Not in Manchac's Backyard !

If you are upset about the proposed Syrah Resources graphite product plant at Port Manchac you should be.  It is obvious the South Tangipahoa Parish Port Commission has not done their research concerning this proposal.

There is a complete lack of information regarding the effects of the production of graphite products in the US by Syrah Resources because currently their largest production plant is in the African Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.

Under an agreement with China, the Australian owned company, Syrah Resources, will provide 30,000 tons of graphite to Jixi BTR Graphite Industrial for the production of lithium ion batteries.

The South Tangipahoa Parish Port Commission needs to focus its attention on China to learn the true facts about the pollutive nature of a graphite product plant.

In October, 2016 The Washington Post did an investigative story on the pollutant effects of graphite dust on a town located near a plant that produces it.  The story entitled “In your phone, in their air” was written by Peter Whoriskey and can be easily Googled.

I have quoted some of its highlights below:

‘At night, the pollution around the village has an otherworldly, almost fairy-tale quality.  ‘The air sparkles,’ said Zhang Tuling, a farmer in a village in far northeastern China. ‘When any bit of light hits the particles, they shine.’

Beside the family home is a plot that once grew saplings, but the trees died once the factory began operating, said Zhang’s husband, Yu Yuan.
‘This is what we live with,’ Zhang said, slowly waving an arm at the stumps.

By daylight, the particles are visible as a lustrous gray dust that settles on everything. It stunts the crops it blankets, begrimes laundry hung outside to dry and leaves grit on food. The village’s well water has become undrinkable, too.

Zhang and Yu live near a factory that produces graphite, a glittery substance that, while best known for filling pencils, has become an indispensable resource in the new millennium. It is an ingredient in lithium-ion batteries.

At five towns in two provinces of China, Washington Post journalists heard the same story from villagers living near graphite companies: sparkling night air, damaged crops, homes and belongings covered in soot, polluted drinking water — and government officials inclined to look the other way to benefit a major employer.

In addition, plant managers and party officials sometimes sternly discouraged journalists from speaking with villagers. At three of the villages, the taxi carrying the Post journalists was followed.
Whatever the obstacles, the villagers who would talk offered remarkably consistent accounts of the pollution. The graphite, they typically said with disgust, makes everything mai tai, a regional expression meaning dirty.

Since the graphite factory opened in Zhang’s village about five years ago, the graphite has become more than a nuisance. The couple live near Jixi, a city less than 50 miles from the Russian border. The dust has covered their corn crop, so much so that walking by a row of cornstalks leaves their faces blackened. And it seems impossible to keep it out of the house — at the dinner table, it often leaves them chewing the particles in their teeth.

They worry, too, about the health consequences, especially of breathing it in. Inhaling particulate matter can cause an array of health troubles, according to health experts, including heart attacks and respiratory ailments.

But it’s not just the air. The graphite plant discharges pollutants into local waters, Zhang and Yu said — a nightly event that they can detect by smell: The discharges leave a chemical odor that irritates their noses and throats. Those emissions have not only made their water undrinkable, they said, but also kept the local river from freezing in winter. They also think the discharge poisoned the poplar trees they were growing for lumber outside their home, just beyond their coops for ducks and geese and chickens.

‘All the trees were fine until the graphite plant started,’ Yu said. ’It killed my trees.’
‘We want to move, but we don’t have any money,’ Zhang said.”

This is the reality of what could happen if this project is allowed to continue.  I’m sure that the company will respond that this is a situation that exists in China known for their lax enforcement of environmental safeguards and that they along with our state will ensure that this doesn’t happened here.  Do you want to trust this company and the state of Louisiana to protect you and the environment? Mr. Zhang in China did and look how that ended.