‘Environmental Racism’ Site Scrapped

A chemical company averted a national test case over “environmental racism” by suspending plans to build a plastics plant in a poor, black community. Shintech Inc. said it will instead try to open the plant in an industrial area near Baton Rouge. The Environmental Protection Agency praised the decision while activists said they will fight to keep the plant from being built anywhere in Louisiana. Shintech had planned to open the polyvinyl chloride plant in Convent, a mostly black town on the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Shintech opponents filed a civil rights complaint with the EPA.