In Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley,’ Excitement Over New Emissions Rules Is Tempered By a Legal Challenge to Federal Environmental Justice Efforts

By Victoria St. Martin

RESERVE, La.—For Robert Taylor, it should have been a moment of celebration. For 60 years, he has watched with apprehension as the curved and winding pipes of the nation’s only chloroprene rubber plant discharged plumes of exhaust over this stretch of the Louisiana bayou long known as “Cancer Alley.”