This map highlights the location of the former Buena Vista plantation in St. James Parish, with a red star placed where the remains of enslaved people have been found. A subsidiary of Formosa Plastics wants to build a. $9 billion petrochemical complex on the property that environmental groups oppose. (Louisiana Bucket Brigade illustration)
NEW ORLEANS — An environmental activist group says it has identified five people buried almost two centuries ago at the site of a proposed industrial complex in St. James Parish, claiming they were enslaved individuals whose descendants might still call the area home.
The company behind the project insists it has taken adequate steps to preserve and respect their remains, but it doesn’t appear receptive to suggestions from organizations opposed to the massive $9.4 billion complex that the burial site be commemorated.
Formosa Plastics discovered the remains in 2019 as part of required archaeological surveys for its project permits, something opponents of the project only learned through a public records request. Three years later, genealogist Lenora Gobert with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade sorted through courthouse records to identify one of persons buried as a 9-year-old girl named Rachel.
On Monday, Gobert revealed the names of four other people she is convinced were also buried there. She joined representatives of Inclusive Louisiana and The Descendants Project at the André Cailloux Center to reveal her findings.
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Since 2000, the Bucket Brigade has actively campaigned to keep petrochemical industry development in check, blaming it for environmental harms and poor health outcomes in the state. The other two groups, based in the River Parishes, also oppose further industrial development, drawing comparisons between historic slavery and environmental pollution they say inordinately impacts the health of descendants of enslaved people.
Gobert’s report, “Buried at Buena Vista,” connects the remains found at the former plantation, on the Mississippi River west bank just downstream from the Sunshine Bridge, to a handwritten, 19th century parish conveyance document. It shows plantation owner Benjamin Winchester mortgaged the property along with five enslaved people who are listed as “dead.”
“This is a tiny tip of an iceberg with so many more names to be discovered,” Gobert said.
In her report, Gobert said it was common for plantation owners to mortgage the enslaved to raise capital based on their appraised value. As for the value of the dead bodies of the enslaved, she cited the work of Amy Bridge, who has researched racial aspects of finance during the era of slavery.
A mortgage conveyance record from the 19th century, handwritten in French, details the names of enslaved people who were buried at Buena Vista plantation in St. James Parish. (Louisiana Bucket Brigade photo)
Such remains were considered assets for a plantation owner, Bride wrote, “… when black bodies are valued not for the economic capital they produce through physical labour, but for the intangible value attributed to the mere existence of their bodies by white speculators, insurers, and creditors.”
The Buena Vista mortgage record Gobert cited identified the enslaved individuals and the age at which they died: Stanley, 31; Simon, 23; Harry, 18; Betsy, 18; and Rachel, 9, whose identity was first reported in 2022.
Other courthouse documents helped Gobert trace the paths of the deceased to Buena Vista.
Simon, for instance, was 10 years old when he was acquired in 1821 as a gift from Winchester’s mother in Kentucky. When Simon was about 16, he was listed in a mortgage deal along with 39 other enslaved people, along with the plantation, for $12,000 with the Bank of Louisiana.
Simon would be mortgaged twice more before he died in 1832, and then at least four more times posthumously.
Gobert and the others groups want to see the burial site at Buena Vista commemorated with grave markers and made easily accessible to visitors.
“They deserve to have a place in history, to be more than commodities bought and sold from one plantation to another,” she said.
Formosa Plastics isn’t outwardly acknowledging the Bucket Brigade’s findings based on a statement from its spokeswoman.
None of the remains found at Buena Vista have been identified or disturbed, according to Janile Parks, director of community and government relations for Formosa subsidiary FG LA LLC. They are behind protective fencing, and the company has backed off plans to relocate the remains under advisement from TerraXplorations Inc., the archeological contractor it hired for its permit surveys, she added.
A company report the Bucket Brigade obtained in 2019 said TerraXplorations planned to have the remains “removed and placed into temporary containers (body bags) and prepared for reinterment.” There has been no indication the company intended to carry out those plans.
“FG will continue to be respectful of these areas and will continue to follow all applicable local, state and federal laws and regulations regarding burial sites,” Parks said. “FG continues to consider all options to respectfully protect the remains in coordination with state authorities.”
Formosa first proposed its complex in the 1990s near the Wallace community in St. John the Baptist Parish. Opposition from neighbors led the company to fold up those plans, along with the federal conviction of the parish president for extortion, racketeering and money laundering related to the project.
In 2018, Formosa announced it had picked a site in St. James in the Welcome community, formerly known as Buena Vista plantation, for its complex. The company obtained its air permits from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) in 2020, but a state judge threw them out two years later after finding state regulators applied data incorrectly during its evaluation.
Formosa successfully challenged that ruling and had its permits reinstated. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeal determined the project’s economic benefits outweighed its environmental harm. LDEQ reviews of permit requests don’t take into account the fiscal upside of proposals, though critics of the agency like the Bucket Brigade have long considered its decisions to lean in favor of business.
Project opponents have asked the Louisiana Supreme Court to consider the case. In the meantime, Formosa has taken steps to renew its state air permits that expire next year.
Jo Banner, co-founder of the Descendants Project, was behind efforts earlier this year to reject a massive grain elevator terminal planned near her lifelong home in Wallace on the same property where the Formosa complex was proposed. Greenfield Holdings has since walked away from the terminal project.
At Monday’s event, Banner correlated the industrial build-out — past and proposed — to the continued subjugation of residents who live next to the facilities. Those neighboring communities in the area known as “Cancer Alley,” have inordinately suffered life-altering and fatal illnesses they link to harmful emissions from petrochemical plants along the river, she said.
Formosa’s refusal to acknowledge that toll is reflected in its treatment of the remains at Buena Vista, according to Banner.
“It is linked to that devaluation of human lives, especially Black lives,” she said.
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