Hurricane Ida triggers focus on chemical plant safety issues

The massive Hurricane that hammered Louisiana earlier this week is refocusing attention on the environmental risks posed by the state’s petrochemical industry. Just days before Hurricane Ida made landfall, a former Army general who led the Defense Department’s (DOD) task force on Hurricane Katrina in 2005 called for state and federal agencies to halt the permitting of liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals and other large fossil fuel projects in the Gulf Coast’s so-called hurricane alley. Retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré,...