On Monday morning, The Descendants Project filed suit in 40th Judicial District Court in Edgard against Greenfield Louisiana LLC, the Port of South Louisiana, and St. John the Baptist Sheriff Mike Tregre. 

In its filing, the nonprofit alleges that by reducing Greenfield’s tax burden, the Port and Sheriff of St. John violated the Louisiana constitution’s prohibition on gratuitous donations, essentially handing over money to Greenfield. 

For over three years, environmental justice advocates had fought Greenfield’s plans to build a towering, $800 million grain elevator along the last rural stretch of Louisiana’s River Road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. As a whole, this largely unindustrialized span in St. John reflected a history and setting that should be preserved, the National Park Service decided, as it recommended in October that the 11-mile span of Great River Road be awarded the designation of National Historic Landmark. 

On the other side of the Mississippi River, the plantation lots became the state’s petrochemical corridor, lined with smokestacks and often referred to as “Cancer Alley.”

While some residents were drawn to Greenfield’s pledges about job creation, significant opposition came from Wallace, a small black hamlet in St. John the Baptist Parish, where residents feared they would be devoured by industry.

Older St. John residents still associated grain elevators with disaster. In 1977, 40 years before the fight against Greenfield began, the Westwego Continental Grain Elevator exploded an hour’s drive downriver from Wallace, killing 36 people, with an explosion that the Times-Picayune described as a thousand-foot-high “mushroom cloud of grain.” It remains one of the worst industrial disasters in modern Louisiana history and one of the deadliest in the nation’s grain industry.

In August, those Wallace neighbors breathed a sigh of relief, when Greenfield announced that it was scrapping its plans for the grain-export facility. 

But Greenfield did not pay its share even as it exited, say twin sisters Joy and Jo Banner, natives of Wallace who led the fight against the Greenfield Terminal through The Descendants Project, which they co-founded. The lawsuit filed Monday summarizes those contentions against Greenfield.

In a statement issued on Monday evening, Greenfield denied The Descendant Project claims. “In part due to multiple frivolous lawsuits by the Descendants Project, Greenfield Louisiana made the difficult decision to terminate all work on the proposed $600 million grain export facility in Wallace, Louisiana,” the statement reads. “Canceling the grain elevator project was painful, but we did everything possible to keep the project on track because we believe in this community.”

The company also maintains that it may still use the land. “Greenfield remains committed to alternate plans to develop the property in a way that will contribute to Wallace’s economic development,” read Greenfield’s statement, which asserts that Greenfield “has paid all ad valorem taxes levied on the property to the St. John the Baptist Sheriff’s Office” and “does not owe any additional funds to the Port of South Louisiana or the St. John the Baptist Sheriff’s Office.”

Officials allowed Greenfield to skirt millions in taxes, lawsuit contends

Greenfield had purchased 1,300 acres of residential, riverfront land that needed to be rezoned as heavy industrial for the elevator to begin construction. But in December, four months after Greenfield unexpectedly halted its industrial grain-elevator project, the Port of South Louisiana authored a Termination and Release Agreement that allowed Greenfield to exit the deal by paying the Port a termination fee of $538,020. 

This sum is only a fraction of what Greenfield owes the parish in property taxes, The Descendants Project contends.

The lawsuit outlines how the Port and the sheriff helped Greenfield avoid its tax burden. Though Greenfield was the rightful owner of the $40 million property, it avoided paying taxes on that land by forging a Cooperative Endeavor Agreement and a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement with the Port and Sheriff. 

That agreement allowed Greenfield to “sell” the $40 million property to the Port for zero dollars, and then allowed Greenfield to lease it back from the Port, giving the Port technical ownership of the property, though Greenfield still controlled the land. 

The advantage was all tax-related. Because public entities do not pay taxes, the land became tax-exempt, saving Greenfield roughly $200 million in taxes.

PILOT agreements are not unusual. Cities and parishes often use them to attract new business to an area. But even the acronym makes clear that companies benefitting from PILOT agreements must make annual payments — in lieu of paying taxes.

In Greenfield’s PILOT agreement, Greenfield pledged to make a one-time payment of $4 million in 2022, with subsequent annual payments of $2 million to kick in once operations began. Greenfield also agreed to pay the Port annual administrative fees of $300,000 for five years beginning in 2022, presumably when the site was in development, and to continue those administrative payments at a $200,000 per year rate throughout the life of the lease.

“These sums are substantial. But they pale in comparison to what Greenfield would pay if it actually paid property taxes,” The Descendants Project wrote. 

In the end, Greenfield never did pay property taxes. 

Greenfield also did not make any of the agreed-upon PILOT payments.

Instead of collecting on Greenfield debts, the Port and Sheriff forgave them

As parish sheriff, Tregre’s statutory duty was to collect and enforce payments required by the PILOT agreement. 

But year after year, instead of collecting and enforcing, the Port and the Sheriff were both forgiving Greenfield’s missed payments, according to The Descendants Project lawsuit, which claims that the debt cancellations violated Art. VII, Section 14 of the Louisiana Constitution, which prohibits the donation of funds, credits, property or things of value to any person or corporation.

“The Sheriff had a legal duty to ‘enforce payment’ when Greenfield didn’t pay. It is a dereliction of duty for a law enforcement officer to refuse to enforce the law like this,” said William Most, The Descendants Project’s lawyer.

The tax-forgiveness decisions were also made without the agreement of other local entities that receive a part of those tax payments, including St. John Parish Council, the School Board, the Assessor, the Library, Lafourche Basin Levee Board, Pontchartrain Levee District and the LA Tax Commission, according to the court filing. 

After scrutinizing the public transactions with Greenfield, The Descendants Project alleges that three agreements were illegal – the Feb. 2023 agreement that retroactively forgave Greenfield’s failure to pay and extended the deadline to Dec. 2023; the Oct. 2023 amendment that extended the payment deadline to Dec. 2024; and the termination agreement in December that canceled the original $4 million payment entirely. 

The arrangement could be considered fraud, according to the lawsuit, which notes that the Port, the Sheriff and Greenfield told the parish tax assessor and the public that the Port owned the land—but despite that, the land remained on Greenfield’s balance sheets and wasn’t claimed by the Port in its audited financial statements, as submitted to the Louisiana Legislative Auditor. 

Along with the $538,020 termination fee paid to the Port, Greenfield paid an additional $87,730.19 to Sheriff Tregre, to be divided among all the ad valorem tax recipients—the list of local entities such as the library, the levee board and public schools. That’s a total of $625,750.19.

But if Greenfield had kept up with its PILOT payments, those entities would have split $900,000, $300,000 annually, through the end of 2024—on top of Greenfield’s initial $4 million payment slated for 2022.

“The Port of South Louisiana’s dealing with Greenfield is the most glaring example of the unfair advantages given to big business that we as residents would never receive,” Joy Banner said. “Agreeing to excuse $200 million in taxes with flimsy proof of jobs and economic development is bad enough, but to have our officials give unlawful extensions and then dismiss the majority of the money that Greenfield still owes is completely indefensible.”

The Descendants Project is asking the court to annul the three allegedly illegal agreements – dated Feb. 2023, Oct. 2023, and Dec. 2024 – and to bar defendants from making gratuitous donations or contracts that violate state law.

This story has been updated with a response from Greenfield Louisiana.