On Tuesday, River Parish residents received unexpected news: Greenfield Louisiana had halted its plans for an $800 million grain-export facility in Wallace.

Greenfield, which specializes in “agricultural infrastructure,” has faced a series of delays over the past three years, due to legal filings and community protests lodged by a group of residents in St. John the Baptist Parish. Led by a local nonprofit, The Descendants Project, residents had argued that the massive terminal – with an elevator nearly the height of the Superdome, set onto a 1,300-acre plot of sugarcane fields – was certain to ruin the rural character that still dominates on the west side of the Mississippi River.

Then, last week, Greenfield got word that its plans would be set back even further, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers delayed the permitting process for the grain terminal by an additional six months. 

In response, Greenfield scrapped its plans for the facility. 

“Time kills all projects, and, sadly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chose to repeatedly delay this project by catering to these special-interest groups when it should have been listening to local voices from our community,” said Lynda Van Davis, counsel and head of external affairs for Greenfield.

Gov. Jeff Landry blamed the Army Corps’ delay on “special interest groups and wealthy plantation owners,” presumably referring to advocates from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, and a group of plantations that would have been disrupted by the construction and operation of the grain terminal.

In May, the National Park Service published a draft of its findings that the 11-mile stretch of River Road along the rural West Bank of the parish is a good candidate for preservation as a National Historic Landmark District. 

Also, the terminal was opposed by three plantations in the area, Whitney, Evergreen and Oak Alley, all of which offer nationally significant interpretations of slavery.

The governor also may have been referring to twin sisters Jo and Joy Banner, two natives of Wallace who founded The Descendants Project in 2020 before Greenfield had announced its plans. The Banner sisters have been at the forefront during every step of the Greenfield fight. Earlier this year, The Descendants Project purchased the Woodland Plantation, the starting point of one of the largest slave revolts in U.S. history, putting it under Black ownership for the first time.

The announcement came by surprise on Tuesday. Residents of St. John had gathered at the Morning Star Church, which stands in Wallace. Neighbors thought that they were there to give input and to hear an update from Greenfield after the Army Corps had announced its latest permitting timeline – the fifth delay over the last 18 months by the Corps. 

Everyone had carved time from their schedules, left their homes and driven to the meeting, only to hear that there was nothing to discuss. No one had any inkling that the Greenfield project was being canceled.

Nicole Dumas, a Wallace resident who attended the meeting, was devastated to hear Greenfield announce the project’s halt. Though the Army Corps has explained its delays by saying that it must respond to detailed requirements, the latest prolonged delay felt like a slap in the face that denied the community the economic and job growth that they had hoped to see, with the construction of the grain terminal, she said. 

Plus, Greenfield representatives have contended that similar projects in the region have been approved in just six months.

Chad Roussell, another Wallace resident, said the Army Corps owes the West Bank a more detailed explanation about the drawn-out permitting process. “Were they really looking into the adverse effects of the project,” he asked, “or just giving in to the plantation owners?”

In the wake of Greenfield’s announcement to abandon its plans, Jo Banner said that she felt sad for her neighbors who had supported the terminal, most of them in the belief that the enterprise would add jobs to the parish’s economy. 

Banner, who co-founded The Descendants Project with her sister to help heal the River Parishes’ Black community, was in the audience that night. As she looked around, she saw a sea of shocked faces, including those of the Army Corps representatives who hosted the meeting. 

Banner was also taken aback by the way Landry and Greenfield placed blame on “special interest groups – many of which are out-of-state NGOs.” She emphasized that The Descendants Project was decidedly in the interest of St. John residents and a very local nonprofit. 

The Banner family has lived for generations in Wallace, a small Black hamlet founded by former Union soldiers. “Where do you think we descend from?” Banner asked.

The next steps for St. John

In April, St. John the Baptist Parish Council had voted to rezone the Greenfield site, nearly 1,300 acres of land, from residential to heavy industrial use. 

Though the parish Code of Ordinances include protections for its residents – such as a 2,000-foot separation that heavy industry must maintain from areas of more dense residential development – the Parish Council accepted a new interpretation for those protections that sets aside density calculations based on U.S. Census data.

Under the new interpretation, the entire parish is at risk of industrial encroachment, The Descendants Project argued in legal filings. 

Now, even though Greenfield has halted its plans for a grain terminal, those interpretations still stand, leaving the door open for what The Descendants Project believes are miscalculations of residential density. Under the parish’s math, any other industrial company could build a facility for heavy industrial use in Wallace or another St. John community – without the 2,000-foot separation requirement.

The Banner sisters have watched closely as the parish’s decision has been publicized. They believe that it’s now on the radar of industry leaders. “We can’t be naive about that,” Jo Banner said. “We stay vigilant and we stay active.”

But for now, those in Wallace who opposed the terminal feel a weight has been lifted from their shoulders, she said. Longtime residents had a litany of concerns that ranged from a loss of history to health hazards. 

Last year, the Army Corps of Engineers found that the Greenfield Grain Terminal could harm historic places in St. John, including the Willow Grove Cemetery, a small community-run cemetery in Wallace. 

Yet, even beyond the destruction of historic sites, residents worried that the 250-foot grain elevator would have blocked the sun from reaching their homes until the afternoon. They had also complained to the parish council about air-quality issues that would have been exacerbated by grain dust released from the elevator. 

Greenfield never agreed with the dust concern, arguing that technological advances in recent decades meant that far less grain dust would be released. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality had issued Greenfield a ‘minor source’ air permit in August 2020, Van Davis noted. “The very same environmental impact as a hospital,” she said. 

In a way, Jo Banner views Greenfield as an arm of the pro-industry Parish Council, which has targeted the village of Wallace for more than three decades now. 

“St. John the Baptist Parish has been bullying Wallace since the days of Formosa,” she said, referring to another polluter fought off by residents. In 1990,  Formosa Plastics, a Taiwanese conglomerate, had spurred the illegal rezoning of the same land that became the Greenfield site, to build a large petrochemical, plastic-manufacturing plant. 

Formosa opted not to build in St. John, but has now set its sights on land within the historically Black community of Welcome in St. James Parish. 

Some who led the fight against Formosa in the 1990s have now passed away. One of the most prominent activists of that era, Wilfred Greene, is buried in the cemetery at the end of West 5th Street.

To Banner, it was no coincidence that Greenfield announced the end of the grain terminal project just one street from the cemetery. “I really felt an ancestor shining down on us yesterday,” she said. 

This article has been updated to add perspective from later interviews with Wallace residents.