We the undersigned demand action in opposition to Israel Chemicals Limited’s (ICL) proposed expansion into the North Riverfront Neighborhood.

On November 19, 2024, the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority (PIEA) passed a controversial tax abatement worth approximately a net $8.2 million to encourage the construction of an LFP manufacturing plant run by Israel Chemicals Limited in the North Riverfront neighborhood. This tax abatement was passed by a non-elected body without public input, nor the approval of the Board of Alders, and used an ordinance from 2009. The federal government additionally granted ICL $197 million to purchase equipment.

As a byproduct of the manufacturing process, this facility will emit air pollutants including particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), small quantities of heavy metals, and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), among others. The local community will pay the health tolls. This industrial facility will be placed less than a mile from the O’Fallon Rec Center, approximately 1000 feet from residences, and across the street from a middle school. This factory will be approximately 5 miles south of the St. Louis City Chain of Rocks water treatment plant’s open settling basins, rendering the city’s water supply vulnerable to pollution from this facility.

Israel Chemicals Limited is not an entity the community trusts, and with good cause:

- At ICL's existing phosphate product plant in the Carondelet neighborhood, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) found ICL to be in violation of the Clean Air Act, and issued four warning letters followed by an official citation in July 2024.

- In a significant environmental disaster abroad, ICL paid $33.7 million in a settlement after one of its facilities collapsed in 2017. This spilled millions of gallons of highly toxic wastewater in a riverbed in the Negev/Naqab desert, killing dozens of animals including ibex, foxes, and birds and impairing the local ecosystem for years after the spill.

- ICL has contracts with the Department of Defense (DoD) to produce white phosphorus, a chemical weapon notoriously used by the Israeli Military against the Palestinian population in Gaza in violation of international law.

- When concerned St. Louisans attempted to obtain a copy of ICL’s construction permit for this proposed facility through the Missouri Sunshine Law, the entire document was redacted beyond legibility, showing us that ICL is hiding their activities from the public.

- While ICL claims that this operation will be safe, as the first producer of LFP cathodes in the country we have no way to verify if this industrial process will be safe and environmentally sound. We have seen other facilities in the battery lifecycle process handling lithium explode.

Like many industrial facilities before it, ICL plans on polluting a predominantly Black, low-income community facing pre-existing exposure to environmental hazards, and elevated health risks as a result. According to census data and the Justice40 tracker, the community nearest to the proposed site qualifies as an at-risk community for environmental justice concerns. It is low income, with more than 21% of people below the poverty line, and its residents are 96% people of color. It is already disproportionately burdened with negative environmental impacts.

Recently, the St. Louis region was designated as a serious nonattainment zone for ozone. Affected communities around the proposed ICL facility are above the 90th or 95th percentile nationally for Ozone burden, NOx burden, and PM 2.5 burden. The community faces preexisting exposure to harmful air pollution from the interstate highway that bisects it, and from contaminants blowing in from industrial operations across the Mississippi. ICL has dismissed the local community, claiming localized harm will be “offset” by adoption of EV’s broadly. We do not accept this sacrifice zone mentality. ICL must reckon with these local impacts in a community already overburdened with environmental hazards.

A 2019 report on environmental racism in St. Louis showed that most of the City’s air pollution sources, like this proposed facility, are located in neighborhoods of color. Data on emergency room visits for asthma in the city show that Black children in St. Louis visit ERs for asthma at roughly ten times the rate of white children. The area of where the ICL plant is slated for construction experiences some of the highest asthma rates in the city.

We demand that city officials who are entrusted with the health and welfare of residents protect their citizens from toxic developments– even and especially in the most vulnerable Black, Brown, and marginalized neighborhoods.

We are asking you to take a stand against industrial polluters contributing to a long standing pattern of environmental racism, against further degradation of St. Louis air quality in the most marginalized neighborhoods, and against tax incentives for unethical corporations.

We are asking our St. Louis elected officials to:

1. Deny tax abatements to Israel Chemicals Limited.
2. Create a two year time limit on ordinances approving tax abatements, so that no company can use old, latent ordinances not intended for that specific development. Companies should not be able to bypass the legislative process in order to receive tax breaks and gain approval to construct in vulnerable areas without the consent of the Board of Aldermen.
3. Support a resolution to declassify ICL’s construction permit in order to foster transparency.
4. Act within your power to stop the construction of the ICL plant in North Riverfront.
5. Break the legacy of environmental racism by halting policies that push toxic development into environmentally over-burdened Black, Brown, and marginalized neighborhoods. Do not provide tax incentives for industrial polluters to develop in marginalized neighborhoods.

Sources:
1. https://aionics.io/from-the-newsletter-bipartisan-infrastructure-law-winners-icl-ip-and-koura-speak-exclusively-with-aionics/
2. https://netl.doe.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/ICL-EA-draft-12042024-v3-reduced.pdf
3. https://echo.epa.gov/detailed-facility-report?fid=110000441102#enforcement
4. https://www.timesofisrael.com/fertilizer-giant-to-pay-nis-110-million-compensation-for-polluting-negev-stream/#:~:text=Fertilizer%20company%20ICL%20said%20
5. https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/fpdsportal?indexName=awardfull&templateName=1.5.3&s=FPDS.GOV&q=ICL-IP&x=0&y=0
6. https://edgi-govdata-archiving.github.io/j40-cejst-2/en/#13.41/38.67967/-90.21571
7. https://dnr.mo.gov/document/st-louis-ozone-nonattainment-area-reclassification-serious-presentation-april-24-2025
8.https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f75504832055a109f6f3ca6/t/63910e6348702e60cea3fb65/1670450793296/2019-09-30_STL_Env_Racism_Report_REVISED_FINAL_Cropped.pdf