Pleading details toxic pollution violations from breaches in waste lake levees
An environmental group has filed a federal lawsuit against a River Parishes alumina refinery that state regulators have repeatedly cited for allowing toxic pollution to escape into public drainage areas and waterways.
The Louisiana Environmental Action Network filed suit Friday against Atalco Gramercy LLC in the federal court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The company operates the Atlantic Alumina facility that straddles the border of St. James and St. John the Baptist parishes on the west bank of the Mississippi River.
The 17-page pleading is based largely on pollution discharges state inspectors discovered during a series of visits to the facility beginning last year. The Illuminator detailed the extent of the pollution and its impact in a series of reports this year. The reports shed light on the high concentrations of toxic metals found in water and soil samples collected from the polluted areas. Much of the information was unknown to neighboring residents and local leaders.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality has cited the facility for dozens of violations stemming from breaches in the levees surrounding the facility’s “red mud” waste containment lakes and numerous wastewater discharges into the river that exceeded permitted limits.
Atalco did not respond Monday to a request for comment.
The lawsuit cites many of the regulatory violations in a 606-page inspection report the Department of Environmental Quality began in September 2024 and completed in March. It also includes violations LDEQ inspectors discovered in subsequent visits to the facility in May and June.
“In the aggregate, this litany of violations demonstrates that Defendant’s lack of care for the proper operation of the Facility has been reckless and with egregious disregard for the environmental and human impacts of its mismanagement,” the lawsuit states.
The Louisiana Environmental Action Network is asking the federal court to award an unspecified amount in civil penalties and legal fees and to declare Atalco’s unpermitted actions as violations of the Clean Water Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. The group is also asking for an injunction to prevent further violations and require Atalco to install appropriate treatment technology at the facility.
Atalco refines bauxite, a rust-colored rock containing raw metals, at the refinery into alumina, turning it into an ultra-fine white powder. Atalco sells the alumina to metal smelters that need it to make finished aluminum.
Opened in 1958 as Kaiser Aluminum, the Gramercy facility is the only remaining bauxite refinery in the United States, making itthe nation’s only domestic source of a critical metal feedstock.
For every ton of aluminum produced from Atalco’s work, bauxite refining generates an estimated 2.5 tons of waste byproduct, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Atalco stores the waste, most of which takes the form of a thick red mud containing highly corrosive and toxic chemicals, in large containment ponds surrounded by 50-feet-high levees.
In August 2024, federal inspectors discovered breaches in some of Atalco’s levees in which the toxic slurry formed erosion channels and flowed offsite into public areas. State inspectors then discovered several more levee breaches in the subsequent months. Atalco made repairs to its levees but inspectors found new erosion channels during a follow-up visit in May.
https://lailluminator.com/2025/11/03/atalco-alumina-refinery-faces-lawsuit/