A River Parishes refinery is under heightened scrutiny from state regulators after it unlawfully discharged industrial waste containing arsenic, cadmium, chromium and other toxic heavy metals into public areas and waterways.
Atlantic Alumina, also known as Atalco, is facing dozens of environmental violations stemming from breaches that occurred last year in the giant levees of its waste containment lakes at its aluminum oxide refinery near Gramercy. The facility is the only one remaining in the United States that refines bauxite into aluminum oxide (alumina), a process that produces a caustic red slurry waste the company stores in several manmade lakes near the St. James-St. John the Baptist parish line.
In August, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality issued the company a “N