WALLACE — Plans to build a 250-acre grain export facility in a historically black town in St. John the Baptist Parish have gone up in smoke.

After a nearly three-year battle, Greenfield Louisiana says they are no longer moving forward with the project, which WBRZ originally reported on in February.

“It just was so appropriate that in that moment we were standing there together and we heard Greenfield pulled out, and we let out shouts of joy,” Jo Banner, who has been fighting the Colorado-based firm from building a plant in Wallace since 2021, said.

Greenfield's project included 56 grain silos and a grain elevator.

“We don't want someone that's just gonna parachute in with some cockamamiey project like we have here. That will wipe us out. the community that our ancestors built for us even after being enslaved, then coming here, buying land to pass it down,” Banner said.

Banner’s non-profit, the Descendants Project, and the Fifolet Cafe are on their family's land directly next to Greenfield's proposed site in Wallace, a historic "free town" established by the formerly enslaved.

“The beauty of Wallace is that it's still here. There’s so many of these towns that have just been ripped apart,” Banner, the founder and director of the Descendants Project, said in February.

In a September 2023 report, the Army Corp of Engineers said the grain facility would have adverse effects on historic sites and cemeteries.

Greenfield blames the permit process, saying the Corp is "catering to special interests."

“The Descendants Project was sponsored by many national non-governmental entities. They spent a lot of money supporting environmental justice, however, I can not say that's who Greenfield felt they were actually fighting against. We were fighting against plantation tourism,” Lynda Davis said.

Banner strongly disagrees.

“If you consider the health of my family, my community's special interest. The health and the preservation of my community, if that's special interests to you, you can have it,” Banner said.

As of Wednesday, the National Park Service was in the process of designating the entire west bank of St. John Parish as a national historic landmark district.

“Greenfield's industrial grain terminal would have been constructed in the heart of it, forever harming this unique cultural landscape,” the National Trust for Historic Preservation said in a statement.