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In April 2024, Formosa Plastics Corp. USA was among 137 companies to receive the 2023 Pinnacle Award by the Union Pacific Railroad for "safe shipping of hazardous materials". The transport company honors cusotmers that "release prevention protocols, corrective action plans and have zero non-accident releases of regulated hazardous materials shipments". 

Meanwhile, journalists at the Intercept have followed how in the aftermath of the East Palestine train disaster, lobbyists have both weakened rail safety (Thakker 2023) and supported the buildout of toxic polyvinylchloride (PVC) production (Mitchell 2023, 2024). The latter includes Formosa Plastics planned expansions in Louisiana's St. James Parish.

"The “1-mile rule”: Texas’ unwritten, arbitrary policy protects big polluters from citizen complaints. It’s not found anywhere in state law or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s rules, but for years the agency has denied citizens the ability to challenge air pollution permits because they live more than a mile away." (Baddour 2023)

The Formosa Monitor Alliance (MFA) is run by a coalition of Taiwanese NGOs, including Covenants Watch, Taiwan Association for Human Rights, Environmental Rights Foundation, and Environmental Jurists Association. The MFA has posted news articles, short interviews with local priests and legal analyses, with introductions to relevant laws such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights (UNGPs). 

Self-description of the group on social media:「監督台塑越鋼聯盟」由長期聲援台塑越鋼受害者的團體們組成，旨在為台塑越鋼汙染案的受害者爭取賠償、倡議環境正義，並監督政府及企業履行其人權義務。

Throughout her 30-year career, Diane Wilson has been a prolific author, having published several books (Wilson 2005; 2011) that have been highly regarded by scholars of feminist and environmental literature (Poe 2013; Thornber 2014; Aming-Hong 2022). Wilson's book, An Unreasonable Woman (2005), has been praised by Karen Thornber (2014), an ecocritical writer who has noted that the book highlights the "global consequences of local and national behaviors" and can "work to change consciousness in the absence of public policy" (Thornber 2014, 991). Moreover, literature scholar Heidi Amin-Hong (2022) has argued that Wilson's "documentary aesthetics" demonstrate how Formosa's pollution of Vietnamese waters is part of a longer history of pollution caused by militarized projects across transpacific geographies, ranging from Vietnam to Taiwan and Texas (Aming-Hong 2022, 1). According to Amin-Hong, Wilson's use of dialogue "decenters individual authority in favor of collective knowledge gathering and communal action" (Aming-Hong 2022, 6).

"[Formosa Plastics] paid $50 million in a consent decree to create the Matagorda Bay Mitigation Trust. The money is spread across environmental restoration and protection projects to mitigate the effects of decades of pollution. It also establishes the Matagorda Bay Fishing Cooperative to help shrimpers and fishers and oyster harvesters revitalize local seafood businesses." 

Source: https://capitalandmain.com/hellcat-big-oil-great-grandmother-is-fightin…

The system was built to serve organizations and individuals with humanitarian goals. The system gathers data from report, reviews, and users and compiles it into comprehensible information to help inform decision-making for humanitarian concerns. Portions of the app also focus on education and technical support for field researchers looking to collect large quantities of data.

The system is primarily used by researchers, scholars, and organizations with humanitarian interests. The app also has functions which would attract users that are beginning research and do not have established connections within the field as the app provides a support system.

The development of Twine was funded primarily through donations from individual investors interested in the data sharing aspects of the software and humanitarian aid organizations who benefit from the accessible data.

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