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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #11-99 No More Wastelands: Environmental Justice (Part I)
March 17, 1999

Program description and guest contact information at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1999/9911.html

Phillip Babich: Welcome to Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. This week on Making Contact:

Sheryl Johnson: We had a lady that was 50 years old, didn’t know she had asthma, who died of an asthma attack. It goes back to the stigmatizing, being in a black community and public housing. We don’t have no ownership property, but it does not still define the right for us not to have the protection for the city or the state or the county ought to offer to our neighborhood.

Ann Braden: The environmental justice movement is the fastest growing grassroots movement in the South. It’s absolutely burgeoning everywhere, simply because people are literally sick and dying.

Phillip Babich: Across the United States, low income communities and neighborhoods where people of color live are disproportionately suffering from toxic exposure and dumping. In some cases, landfills and polluting industries literally border schools and homes. Over the last decade, a growing movement has been calling for protection from hazardous waste and chemical emissions, a view that's being challenged by big business. On this program, we take a look at the environmental justice movement. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact.

Before environmental regulations went on the books in the United States, heavy industry dumped its wastes with impunity. We hear stories, now, about rivers catching fire earlier in this century -- including the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire in Ohio -- and we may think those days are long past. Think again. It may not be as headline grabbing or sensational, but, every day, low income communities are suffering from toxic exposure. Stories that may seem more apt to come from the U.S.-Mexico border, where chemical waste is dumped into backyard streams are unfolding here in U.S. cities.

Marjorie Richard: Even though it’s pretty outside, today, when I step outside, I wish I could see what I saw when I was growing up or during my early years. The beauty of the land and the trees. But, when I step outside right now, I usually come back. Because all I see is the flare, the trucks. As a matter of fact, right now, I’m sitting in my living room and I can look out and see the operation.

Phillip Babich: Marjorie Richard lives in Norco, a small town in Louisiana that has seen its environment deteriorate since a multinational petroleum company set up shop there in 1929. That year, Royal Dutch Shell Oil acquired the New Orleans Refining Company -- called Norco -- in what was then known as Sellers. Shell renamed the town Norco, after its newly acquired operation. Shell then opened a chemical plant in Norco in the early 1950s, displacing a number of long-time residents of the town. Critics say the company's move also crippled a thriving local African-American economy.

Current residents of the Diamond Subdivision -- an African-American low income neighborhood adjacent to the Shell facilities -- have been trying for years to get Shell to address their complaints of serious environmental health problems that they believe are linked to the oil company's operations. Shell currently ranks third in the United States in releasing cancer-causing agents into the air and fifth in the nation for total production-related waste. Richard is president of Concerned Citizens of Norco, a community group that is challenging Shell's environmental record.

Marjorie Richard: Not only do you smell odors such as chlorine bleach, odors such as rotten eggs or sulfur...you smell odors like some type of bleach mixed with garlic. It’s just...some smells you can’t even describe. The air is just not safe at night. You smell gas odors. It’s not right. My health has not been very good since I’ve retired and I’m able to see what’s going on daily. It’s not right. We’ve been dealing with the State Department and also with EPA DEQ to see if we can get help here. Because we do have another problem. It’s a serious environmental health problem and nobody was listening to us. So, they’re looking into it for the first time, this past year. There was a fact-finding tour by national EPA people. There has been a lot of education provided for us through the environmental groups for people to know how to take care of their health. We have a lot of children with asthma. My family suffers with it, my mom. Everybody on my street. And the other four streets, they go to the hospital frequently for asthma, emphysema and depression, headaches. It’s a trauma, it’s really a trauma. For me, it’s personally a trauma and now everybody is affected - in this area - with cancer - breast cancer. Everything. If it didn’t cause it, it contributed a lot to it, because dioxin is known as a solid killer. Definitely, benzene is at the top of the list; it’s a known carcinogen.

Phillip Babich: A number of accidents have occurred in the Norco area, including in 1988, when a pipeline near the refinery exploded, killing a woman and her son while he was outside cutting grass. Her house caught fire and spread to another house across the street. The explosion shook the town, causing some buildings to collapse and others to crack.

Marjorie Richard: Two blocks from me, on the corner a lady - her name was Miss Helen - was inside sleeping. She was in her 70s, I remember. And her son, who was a student at the school where I taught, was outside cutting grass. And the ethylene pipeline, ignited. And her house blew away. The fire went across the street and scorched my aunt’s house. The old lady and the boy died. Not long ago, we had an evacuation of one of the schools. They said there was nothing in the steam, but it caused trauma for a lot of people. And it’s simply because of what we’re experienced in the past: the noise, seeing objects flying in the air, not knowing where they’re going to fall. Later on, we find out that it was part of a floating tank top that fell on the playground down here where the children play. And it’s frightening. You can’t sit out in your yard and have picnics anymore. On Mother’s Day, 1998, a lime truck spilled or exploded over there, and it went all the way into the community.

Phillip Babich: On December 8, 1998, Shell reported the overheating of a tank containing methyl-ethyl ketone, or MEK, an extremely toxic chemical monitored by the EPA. The company advised local students to remain indoors and arriving school buses were rerouted during the incident. Residents reported a roaring sound, billowing clouds of white smoke, and said that the cloud leaked into their homes, causing lung and eye irritation. Though there were air samples taken eight hours after the incident reporting high levels of MEK and a number of other dangerous toxins, Shell told the neighbors that there were no chemicals released in their community. The very same day at noon, a Shell company truck spilled hundreds of pounds of hydrochloric acid. Company spokesperson, Don Baker, said that Shell was not required to report the incident since the law only requires a company to report a spill of one thousand pounds or more.

In August of 1997, Concerned Citizens of Norco attempted to sue Shell for relocation fees, fearing for the health of their families, but they lost. Shell has offered to purchase some of the properties of Norco, but residents say their offer isn't enough money to allow them to relocate to a safer area. The Sierra Club joined the Concerned Citizens of Norco and other community groups for a "Toxic Tour" in February 1999. Shell spokesperson Baker said he was disappointed with the event and believed that it was intended to present a negative view of the company's impact on the community. Marjorie Richard...

Marjorie Richard: We’re not making Norco look bad, as we’ve been accused of. We’re not doing that. If we don’t tell them, how will they know? We’re not doing it because we’re out to get anybody. We asked for help. We’re asking for help, because we want our children to grow up healthy. And children don’t deserve to be put in that position. The issue here is honesty and fairness. It’s bad; it’s a human rights issue. It’s my constitutional right and it’s my God-given right. We were here first; Shell chemical plant came after.

Phillip Babich: Shell declined to comment on tape for us, but in a written statement sent to Making Contact, Shell spokesperson Don Baker disputed the claims made by Richard and her organization that the level of toxicity is dangerous to public health and the environment. Baker says that since 1987, Shell has reduced its overall emissions, and cites studies concluding that the rates of cancer in the area are not significantly higher than those in the rest of the nation. But, according to Concerned Citizens of Norco, there have been unusually high rates of rare diseases, including one that claimed the life of Marjorie Richard's sister. Also, Shell's Baker didn't respond to our question regarding the extent of Shell's responsibility for the health of the citizens in the communities where it operates, even if the company is operating within government regulations.

Shereen Meraji: You’re listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. This program can now be heard across the United States and Canada, South Africa, and around the world on Radio for Peace International short-wave. You can also hear us on the Internet. If you want more information about the subject of this week’s program or you would like to learn how you can get involved with Making Contact, please give us a call. It’s toll free. 800-529-5736. Call that same number for tapes and transcripts. We also welcome comments and suggestions for future programs.

Phillip Babich: In other parts of the United States, pollution and chemicals emanate from heavy industry and the hazardous dumps themselves. Such is the case with a public housing tract in Chicago. Altgeld Gardens is a low-income housing development on Chicago's Southeast side. For over one hundred years, this area has been home to numerous polluting industries. It has the highest incidence of cancer anywhere in the greater Chicago area.

Making Contact first visited Altgeld Gardens in 1996. The land surrounding the public housing tract is relatively barren and the units are set distinctly apart from downtown Chicago. Scents from hills made of sewer sludge waft through the air and listening to the stories of community organizers there makes one wonder about the children riding their bikes around the area. Today, in 1999, it's the same story.

In 1982, in an effort to understand why so many people in this mostly African-American community were sick, Hazel Johnson founded People for Community Recovery. In the years that followed, the organization began lobbying the state and federal government to investigate the high rates of cancer and other illnesses at Altgeld Gardens.

Hazel Johnson: My husband died of lung cancer. I happened to be watching the news on TV; I heard that our area had a high rate of cancer, then I wanted to know why. I started looking around the community. A lot of people had cancer, and, in many cases, had died of cancer. We had seven babies, they was all girls, that was born with some type of cancer, that died at the age of two and three years old. Except for one. She was so small you could put her in a shoe box. And her brain was protruded...her head. And then she had correctable surgery. But, still she died at the age of seven months - and she was real small.

Phillip Babich: Hazel's daughter, Sheryl Johnson, began working with People for Community Recovery over ten years ago. She says that the Federal Environmental Protection Agency has not done its job to help clean up the contaminated sites. She says that studies have shown high concentrations of toxic chemicals such as poly-aromatic-hydrocarbons -- PAHs -- PCBs, lead, and pesticides at Altgeld Gardens.

Sheryl Johnson: We also have, less than 20 yards from our office, a PCB cleanup site, which has been contaminated for over 30 years. The Chicago Housing Authority used to store transformers, that was laced with PCB, and in 1984, they tried to clean it up. In 1986, they didn’t clean it adequately. So the U.S. EPA came in and cited them. They started at ten thousand dollars, then they reduced it to one thousand, which they never paid. But, an anonymous tip by someone who used to work in that particular area, informed us that the PCB was still there. And the Chicago Housing Authority has now hired a contractor to remediate the PCB, but it’s only supposed to deal with five inches of the soil. But, when they started doing the excavation, they had 11 feet, and the PCB contaminant is currently still there. We know that our soil is contaminated and our children is always at risk. Who plays in the soil 80 percent of the time? It’s the children.

So, two years ago, we had a sulfur trioxide spill. When it was released too fast, it exploded. Didn’t have a shutoff valve, so it sent a big plume over my community. And the sad thing about it, the forecast for the day was rain. If it had rained, the sulfur trioxide would have turned into sulfuric acid. What did a lot of people do? They went home because they had the residue on them. They went home and washed. What did that do? They burned their skin. No one is saying anything about those things that happened. We have a high incidence of people with asthma and emphysema in our community. Just two years ago, we had a lady that was 50 years old, didn’t know she had asthma, died of an asthma attack. It goes back to the stigmatizing, being in a black community and public housing. We don’t have no ownership property, but it does not still define the right for us not to have the protection the city or the state or the county ought to offer to our neighborhood.

Phillip Babich: In 1996, President Clinton signed an Environmental Executive Order in an effort to clean up toxic sites. After five years, it has had no visible impact on Altgeld Gardens, says Sheryl Johnson.

Sheryl Johnson: U.S. EPA had a history of not dealing with residential issues. They always dealt with industrial and commercial issues in the past, before the signing of Executive Order 12898. What he done was allow for a lot of resources to be available, but they have not trickled down to impact the community.

Phillip Babich: As communities across the United States share information about their environmental conditions, the movement to challenge polluters and lax government agencies has been growing. According to Ann Braden, a long-time civil rights, labor, and peace activist in Louisville, Kentucky, with the Southern Organizing Committee for Social and Economic Justice, a pivotal moment for the environmental justice movement was an environmental conference for people of color held in Washington, DC in 1991.

Ann Braden: It was the most inspiring gathering that I had been in since the 1960s and the movement at that time. People came from all over the world. It was international, as well as from all these constituencies in this country from the grass roots, an issue was adopted - and this is a document everybody ought to read - 17 principals of environmental justice, which we’ve used as a yardstick ever since, of what constitutes environmental justice. Also, they issue a call for action; a very eloquent document to people to come together against what they call worldwide genocide.

The EPA, at that time, was saying there’s no such thing as environmental racism. The term environmental racism was really not known widely, even to its victims. But people organized and began to demand - there was an open letter we drew up and circulated to the new Clinton administration when it came in, to pay attention to this issue. He responded with an executive order, which has been put through the federal government, at least on paper, on the side of environmental justice.

Phillip Babich: Another enforcement tool for tackling environmental justice claims is Title 6 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which makes allocation of federal funds contingent upon non-discriminatory practices. Up ‘til now, the EPA has pursued only two Title 6 claims. Challenges to using Title 6 for environmental protection have sprung forth from business interests and the right-wing, under the rubric of states' rights. As Braden explains the notion of state's rights, a shift of power from the federal government to state and local governments, has become known as devolution.

Ann Braden: Different efforts to invoke Title 6, of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which basically says, if you can’t...if you get federal money, which all these state agencies which issue the permits for enforcement do, that you can’t discriminate against people because of race. In February, a year ago, the EPA issue what they called a guidance instructing all the...saying that Title 6 must be enforced by the regulatory agencies in the states. In other words, they had to stop this business. You know, it actually says you’ve got to stop putting these...not in these words...putting these dumps in the communities of color. Doesn’t really deal with poor white communities. But it would have that effect too. It produced a firestorm of protest from the polluting industries, of course, and from many of the state governments. And it gets all tied in with this whole issue of devolution, which we just think is a return to states’ rights. But I think the people who wrote it call it returning more power to the states, and taking power away from federal agencies. Devolution is a big word that most of us haven’t heard till recently. The people that we work with are calling it ‘devolution.’ They’ve never heard of the word devolution. They call it demolution, and we picked that up, because that’s really what it is. It’s destroying, and it goes far beyond the environmental issues, because it’s the whole effort to kill off both resources and protection. On people’s rights, not just their environmental rights, but all rights, coming from the federal government.

Phillip Babich: Braden adds that the environmental justice movement has drawn together a diverse coalition of activist organizations.

Ann Braden: The environmental justice movement is the fastest growing grassroots movement in the South. It’s absolutely burgeoning everywhere, simply because people are literally sick and dying in these communities. Mainly, communities of color: African-American, also Latino, Native American. Also, in working class white areas. So, what’s happened is, people have become aware of the fact that there’s so much sickness, so many miscarriages, so many birth defects, lung problems, heart problems in their communities that are not just accidents. It has to do with the terrible pollution, a toxic pollution of their air and water and soil. You can’t fight this in one community. The polluters are well-organized and they’re rich.

Phillip Babich: I wonder if you can back up a bit and tell us your take on why is it low income communities are disproportionately seeing the effects of toxic waste and toxic pollution and toxic dumping.

Ann Braden: I think that the way our economy has developed and the way our industrial process has developed, that we are now producing poisons to the extent that this earth cannot sustain. It really can’t. So, I think that it comes back to what happens in a racist and classist society. I don’t know that you can single out a conspiracy theory of history. I don’t think somebody sat around a table somewhere and decided, "well, we’re going to dump things in communities of color because we don’t like people of color." I don’t think that’s what happened. But, I think what did happen and is happening is just as evil and just as insidious. You see, in a racist society - white supremacy is a better word to describe our racial situation in this country. We’ve got to see that racism or white supremacy is not some wart on the body politic, that we’ve got a good society and this is just a little problem we have. This country was built on racism, that’s where the wealth came from. The initial wealth came from the slavery and the slave trade. It was built into the institution from the beginning. That’s so important to those of us who are white to see. Because sometimes people think, well, if they can just get rid of their personal prejudice...if anybody ever can...you know, I’m not sure you get beyond all of it. But people think they do and they struggle and we sit around feeling guilty. We need to understand the depth of this. It’s built into the institution; it’s not your or my or anyone’s personal attitude. One net result of that is, if there are problems to be borne, you dump them on people of color. That’s why I say you don’t sit around the table and say you don’t like the people. It’s just, what do you do with your problems? You dump them on people of color and poor people. This country has written off people of color and poor people as expendable. And if you can’t dump it all in this country, you dump it on the Third World; they’re trying that too. Which makes this whole movement very important.

Phillip Babich: I wonder if you can talk about the flip side of this environmental justice issue: this coalition of businesses - business interests, really - that are opposing any moves by the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce environmental justice provisions. We’re talking about big players, such as the American Petroleum Institute, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the National Mining Association. Just to quote an industry spokesperson, who is attacking the guidelines in the Environmental Protection Agency with regard to environmental justice issues, it has "a terrible effect on economic opportunity." And that is often presented as being the counter-argument to low income communities actually opposing dumps coming to their town: it stifles business and it’s not going to present the economic opportunities that we’re supposed to have to raise these low income people to higher economic standards. What do you think about that whole view?

Ann Braden: Well, I know that there’s a huge propaganda - I call it propaganda, I’m sorry - campaign that’s coming from big business and from some of the state governments too. They’re often tied in with big business, and they have convinced some people in some of the communities that are the worst affected by this, there’s no doubt about it. Like in any other struggle, you’re in a struggle for the minds of the people if you want action. I think they’re convincing fewer and fewer of them because people see different. I think what’s wrong with it is, in the first place, most of these developments do not create the jobs that they promise. Certainly, the waste dumps do not create jobs; They say that, but they don’t. They might create some, but very few; so, it’s not a good economic development. Alabama’s got a new governor now, which you may know. Alabama is handing out permits for waste dumps, almost automatically. The previous governor, some of his family was tied in with the waste businesses, and his was really a very "economic development" program.

Now, there’s another aspect to that. You see, what we say - and this may sound visionary, and we’ve got to have a little vision - in a way, even this conflict is not new. Working people in this society, in most societies, have always made a trade-off on this issue. The first time, I lived in Kentucky, where coal mining has been. Coal mining has always been a tremendously dangerous occupation; people got killed and maimed or they got black lung, they spent their elderly years suffering with that. And miners knew that; people who went into the mines traditionally made a trade-off. They knew they were going to shorten their lives, but they did it because they wanted to make a living for their children. We take the position that working people, any people, should not have to make that trade-off. We should not have to decide between dying early or jobs that kill us or not having a job at all. We say that you can develop - what the general terminology is - sustainable economies. What that means is jobs that pay well, but don’t kill you. We begin to use the term, revitalize, rebuild some of these communities that have been so poisoned, that in itself is going to create some jobs. The federal government needs to pour money into this. We need to rebuild most of the cities in this country, and we’re the richest country in the world. It could be done; you know, it’s the will to do it and who’s running things. And you come back to people who are putting out this propaganda, they are in business. They want to make money. The waste business is a hugely profitable thing. So, it’s a matter of "people are more important than profits," that’s all. When people have to decide, we are going to make our needs come first.

Phillip Babich: Ann Braden is with the Southern Organizing Committee and is based in Louisville.

That's it for this edition of Making Contact, a look at the environmental justice movement. Thanks for listening. Special thanks this week to Claudia Valenzuela and the Guatemala Radio Project for recorded portions. We had production assistance from Stephanie Welch, Courtney Malone, and Eric Hamako. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law is executive director. Our production assistant is Shereen Meraji. Norman Solomon is senior advisor. Our national producer is David Barsamian. And I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich.

If you want more information about the subject of this week’s program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts.

Making Contact is an independent production. We’re committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we’d like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. ‘Bye for now.