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< BACK Diamond A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor Steve Lerner Foreword by Robert D. Bullard An Interview with Author Steve LernerQ: What has happened to the citizens of Diamond since they won their struggle for relocation?A: Almost all of them moved to another location in St. Charles Parish or the adjacent St John's Parish. Diamond is now a ghost town. Most of the houses have been bulldozed and all that remains are faint traces of their foundations. Shell plans to use the land as a park that will separate their facilities from the nearby community of NORCO. Q: How were the Shell refinery and chemical plant affected by hurricane Katrina? A: The plants suffered moderate damage. The land they occupy is high ground, rarely subject to flooding, and that is one of the reasons they chose it for their facilities and evicted Diamond residents from the land who had been farming it for generations. Q: Was there pollution from the Shell facilities following Katrina: A: Local residents report that the Shell facilities were emitting large flares following Katrina. Q: Were any of the former residents of Diamond affected by Katrina? A: To my knowledge only one resident, who had moved to New Orleans, lost her home. However, many of those in the environmental justice community, who helped with the Diamond relocation campaign, either lost their homes or their place of work and were evacuated. Xavier University, for example, where the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice had offices, was flooded. Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, whose offices were also flooded, had to move out to Baton Rouge and has only recently been able to return to New Orleans. Q: Did the hurricane and subsequent flood caused by Katrina further demonstrate the perils of siting hazardous industrial facilities immediately adjacent to residential communities? A: It certainly did. Katrina proved that fenceline residents are not only exposed to pollutants that waft across the fenceline into their communities on a daily basis. They are also at risk of suffering when a big storm spreads pollutants from adjacent plants into their community. That is what happened to the residents of St. Bernard Parish, where a one million gallon spill from Murphy oil contaminated the homes and grounds of large numbers of residents in the surrounding community. Q: Who was most severely affected by this spill? A: Residents living with a quarter of a mile from the Murphy Oil tank farm. "Their proximity to these plants set them up to be devastated," observes Rolfes. Q: What is being done about it? A: Rolfes has been working with local residents to see that testing is done of the soil in this community. With inadequate testing being done by officials, local people have to be equipped and trained to do citizen sampling, she continues. A big effort is being made to demand that large buffer zones be established around facilities that use hazardous materials. The refineries are trying to get FEMA to pay to establish some of these buffer zones, she adds. Q: Is the government sponsored clean-up of toxic wastes spread by Katrina going to solve the problem? A: No. "State and Federal officials are doing nothing beyond the to clean up the mess beyond the initial removal of oil. What should be done is remedial work using the best available technologies and then test the area to see if it is safe. However, that will do nothing to clean up the water table that is heavily polluted," Rolfes observes. "No one is talking about that." Q: What did residemt sampling reveal of the extent of soil pollution in St. Bernard Parish? A: The results of fifty-three soil samples taken by St. Bernard citizens in early March show arsenic and diesel fuel exceeding federal and state health standards throughout the parish. "These samples - like the ones before - show contamination," said Rolfes. "The question is why aren't the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality doing anything about it, and where have they been for the last seven months?" The sample results show the state health screening level for diesel fuel to be met or exceeded in a third of the samples. Q: What have we learned about the affect of Katrina on fenceline communities? A: Katrina demonstrated the exceptional hazards of living in a residential community immediately adjacent to a large industrial facility that uses toxic chemicals. People who live in these communities are daily exposed to pollutants. They are at risk of injury when industrial accidents occur at these plants, such as the explosions that took lives in the community of Diamond/Norco in 1973 and 1988. What we learned from Katrina is that it is especially foolish to permit residential communities to be located across the fence from heavily polluting facilities in areas that are regularly visited by hurricanes, floods, tornados, fires and other violent weather-related events. Katrina demonstrates the need for a national buffer zone policy that will require residential communities to be built at a safe distance form toxic industries. |
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