2008 Woodie Awards
Port Arthur, Texas, residents protest plans to burn nerve gas waste agent
Associated Press
Issue date: 5/1/07 Section: Nation
PORT ARTHUR, Texas (AP) - At the Carver Terrace housing projects, only a chain-link fence and a cluster of no-trespassing signs separate brightly painted jungle gyms from the Motiva oil refinery.
On warm days, the playground is filled with children playing in the shadow of the towers and pipes that spew smoke and spread a sulfurous, rotten-egg smell over this mostly poor, mostly black city of 60,000 along the Louisiana state line.
For decades, Port Arthur residents have lived with the refineries and chemical plants that ring their neighborhoods and loom over their backyards. And they have tolerated the cancer, asthma, and liver and kidney disease that some blame on the pollution.
But when a company won a $49 million contract to incinerate chemical waste from the destruction of the deadly nerve agent VX, Hilton Kelley and others said enough was enough.
"It's disgusting to know that all across America, when you mention Port Arthur, Texas, that it's considered the toxic dump site of North America. It's disgusting to know people are turning their backs on little children and old people and letting them stew in toxic waste," said Kelley, 46, a community activist. "It's not right, and I am not going to stand by and let anyone come and dump toxic waste in my community."
Kelley has been holding rallies and meetings to protest the incineration, drawing about 100 people to one recent meeting. And one mother started a petition drive to halt the project. But so far, there is little reason to believe they will accomplish anything.
Jefferson County, where Port Arthur is located, is home to one of the country's biggest chemical-industrial complexes and has been ranked in the top 10 percent of America's dirtiest counties by the Environmental Defense Fund.
Port Arthur is encircled by major refineries and chemical plants run by such companies as Motiva, Chevron Phillips, Valero and BASF, and their properties abut the backyards and playgrounds of the city's poor and historically black west end.
On warm days, the playground is filled with children playing in the shadow of the towers and pipes that spew smoke and spread a sulfurous, rotten-egg smell over this mostly poor, mostly black city of 60,000 along the Louisiana state line.
For decades, Port Arthur residents have lived with the refineries and chemical plants that ring their neighborhoods and loom over their backyards. And they have tolerated the cancer, asthma, and liver and kidney disease that some blame on the pollution.
But when a company won a $49 million contract to incinerate chemical waste from the destruction of the deadly nerve agent VX, Hilton Kelley and others said enough was enough.
"It's disgusting to know that all across America, when you mention Port Arthur, Texas, that it's considered the toxic dump site of North America. It's disgusting to know people are turning their backs on little children and old people and letting them stew in toxic waste," said Kelley, 46, a community activist. "It's not right, and I am not going to stand by and let anyone come and dump toxic waste in my community."
Kelley has been holding rallies and meetings to protest the incineration, drawing about 100 people to one recent meeting. And one mother started a petition drive to halt the project. But so far, there is little reason to believe they will accomplish anything.
Jefferson County, where Port Arthur is located, is home to one of the country's biggest chemical-industrial complexes and has been ranked in the top 10 percent of America's dirtiest counties by the Environmental Defense Fund.
Port Arthur is encircled by major refineries and chemical plants run by such companies as Motiva, Chevron Phillips, Valero and BASF, and their properties abut the backyards and playgrounds of the city's poor and historically black west end.
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