Florence Robinson, an Alsen activist, stands near her home. She bought her first home in Alsen to raise her kids. Soon after large-scale industry moved in, spoiling the pastoral quality of life. Not much later her family came down with a series of illnesses and she finally moved away. Robinson has become a leader in the Alsen fight.
Chickens in Diane Prince's coop strut across the street from Mossille chemical plant. The plant, which produces chlorine, may be a source for dioxin-contaminated blood in many Mossville residents. Eggs are a major source of dioxin contamination and many residents eat eggs from local chickens.
David Prince's home looks out over the Condea Vista VCM chemical plant in Mossville. Both Prince and his wife tested with high levels of dioxin in their blood and the VCM plant could be a source.
All that remains of the large scale Uranium mines in the Southern section of the Navajo nation are concrete slabs capping the mine shafts. When the market price of uranium dropped, the mines closed, leaving hundreds unemployed. Navajos are mostly opposed to any new mining, having experienced many ill effects from the industry. Many workers like Larry King were left without work.
Transamerican refinery takes shape on the river in Norco. Once the site of Prospect plantation where over a century of sugar cane was harvested, the site now hosts wall to wall industry.
The Pleasant Hill Cemetery behind the Freetown Community in St. James Parish. Many generations of Freetown families are buried here. Shintech would have built its PVC plant in the adjacent sugar cane field. Motiva refinery is in the distance.
Tully Rizzuto, a machinist at Quality Machine Works in Gran Pointe, grinds down a conveyor shaft for a local plant. Quality lost a large potential amount of business when Shintec pulled out.
Construction workers wait for prize raffles during the rebuild of the Transamerican (now Orion) refinery in Norco, 1998. Transamerican was the last major rebuild of a large scale refinery in the Mississippi River corridor and plant officials had to deal with the New Sarpy community next door. Many of the workers hoped to get permanent high paying jobs with the company after it was built.
Florence Robinson, an Alsen activist, stands near her home. She bought her first home in Alsen to raise her kids. Soon after large-scale industry moved in, spoiling the pastoral quality of life. Not much later her family came down with a series of illnesses and she finally moved away. Robinson has become a leader in the Alsen fight.
Transamerican refinery takes shape on the river in Norco. Once the site of Prospect plantation where over a century of sugar cane was harvested, the site now hosts wall to wall industry.
Construction workers wait for prize raffles during the rebuild of the Transamerican (now Orion) refinery in Norco, 1998. Transamerican was the last major rebuild of a large scale refinery in the Mississippi River corridor and plant officials had to deal with the New Sarpy community next door. Many of the workers hoped to get permanent high paying jobs with the company after it was built.
In 2000, The Times-Picayune published a four-part series examining the issue of environmental justice and the disproportionate share of pollution, declining property values and diminishing quality of life suffered by poor and minority communities living near polluting industries.
The series received the seventh annual John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Reporting.
By John McQuaid, Photos by Thom Scott
Imagine waking every morning to acrid fumes; horizons marred by towering pretzels of metal and pipe; fear of hazardous-waste spills. History, geography and the legacy of latent if not outright racism have conspired to place factories, dumps and chemical plants next to the poor.
With help from environmental groups, some residents are rallying around a controversial banner -- environmental justice, a coming together of civil rights and environmental activism.
The debate is reshaping the American landscape, pitting those who point to the benefits of jobs and growth against those who say they don't get enough benefits and don't want the problems. In the middle is the federal government, which is struggling to give an emotional and political debate a scientific foundation.