[the American Society of Civil Engineers has set up a listserv for technical issues related to post-Katrina reconstruction]
<http://lists.asce.org/list/listinfo/hurricane>
[Louisiana gets the highest subsidies, a bipartisan environmental racism at work...]
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=333280>
Defending the Public Domain: Pollution, Subsidies and Poverty
PAUL H. TEMPLET Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge - Department of Environmental Studies January 2001
PERI Working Paper No. 12
Abstract: When firms externalize environmental costs, they appropriate de facto property rights to public natural assets - land, air, and water - without compensation to society at large. In effect, this bestows a large public subsidy on corporations. This paper compares the extent of public subsidies in pollution, energy, and taxes across the 50 U.S. states, and finds that states with higher subsidies generally have worse environmental quality and poorer economic performance. These subsidies both reflect and reinforce unequal distributions of political power.
Working Paper Series
Suggested Citation
Templet, Paul H., "Defending the Public Domain: Pollution, Subsidies and Poverty" (January 2001). PERI Working Paper No. 12. http://ssrn.com/abstract=333280
Contact Information for PAUL H. TEMPLET (Contact Author)
Email address for PAUL H. TEMPLET Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge - Department of Environmental Studies 42 Atkinson Hall Baton Rouge , LA 70803 United States (225)578-8521 (Phone) (225)578-4286 (Fax)
[Relevant national and state unions in LA related to Katrina issues] <http://www.paceunion.org/>
<http://www.xpdnc.com/links/lousla.html>
[finally]
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10242&ttype=2>
Diamond A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor Steve Lerner
Foreword by Robert D. Bullard
For years, the residents of Diamond, Louisiana, lived with an inescapable acrid, metallic smell -- the "toxic bouquet" of pollution -- and a mysterious chemical fog that seeped into their houses. They looked out on the massive Norco Industrial Complex: a maze of pipelines, stacks topped by flares burning off excess gas, and huge oil tankers moving up the Mississippi. They experienced headaches, stinging eyes, allergies, asthma, and other respiratory problems, skin disorders, and cancers that they were convinced were caused by their proximity to heavy industry. Periodic industrial explosions damaged their houses and killed some of their neighbors. Their small, African-American, mixed-income neighborhood was sandwiched between two giant Shell Oil plants in Louisiana's notorious Chemical Corridor. When the residents of Diamond demanded that Shell relocate them, their chances of success seemed slim: a community with little political clout was taking on the second-largest oil company in the world. And yet, after effective grassroots organizing, unremitting fenceline protests, seemingly endless negotiations with Shell officials, and intense media coverage, the people of Diamond finally got what they wanted: money from Shell to help them relocate out of harm's way. In this book, Steve Lerner tells their story.
Around the United States, struggles for environmental justice such as the one in Diamond are the new front lines of both the civil rights and the environmental movements, and Diamond is in many ways a classic environmental-justice story: a minority neighborhood, faced with a polluting industry in its midst, fights back. But Diamond is also the history of a black community that goes back to the days of slavery. In 1811, Diamond (then the Trepagnier Plantation) was the center of the largest slave rebellion in United States history. Descendants of these slaves were among the participants in the modern-day Diamond relocation campaign.
Steve Lerner talks to the people of Diamond, and lets them tell their story in their own words. He talks also to the residents of a nearby white neighborhood -- many of whom work for Shell and have fewer complaints about the plants -- and to environmental activists and Shell officials. His account of Diamond's 30-year ordeal puts a human face on the struggle for environmental justice in the United States.
Steve Lerner is Research Director of Commonweal, a health and environment research institute. He is the author of Eco-Pioneers: Practical Visionaries Solving Today's Environmental Problems (MIT Press, 1998).
Reviews
"Steve Lerner's story of Diamond, Louisiana, is one of the most remarkable tales that has ever been told about the environmental justice movement." -- Ruth Rosen, Dissent
"Lerner does an excellent job of explaining concisely both the scientific and the legal issues involved... a compelling story." -- Publishers Weekly
"'Diamond' is an important, ultimately inspiring book." -- Steve Weinberg, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
Endorsements
"Steve Lerner's patient, thorough telling of the Diamond story provides such detail that you feel you are there as events unfold. He understands and relays eloquently the spiritual cornerstone of this historic African-American victory -- the powerful faith that propelled David over Goliath." -- Anne Rolfes, Founding Director, Louisiana Bucket Brigade
"This book expertly captures the many facets of the struggles of the environmental justice fenceline community as its members attempted to survive in the toxic plume of air emissions from nearby industrial facilities. The strategies for the relocation of Diamond residents will serve as a comprehensive and realistic model to guide other environmentally affected communities." -- Wilma Subra, Subra Company, technical advisor on environmental justice issues
"Steve Lerner passionately weaves together the story of the Diamond community in a way that allows the reader to gain a telling picture of the people involved while resisting the temptation to romanticize either the residents or their cause. This book is not only an excellent read, but an important contribution to the growing body of work that connects space to racial equity. Perhaps equally important, Lerner has forged a path of new possibilities by documenting the potential for change created by collaboration across the traditional boundaries between environmentalists and racial justice movements." -- john a. powell, Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Ohio State University
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1070021,00.html>
Diamond, Louisiana
Matthew Engel Friday October 24, 2003 Guardian
By the banks of the Mississippi, Margie Eugene-Richard showed me where she grew up. That was where she caught crayfish as a kid. There was the place her grandfather grew sugar cane and watermelon. And that was the tangerine tree she planted. The sugar cane and watermelon have long gone. In their place now they are growing ethylene and propylene.
This was the poor, historically black community of Diamond, Louisiana, now disappearing - at its own request. Eugene-Richard lived for 50 years with the most overbearing, most unfeeling neighbour you can imagine, she says: the Shell Chemicals plant. Until 2001, her home was 17ft from the perimeter fence. It was a dangerous neighbour too. One explosion, in 1973, killed two people; another was experienced "like an earthquake" in New Orleans, 20 miles away. And always there was the smell: "Like bleach mixed with garlic and gas," she says.
The more insidious consequences of living next to a chemicals plant remain unclear, but Eugene-Richard has no doubt. "My sister died of sarcoidosis at 43. Then I thought about it. And you know what? Half her class had gone."
This stretch of the Mississippi - between New Orleans and the Louisiana state capital, Baton Rouge - is known to campaigners as "cancer alley". A huge proportion of the US's most unwelcome neighbours, especially chemical factories and oil refineries, are concentrated here. The river ensures an easy supply of water and transport; the oil and gas fields of the Gulf of Mexico are close by; the residents affected are black or poor or often both; and Louisiana politicians have long had a reputation as the most biddable in the nation.
Eugene-Richard was unusually determined, and eventually forced Shell to give up its policy of buying up nearby property at prices that reflected the fact that no one wanted to live there. Instead, in 2001, an 11-year campaign ended in an agreement to buy them out fairly.
The link between these plants and cancer is unproven - the most recent research attributed high local disease rates to smoking. Protesters reject these findings. Anne Rolfes runs the Bucket Brigade, which provides residents with kits to take samples if they suspect discharges. "Next to the refineries we find a great many sulphurs, a lot of them known to cause respiratory diseases. We find benzene, a known carcinogen. Up and down the streets, you find very rare cancers. Anecdotally, it's very shocking."
But fighters are rare. Ken Ford is now 66, and has lived at Chalmette, in the shadow of the Exxon-Mobil refinery, for 40 years. He has been too ill to work for the past 30. "I really believe that living here has made me sick. But just try to prove it. Several people living on my block have come down with rare cancers in the past two years. People will not complain. I try to get them interested, and they say: 'Man, you don't want to mess with that.'" Ford claims the Bucket Brigade's equipment showed that the refinery exceeded permitted emissions levels 32 times between May and July this year. The company says there were no such incidents.
A mile from Ford's home is the site of one of the US's most famous victories over the British, the Battle of New Orleans (1815). The British came over from where the refinery is now, and most of their dead are buried underneath. Guides, dressed as militiamen, fire muskets and cannon towards the refinery for the tourists, who come by paddle steamer from the city. But it's not a whiff of grapeshot they get back. It's a whiff that smells like rotten eggs, or hydrogen sulphide. "It does rather detract from the historical perspective," says a guide, sadly.