Hurricanes, Toxic Waste, and Their Sacrifice Zones: Low-Income Communities of Color on the Gulf Coast
When Hurricane Laura made landfall in August 2020, on the Texas and Louisiana coastlines, it ravaged an area dotted with petrochemical plants, oil refineries, and industrial facilities, and predominantly populated by low-income communities of color. Refineries near Houston emitted plumes of over 4 million pounds of air pollution, including benzene and nitrogen oxides — carcinogens that can exacerbate respiratory issues. An hour east, in Westlake, Louisiana, the storm ignited a fire at a chemical plant, leaking plumes of chlorine into the air and forcing a mandatory stay-at-home order for residents. Two months later, toxic pollutants still linger in the air.
This is particularly problematic amid the Covid-19 pandemic, as residents of chemical-laden “sacrifice zones” are disproportionately low-income people of color, populations that have seen higher Covid-19 mortality rates and are more likely to suffer from preexisting conditions.
An area of particular concern is Port Arthur, Texas — home to the state’s largest oil refinery — which Laura deluged, liberating immense quantities of carbon dioxide from the refinery.
“Many people in the city of Port Arthur already suffer from preexisting conditions like hypertension, chronic asthma, bronchitis, COPD, liver and kidney disease,” said Hilton Kelley, the director of the Community In-Power and Development Association. “So, in our particular area, we are very concerned about these toxic fumes from the refineries and about COVID.”
Weeks after Laura’s wreckage on the Gulf Coast, another Category 4 hurricane — Hurricane Delta — devastated the region.
“Hurricane Delta’s impact is compounded by the three concurrent crises our country currently faces: the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and the decades-long environmental and structural racism on which our nation was built,” said Earthjustice attorney Emma Cheuse. “As a result, communities of color and low income communities continue to disproportionately pay the price for our nation’s inaction.”
Low-income, minority residents of the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast are no strangers to compromised air quality. Countless studies of East Houston and Southern Louisiana have found that communities with higher populations of color and higher poverty levels face greater risks from chemical accidents and everyday toxic exposure.
The Houston area has more petrochemical and oil refineries than anywhere in the country. The “energy capital of the U.S.” also happens to be the country’s only city with no zoning laws, which essentially renders it a Wild West for development. Much of its energy infrastructure is concentrated on the region’s East Side, an area with low property values, home to thousands of low-income people of color. With no zoning laws to govern development, residential areas can be located dangerously close to facilities spewing toxic waste — like in Houston’s Manchester neighborhood, whose population is 97% Black and Hispanic and 90% low income, where 90% of residents live within one mile of a hazardous chemical facility.
Manchester is part of an East Houston “cancer cluster,” where residents have elevated rates of cancers of the brain, skin, eyes, and cervix, all linked to toxic waste exposure. For its part, Southern Louisiana is home to the nation’s “cancer alley,” a petrochemical hub with more cancer deaths linked to hazardous chemicals than anywhere else in the country.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused 500 oil spills, including one of the worst in U.S. history. In 2008, Ike led to boil water advisories for dozens of Texas water systems. And in 2017, Harvey inundated 13 Houston-area Superfund sites, contaminating riverbanks with mercury and poisonous sludge.
As climate change intensifies, hurricanes like these will become more frequent and more severe, as atmospheric warming speeds up hurricane winds and increases the energy available to hurricanes, which — compounded by sea level rise — induces more dangerous storm surge flooding.
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most catastrophic on record, and only the second in recorded history that required the use of Greek letters for storm naming, after exhausting the Roman alphabet by mid-September.
One 2019 General Accounting Office report found that 945 Superfund sites on the National Priorities List — the sites that pose the largest risk to public health — are threatened by climate change. Of the sites on the East and Gulf Coasts, over half are vulnerable to extreme flooding in the next 40 years, while 80 percent regularly flood at high tide or are already permanently submerged.
After the report was released, Senate Democrats sent a letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, demanding an explanation for the agency’s failure to recognize climate change as a policy objective.
“We believe that EPA’s refusal to implement GAO’s recommendations could result in real harm to human health and the environment as the effects of climate change become more frequent and intense,” the Senators wrote in the letter.
While some sites are designed to withstand storm damage, intensified flooding due to climate change can render old defenses inadequate. For instance, the Port Arthur refinery — the Houston refinery that leached millions of pounds of carbon dioxide during Hurricane Laura — has a 14-foot levee, no match for Hurricane Laura’s storm surge of up to 20 feet.
Like most Obama-era environmental policies, modern Superfund regulations have been rolled back under the Trump Administration. The Administration rescinded a 2015 executive order that mandated the use of updated climate data to analyze flood risks for Superfund sites; proposed a $113 million cut in Superfund funding and a 70 percent cut to funding of environmental justice programs; and, in 2019, completed the fewest number of annual Superfund cleanups in 35 years. To add insult to injury, the Trump Administration rescinded an Obama executive order that made climate change preparedness a national priority, and, the EPA’s most recent strategic plan, a 51-page report released in 2018, makes no mention of climate change.
There is, however, reason to be cautiously optimistic about environmental justice policy under a newly elected President and Congress in 2021. In September, Senator Cory Booker and Congresswoman Debra Haaland introduced the Environmental Justice Legacy Pollution Cleanup Act, a bill that would invest $100 billion in cleaning up Superfund sites and replacing old wastewater systems, and would prohibit new air pollution permits in historically marginalized communities. And at the final 2020 presidential debate, former Vice President Joe Biden committed to prioritizing environmental justice, referencing his childhood in a region of Delaware replete with oil refineries.
“When my mom would get in the car when there was a first frost to drive me to school, turning on the windshield wiper, there’d be an oil slick in the window,” said Biden.
“That’s why so many people in my state were dying and getting cancer. The fact is, those frontline communities — it’s not a matter of what you’re paying them. It matters how you keep them safe. What do you do? You impose restrictions on the pollutants coming out of those fenceline communities…The oil industry pollutes significantly, and it has to be replaced by renewable energy.”
