Fighting Environmental Racism

Corpus Christi was built on racial divide. Race zoning laws of the past forced people of color and low-income to live by the most polluted areas. Even though the restictions were lifted long ago, nothing has changed. City, County and Government have done nothing to address the race-zoning from the past; therefore, people of color and low-income continue to bear more environmental burden. The result: billion dollar oil giants live next door to the poor and the sick.

Steve Lerner, Research Director with Commonwealth conducted a research visit in the Corpus Christi fence-line community of Hillcrest in preparation for a chapter that will be included in an upcoming book tentatively titled, "Sacrifice Zones: The Front Line of Chemical Exposure in the United States." After returning home from his reserach visit, Steve wrote the following:

Dear Ms. Canales:                                                                                           April 28, 2007

   Thank you very much for taking me on an extensive research visit to the Hillcrest community that is located on the fenceline with Citgo Refinery and  Koch (Flint Hills) refinery. I felt privileged to have been invited into the homes of over a dozen residents who are suffering from various health effects that they think are related to exposure to fumes coming from "refinery row" facilities.
   Hillcrest residents live on the frontlines of toxic chemical exposure in the United States. In many of the homes I visited with you, the smell of emissions from the plants was clear to me. It burned my throat, stung my eyes, and gave me a headache. I can only begin to imagine what a hardship it is to live with this kind of contamination on a daily basis 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. My own exposure was brief, I came to visit for a few days and then went home to a community that is located in an area without these kind of intense emissions but I leave behind people who cannot escape these polluted conditions.
   As a journalist, who has written a book about a similarly situated fenceline community in Louisiana and visited a number of similar places for the book I am writing now, I was struck by the intensity of the air pollution with which Hillcrest residents must live. The fact that I could smell the fumes from the plant and was affected by the pollution myself, combined with the air monitoring data you showed me which indicates periodic spikes in benzene and other contaminants in the air, suggest to me that it is not safe to live this close to these heavily-polluting facilities.
   All the residents of Hillcrest I spoke with also report health problems that they associate with the pollution. This, combined with the studies which show elevated rates of cancer and birth defects, suggests to me that a more thorough epidemiological study or health study, combined with more comprehensive air monitoring,  is warranted in this community.
   I plan to write about these intolerable conditions in Hillcrest in an effort to expose what I see as a prime case of environmental injustice. It is my strong sense that, unless federal and state environmental regulation can be tightened to a point where contamination in the air coming from refinery row is reduced to the point where it is safe to breathe once it crosses to fenceline into Hillcrest  (something which clearly is not happening now and has not been the case for many years), then residents of Hillcrest should be provided the option of being bought out by the industries that are producing the contamination at a price that will permit them to buy a house in an uncontaminated area out of harms way.
   I take away from my visit to Hillcrest many powerful images of dignified people living in intolerable conditions in which their health is being injured by a source of pollution they can see from their backyards. One individual I spoke with said: "The fumes from the plant are killing me." As he spoke he was connected to an oxygen machine that was helping him to breathe. A few minutes after he spoke these words, a woman next door was being carried out to an ambulance to have a dialysis treatment. Occupants of the surrounding homes had either died of cancer or were living with life-threatening diseases. While it may be impossible to prove to the satisfaction of a court that this heavy concentration of health problems are caused by emissions from the neighboring refinery, common sense suggests that there is a strong connection.
   Please thank all the residents of Hillcrest I met with for inviting me into their homes and sharing their stories. I will try to accurately portray the harsh realities with which they are forced to deal.

Best,

Steve Lerner

Hillcrest - A Sacrifice Zone

It came as no surprise that the first results to come in on soil and dust samples collected at Hillcrest last spring were high for PAHs, afterall, the community borders two major oil refineries. But some people were suprised at just how high the results were.

The study represent a very small sample size; however, we plan on taking additional soil samples as well as serum and urine samples very soon. The soil samples were 6 to 10 times the EPA residential soil limit and the dust samples were comparable to those taken in the Former Soviet Union. Stay tuned for more information.

CRIMINAL INJUSTICE: CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS

There is no place for Voluntary Environmental Self Audits. Due to the
legislation "Texas Environmental, Health, and Safety Audit Privilege Act (Audit Act),"
polluters are encouraged to perform their own assessments and compliance of environmental laws, regulations, and permits for their own facilities.

Legislators must pass laws to eliminate the "honor system," in order to protect human health. Industry has shown that they cannot be trusted. For example, Citgo is not the first local refinery to face criminal charges involving benzene. In 2000, Koch Refinery (Corpus Christi) paid the largest criminal charge in U.S. History and plead guilty to conspiring to conceal documents from the government. This criminal act involved falsifying benzene amounts from their wastewater stream. A whistleblower, Sally Buckingham Solis, revealed that Koch's West Plant had at least 91 metric tons of uncontrolled benzene in its liquid waste streams in 1995, 15 times greater than the 6 metric ton limit.

The public deserves frequent inspections by TCEQ, not industry. The State Auditor's report of 2003 said that TCEQ bends over backwards to protect industry over the public and that it is significantly less costly for industry to pay a fine (if they are fined at all) than to comply with the law. Therefore, we demand EPA demonstrate complete and strong oversight over TCEQ's practices. EPA must do the inspections if TCEQ fails to do its job. THEREFORE we demand EPA demonstrate complete and strong oversight over TCEQ's practices. EPA must do the inspections id TCEQ fails to do its job.