No Clear Skies
In a Texas oil town, the assault on the nation's clean-air laws has hit
close to home.
Donovan Webster
Mother Jones
September 1, 2003
Latest Dispatch from Port Arthur, TX: Refinery Reform Campaign's #1 Priority
Effort:
SHORTLY AFTER 4:30 P.M. ON MONDAY, April 14, 2003, the power went out at the
Motiva refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. The massive plant shut down instantly
and, as is common when something goes wrong at a refinery, the "product" in
the pipes -- tens of thousands of pounds of highly pressurized liquids and
gases -- was released through the smokestacks. In this particular incident,
256,653 pounds of toxic chemicals were hurled into the air over the next 24
hours.
"That refinery was blowing hot," says Hilton Kelley, the tall, sturdy,
42-year-old founder of a local group called the Community In-Power
Development Association. "And that cloud of poison hung over us until, I'd
guess, 10 or 11 that night."
It wasn't the first such incident, or "upset," at the 3,800-acre plant, a
century-old, grime-stained industrial giant that glowers above Port Arthur's
pancake-flat landscape. Motiva had experienced seven in just the previous 11
weeks, and the record of Port Arthur's other refineries wasn't much better;
during one six-month period last year, barely a day went by without a toxic
accident of some kind.
And so, Kelley knew just what to do as 128.3 tons of vaporized poisons --
including sulfur dioxide, hexane, carbon monoxide, isobutane -- began
sifting earthward. He went door to door, warning his neighbors to either
leave quickly or stay inside with the windows shut tight. He also made a
phone call, to a toll-free number at the Texas Commission on Environmental
Quality, the state agency charged with monitoring airborne toxic releases.
When a TCEQ staffer finally arrived, Kelley says, "I asked the guy, 'You got
any air-monitoring equipment with you?' And the guy said, 'No.' And I
thought, So...what? You're here to watch?"
"Around here," Kelley says, "it turns out April 14 was just another day."
PORT ARTHUR AND POLLUTION have gone together ever since Texas' First major
oil well was discovered in 1901, at the Spindletop derrick just up the road
in Beaumont. The city's First refining facility was built that same year,
and Port Arthur boomed along with the oil business. Janis Joplin was born
here, the daughter of a refinery engineer, and sang in the choir at First
Christian Church in the '50s. But by the 1990s, mechanization had taken away
most of the refinery jobs, and Port Arthur -- along with much of the Gulf
Coast oil belt between Houston and Baton Rouge -- fell on hard times.
Today, Port Arthur resembles nothing so much as a gated community in
reverse. Sprawling refineries hide behind chain-link fences topped with
razor wire and guards at the exits. Outside the fences, in the predominantly
African-American neighborhood known as the Westside, streets are potholed,
and every third or fourth house is empty and overgrown.
Full story at: http://motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/36/ma_496_01.html
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