Health and Safety Risks Shouldn’t Be the Cost of Doing Business

For generations, our family has lived in Wallace, Louisiana, 50 miles upriver from New Orleans. Our community is steeped in history, culture, and, most of all, love handed down through our ancestors, many of whom settled in the area we live in today. Even with a backdrop of plantation homes, the very plantations some of our ancestors were enslaved to, our family found a way to create a happy life by buying land, building communities, and recounting parts of our story that will never be told in the history books.

Far too often, however, the talk of our family is centered around the threats brought on by heavy industry, whether through potential industrial development or disasters at current industrial plants.

After a Marathon Petroleum refinery across the Mississippi River from our homes erupted into flames one Friday morning in August, we watched a tower of black smoke drift across the river toward us. We stood by for a signal to evacuate, for sirens, alarms, or responding fire trucks. We heard nothing.

Last year, a chemical disaster occurred nearly every day in the U.S.

Months later, we still don’t know what’s in our air from the fire, which ignited at tanks storing naphtha, a petrochemical used in gasoline and paint that can cause headaches, nausea, and vomiting. And as dozens of other chemical plants pollute the air along the river every day, we are breathing in an unknown mix of toxins and paying with our health.

These crises are all too common for communities on the fence line of the petrochemical industry. Last year, a chemical disaster occurred nearly every day in the U.S.

As the oil and gas industry tells it, they’re the economic bedrock of the communities across the country where they operate. But jobs should not come at the cost of our health and safety. And promises of good-paying careers for local residents can fall flat, even as companies take advantage of tax breaks intende d to incentivize job creation. Despite the large Black population of St. John the Baptist Parish, for instance, few people of color are employed by heavy industry, according to research from the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic.

That our communities are so enmeshed with the petrochemical industry is one of many legacies of environmental injustice, driven by discriminatory zoning that has allowed the disproportionate siting of petrochemical plants in Black communities. These and other long-term factors have led to our parish topping the list of the most climate-vulnerable places in the country.

There are more than 200 petrochemical plants along the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, known as Cancer Alley for its elevated cancer risks. As climate change drives more frequent and intense storms, fires, flooding, and more, our communities are at even greater risk. Recent analysis indicates that 740 Louisiana facilities housing toxic chemicals are at risk from extreme weather.

The cumulative burden of these stressors adds up: our communities are less equipped to prepare for, withstand and rebuild from storms and chemical disasters. There’s no time to recover from one crisis to the next.

And when regulators don’t take their responsibility to protect us seriously, there will always be another crisis. Many of these polluting facilities have a demonstrated history of violating environmental laws. Of the more than 200 U.S.-based petrochemical facilities analyzed by Environmental Defense Fund, over 80% were noncompliant with existing laws in the past three years.

When these companies break the laws intended to keep us safe, people get sick and hurt. Evacuation orders don’t reach everyone quickly enough, and even after we’re told it’s safe to return, there isn’t enough information about what we’re breathing in after the flames die down.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

First, we need greater investments in economic opportunities that don’t threaten our health and safety–tourism, clean energy, arts and humanities, and career options based on environmental restoration and protection — so that our communities can continue to thrive. We don’t need to double down on polluting industries, which is why we led the fight against a 30-year-old corrupt zoning law that would have exposed our community to more risk.

Petrochemical plants throughout the country are not adequately monitored, and the existing rules are not rigorously enforced. This must change. Some chemical fires and explosions at industrial plants could be prevented through more routine maintenance of equipment, robust safety plans, and early identification of malfunction. All levels of government must work together to enact and enforce stronger safeguards for petrochemical pollution.

For too long, we’ve been told that the risks that come with jobs in polluting industries are simply the cost of doing business. But we can do better. We are fighting for a safer, healthier future as we honor our heritage and those who came before us. St. John the Baptist Parish communities were here long before petrochemical plants crowded the banks of our river. We don’t need these jobs to survive.

Jo Banner and Dr. Joy Banner are the co-founders and co-directors of The Descendants Project, an emerging organization committed to the intergenerational healing and flourishing of the Black descendant community in the Louisiana river parishes.

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