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The Richmond Greens Say: "No more enviromental racism."

Environmental Racism: Poisoning African-Americans
By Alex Chis

On July 26 in Richmond, a predominantly African-American industrial city in the San Francisco Bay area, more than 7000 pounds of sulfuric acid fumes poured from a leaky General Chemical railroad car for three hours, forming a corrosive cloud that sent up to 20,000 people to hospital.

Although one of the worst accidents in Contra Costa County's history, it was far from unique. Michael Belliveau, the executive director of the California Citizens for a Better Environment (CBE) stated in a hearing on the spill on August 10, “Over the last five years, more than 10 other major chemical releases and explosions have killed one person, severely burned four people and exposed thousands more throughout the county”.

The hearing revealed that at least 500 railroad cars containing 80 million gallons of hazardous chemicals are stored on tracks throughout Contra Costa County, and nearly 127 million pounds of 50 different acutely hazardous chemicals are in storage at any one time at 129 industrial plants and public facilities. More than 39 million pounds of extremely hazardous chemicals are stored in the Richmond area alone.

How do local residents feel about this situation? “We are expendable. Our lives are not important. They feel that they can continue to trample on our human dignity.” These comments from Henry Clark, the executive director of the West County Toxics Coalition and a resident of North Richmond, the area hardest hit by the toxic release, reflect the general mood.

Michelle Jackson of Neighborhood House in North Richmond underlined this in her testimony. “This racism was blatant when African American females were taken to the fire station and asked to take off all their clothes while white firemen watered their naked bodies down with water hoses looking very promiscuous ... This racism was blatant when residents [who were taken over 50 kilometres away for care] ... were left to find their own way back to North Richmond ... This racism was blatant when nobody, absolutely nobody came to North Richmond to do an environmental check on the elderly, children, families, and residents with prior documented respiratory problems.”

The 1989 CBE report “Richmond At Risk: Community Demographics and Toxic Hazards from Industrial Polluters” documents this environmental racism, finding that the toxic hazards in the Richmond industrial zones were located adjacent to 14 neighbourhoods where 70% to 90% of the residents were African-American.

The August 10 hearing focused light on the fact that rail cars can easily fall, or more correctly be forced by the chemical companies, through regulatory loopholes. Federal agencies cover cars in transit, but expect them to be unloaded within 48 hours of arrival, and do not cover cars used for storage. California requires notification to the county Health Department for cars staying over 30 days, but Barbara Masters of the county Hazardous Materials Division admitted that even this reporting “doesn't happen very often”.

Michael Leedie, of the West County Toxics Coalition and CBE, at an August 17 County Board of Supervisors meeting said that of the 129 hazardous chemical facilities in the county, only two have county-approved plans in place for preventing chemical disasters. “That's outrageous for the kinds of materials we have stored.”

His report points out that General Chemical has only three engineers overseeing prevention efforts and the county has only an eight-member response team for accidents. He recommends that more prevention workers be funded by raising fees on industries “because they're the ones causing the problem”. Unfortunately, the county has consistently sided with industry in its claim that Contra Costa County cannot mandate prevention actions.

A start to a solution was highlighted in an article in the Bay Guardian three months before the accident: “Activists want to open up plants like General Chemical in Richmond”.

As CBE's Belliveau points out, “the public is being shut out of chemical disaster prevention and emergency response planning. At-risk community members and workers must be fully informed of chemical hazards and empowered to join as equal partners in government and industry decision making regarding hazardous materials.”

His report also highlights the essential role played by the unions in the industry, pointing out that union training programs prevent accidents, while many non-union contract workers have little safety training and that the trend in using under-trained, non-union workers and reducing maintenance may be causing more accidents.

Belliveau sums up, “The General Chemical toxic gas cloud was a tragic wake-up call. It was no `accident'; it was a statistically predictable event. Nor was this an isolated event ... The July 26 release must serve as a tragic and costly warning; with another chemical, there could have been dead bodies in the streets of Richmond.”

[From the US magazine Independent Politics.]

This article was posted on the Green Left Weekly Home Page.

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