Rebuilding on Poisoned Ground

• Published in: Colorlines (Oakland, Calif.) Calif.), 2006-04, Vol.9 (1), p.26
• Main Authors: Cole, Oskar, Woelfle-Erskine, Cleo
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cities; Contamination; Environmental cleanup; Environmental impact; Environmental justice; Hazardous materials; Low income groups; Racism
• ISSN: 1098-3503

At Momma D's home in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans, a network of generators and car batteries powers several houses, a radio station, and-at night-a string of lights spanning the street between two live oaks. They're the only lights for blocks in a pitch-dark, eerie cityscape, strung in effort to stop police harassment. A curfew restricts people to their homes after dark in unlighted areas; electricity has not been restored to the mostly Black and Black Creole Seventh Ward. Momma D-Diane Frenchcoat-has lived in her grandmother's house on Dorgenois Street since the early 1950s. She's worked for decades to protect her neighborhood from police brutality and redevelopment, and after 1965's Hurricane Betsy, she organized her neighbors to survive and rebuild. Bringing back her flooded neighborhood this time around will be complicated by new, unprecedented toxic contamination. In late October, a month after people started coming home to New Orleans, the EPA at last released initial results. They analyzed 300 sites; 77 toxic substances were found. But it's hard to glean an understanding of the complex scatterings of lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium and petroleum byproducts from the cryptic databases. The agency's own interpretations have earned accusations from environmental watchdogs of data manipulation and risk distortion. In one instance, the EPA declared benzene levels "slightly elevated" and no dire threat to human health. The standard they'd used was a 24-hour exposure risk calculated for short-term, emergency workers. The reported benzene levels were forty-five times the residential standard for two-week exposure, according to environmental advocates. Regulatory agencies have been notoriously complicit in the poisoning of Coastal Louisiana. Environmental justice advocates' criticisms of government response to the hurricane's toxic aftermath are no surprise; they echo long-time challenges to the racism entrenched in regulatory process. Senate Bill 1711 proposes to expand the EPA's power to suspend state and federal regulations. Introduced last September by Senators James Inhofe and David Vitter, it would allow the EPA's appointed director to waive civil rights, labor, tax, wage and public health laws for the crucial eighteen months after a disaster. Other bills before Congress aim to roll back drinking water standards; environmental discrimination laws; and air, water and landfill regulations.