
The Louisiana Environmental Apocalypse Road Trip - kawera
https://longreads.com/2017/07/13/the-louisiana-environmental-apocalypse-road-trip/
======
reservelanote
This is a good read for those concerned about pollution, and it's very
important to remember that climate change is not the only environmental threat
around. Chemical pollution is a bad situation. I was disappointed with a lack
of a practical call to action: it's mostly a TED-style exhortation for the
"government to do something", along with "chemical plants are bad". There are
surely environmental laws, programs, and other regulatory procedures that
could help this pollution. Was DuPont breaking the law? Should they have been?
How about getting some quotes from the EPA or environmental lawyers? Ranting
about "Jazzfest sponsored by Shell" isn't going to inform a citizen or
government official about what steps to take next.

Additionally, the second paragraph of the article contains a misleading
statement about the risk of cancer in Reserve -- "800 times the national
average". The data [1] is still shocking and generally backs up the article:
there is a lot of chloroprene being dumped in the air in John the Baptist
Parish, and the cancer risk there is the highest in the nation. But the 800x
metric is only a summation of specifically enumerated, mostly chemical "point
sources". If you sort by total cancer risk (most notably including emissions
from cars and trucks), some of the tracts in the parish are only 2-4x the
cancer risk of tracts in Manhattan and San Francisco.

[1] [https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-
assessment/2011-nati...](https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-
assessment/2011-national-air-toxics-assessment)

~~~
beeeebo
2 to 4 times what it ought to be or not? Maybe it's ok

~~~
reservelanote
The particular situation with the neoprene plant couldn't possibly be OK, but
the article is short on details. But I do think the risks of living in the
general vicinity (yet outside the explosion range) of industrial facilities is
oversold. For example, the east side of Houston towards the ship channel and
its hundreds of refineries, terminals, plants, and other facilities shows a
higher cancer risk than the rest of the metro area, but it's still less than
many parts of LA, Seattle, NYC and San Francisco, due to other factors. The
EPA doesn't recommend making these kind of comparisons for several reasons
[1]. Also this dataset only covers air (not water / food / lifestyle) risks.

[1] [https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/nata-
freq...](https://www.epa.gov/national-air-toxics-assessment/nata-frequent-
questions#background4)

------
ryanmarsh
Louisiana is a wonderful mix of good things tainted with backwards thinking
and selfishness. It is uniquely great and tragically flawed.

There are several things at play in Louisiana:

\- the US economy runs on noxious chemicals made in Louisiana

\- families are tight

\- people are at peace with adversity

\- the food and music are like nowhere else

\- everyone knows everyone

\- the well off who stay in Louisana are very greedy and small minded

\- people there have a way of life that is slowly going away and they feel
threatened and short changed

This produces exactly what you'd expect.

I lived in central and western Louisiana for two years and also had business
there off and on for several more years. I love Louisiana. I love the
closeness of the families, the polite friendly attitudes, the amazing food,
the laid back fun culture. I love the salt-of-the-earth people. Mixed in is a
lot of ignorance, backwardness, and amongst those with money or power:
selfishness, corruption, and nepotism.

Louisiana will remain in this low simmer of tragedy forever. As long as there
are chemical plants there will be small communities of working poor. As long
as there are small tight nit communities of working poor that can endure,
along with pollution, there will be environmental tragedies.

Louisiana will never change. I imagine 200 years from now Louisiana will be
one big superfund site which elite Americans are (once a year) horrified to
find people still live in. It'll probably be some long-form bit of journalism
just like this. People will say "oh that's terrible" and things will continue
on as they always have.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Louisiana is a lot like the Rust Belt in the sense that people have been able
to graduate with a high school degree for generations and with the right
connections, land a life-long job at a chemical plant paying good money with
better-than-average benefits, mostly due to pension plans being baked into
their benefits because they work for multinational corporations. They have
been conditioned to believe that education is not important while being
constantly exposed to casual racism and are thus heavily conservative... the
large Catholic population in the southern part of the state has certainly
played a part in moving in that direction given the Democratic Party's stance
on women's rights. They are also highly sensitive to any issue that negatively
affects the petrochemical industry. Local politicians have tried to introduce
other types of business to the region, but who wants to go to an area where
the heat is oppressive, the education system sucks, and you're a hurricane
away from not having power or clean water for a month?

Most people in that state are like most people in other states with respect to
banal "exceptionalism." They believe that their culture and way of life is
greater than that of other areas even though the average citizen is poorly
educated.

------
100k
There's a good treatment of the politics of Louisiana's environmental
catastrophe in "Strangers in Their Own Land":
[https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-
Mourning/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Strangers-Their-Own-Land-
Mourning/dp/1620972255)

The author talks to a lot of people in the state about the conflict between
loving the outdoors (outdoor sports/hunting/recreation are big) and supporting
companies that dump chemicals in the bayous, because of jobs. There's a lot of
fatalism.

------
QAPereo
The only fate of Louisiana is that it's a problem with its own inevitable
solution; it will be inundated and become relatively unlivable. I have to
wonder how much that plays into the decisions made by the people who
understand that it's not really a long-term project as a state. This is still
a hell of a way to treat people living there, but truly, no one should live
there.

~~~
scurvy
A little background about myself: I was born and raised in New Orleans to a
middle class family that valued education (both parents 1600 SAT and English
majors, MD, and MA). I went to one of the best private schools in the New
Orleans area, coincidentally built on top of a former dump. All of my family
still lives in New Orleans. I live in San Francisco now and haven't lived in
New Orleans since my high school graduation.

I return to visit New Orleans about three to four times per year. On every
visit, someone will half-jokingly ask me, "So when are you going to leave
crazy California and move back?" I simply reply, "When are you going to flee
Louisiana?" I have a convenient excuse in that I work in tech, and my family
members convince themselves that's the only reason I don't move back. I tell
them that I'm never moving back, but they stubbornly hold on to hope. My
family isn't the stereotypical American-without-a-passport untraveled,
uncultured types. My sisters have lived in Paris, London, Oregon, Maine,
Maryland, DC, Texas, Georgia etc. My mom lived in Barcelona for stretches and
speaks three languages. Yet they all end up back in the New Orleans area.
Family bonds are that strong. Maybe I'm cold and too calculating for not
living there with them.

After every good visit with the kids, nephews, aunts and uncles, my wife prods
me, "Hey maybe we should live closer to your family." I just reply "No." The
answer is simple: Louisiana, and New Orleans especially, is doomed as an
ongoing entity. Call it fatalism, call it blindness, or call it stupidity,
whatever the reason -- the people of Louisiana just keep on doing the same
thing with the same reaction every time something bad happens; "Oh that's such
a shame."

New Orleans' nickname is the "big easy"; I call it "the tiny difficult".
Nothing ever changes. Progress is slow and glacial. Everyone knows everyone
and has their nose in everyone else's business. You live a good life in Old
Metairie with a nice weekend home in rural Louisiana. You find out that the
wilderness near your home has recently been purchased. The land hasn't ever
been touched, so you do some digging into it. You find out that they're going
to clearcut the forest and wetlands and build an "oil services facility" on it
with "mixed use commercial and residential" on the other side. This worries
you because of the loss of wetlands and buffer zone (the forest would soak up
flood waters in storms), and you're worried about pollution from the increased
land use. You object to the project formally because you're well off and have
some free time. Only later, you find out that your opponents are your very
rich neighbors in Old Metairie -- doctors and lawyers speculating on land with
their friends in the oil business. They start saying bad things and calling
you names like a tree hugger and eco-mentalist. Others say that you're
blocking progress and aren't thinking of the community and jobs. Eventually,
the crooked tentacles of corruption will make their way through the
bureaucracies and you will lose. Your neighbors will make more money,
"progress" will happen, and you'll now deal with floods annually on a property
that never flooded in hundreds of years.

The craziest thing about this tale isn't that it's true. It's that the very
people profiting from this and pulling the levers are in the state. They're
not always far-off corporations. They're your neighbors: pillars of local
industry and commerce who are lauded for their success. It's insane to me that
these people are looting and ravaging the very land that they live, and that
they will continue to live on. It's one thing to be a wild tycoon, burn the
locals and flee. But they're knowingly (or blindingly) hurting themselves,
their families, and future generations. Maybe it's the constant layer of
corruption in the state at every level. Maybe there's a sense of fatalism. But
the very people whose livelihoods are on the line just don't care. One would
think that Louisianans would be the most read, most vested people in the US on
the topic of climate change. They're not. They don't believe in it. Despite
losing all the barrier islands, wetland loss, extinction of species from
habitat loss, facing worse storms every year, etc. They just think of their
jobs and their family. People don't like being told that their job and way of
life is going away because of their own ignorance, but it's the truth.

There's not much that will save Louisiana at this point. Maybe the federal
government (not in this administration) will step in and help? The best thing
that happened to the New Orleans public school system was Katrina (the feds
took over the local school system and turned it around). It pains me to write
this. I love my homeland. I truly do. I love my family. I love my culture. I
just can't be there. Especially now as I tend to my father's estate after he
passed away at a relatively young age from a hyper rare cancer (squamous
carcinoma of the pancreas). I like breathing clean air. I like drinking
(relatively) clean water. I like being healthy. You won't get those things in
Louisiana, and sadly, no one with any clout seems to give a damn.

~~~
bproven
This was a great analysis. I grew up in Louisiana as well and you capture my
sentiments exactly. It is a shame because New Orleans is a wonderfully
historical city, with beautiful architecture and a very walkable downtown. It
could be a _great_ city - at the very least the epicenter of the region. But I
don't think it ever will be...no one with the ability to change it cares
enough.

~~~
scurvy
I've often wondered who are the people who have the ability and power to
change the city? Is it a matter of the right people not caring, or is it
beyond saving at this point?

Or maybe we should really treat it as The City That Care Forgot? Order another
round, swing that doo-rag around the second line, and forget about the reality
staring us in the face. Crank up the tunes man. Hey, at least WWOZ streams
over the Internet now.

~~~
hughw
The "leadership" of the city abdicated sometime after the Morrison days. New
Orleans used to have the port and manufacturing, and truly competed to be the
first city of the South. Now tourism provides jobs for chambermaids and
busboys, but no middle class. Private and parochial schools have trained
nothing but lawyers and doctors since the 60s, and the public system is just
starved. Kids have no local STEM opportunities outside the oil and gas
industry. I wish NOLA could revive in my lifetime, but it won't.

------
brooklyntribe
Louisiana sounds like hell. Guess they sold their souls for jobs. They seem OK
with that.

> The risk of cancer in Reserve, a community founded by freed slaves, is 800
> times the national average, making the community, by one EPA metric, the
> most carcinogenic census tract in America—the cause is a DuPont/Denka
> chemical plant adjacent to the town that annually spews 250,000 pounds of
> the likely carcinogen chloroprene into the air. If you think the situation
> in Flint is bad, there are approximately 400 public water systems in
> Louisiana with lead or other hazardous substances leaching into the drinking
> water. Meanwhile, hundreds of petrochemical plants peppered across the
> state’s lush swampy interior freely emit carcinogens, endocrine disruptors,
> and neurotoxins into the air and water, as well as inject them deep into the
> earth.

------
jacquesm
This is an interesting contrast to the VW scandal and the response to it.

~~~
ams6110
Good observation. The VW emissions cheating was a technical violation that
didn't have much of a real-world impact, because the percentage of diesel cars
sold in the USA is tiny.

It often seems that there's something of an inverse proportion in the public
outrage over some event vs. the actual damage caused.

VW cheats on emissions for cars that are a tiny of a percent of total cars
sold in the USA --- huge fines, mass outrage, because why not? There's really
no downside.

New Orleans is chemically polluted for decades, cancer hot zone, etc --- shut
up, business as usual, because we need the jobs.

~~~
jpatokal
The percentage of diesel cars in the EU, on the other hand, is huge: as late
as 2015, many large countries like France and Germany had >50% shares.

[http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Passenger_cars_in_the_EU)

------
lisper
> The risk of cancer in Reserve, a community founded by freed slaves, is 800
> times the national average

I stopped reading there because I could think of no interpretation of that
statement where the claim was even remotely plausible. The overall risk of
developing some kind of cancer at some point in your life in the U.S. is about
40% [1]. Life expectancy is just shy of 80 years, so the annual risk of cancer
is 0.5%. For the risk in Reserve to be 800 times that, the entire population
would have to come down with cancer every three months. If that happened, it
would be a bigger story.

[1] [https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/lifetime-
probabi...](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-basics/lifetime-probability-
of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer.html)

~~~
ams6110
I stopped after Donald Trump was brought up in about the fourth paragraph.
Like him or not, he has nothing to do with the state of Louisana or New
Orleans specifically. New Orleans has been governed by Democrats exclusively
while all of this environmental damage happened.

~~~
somethingsimple
Further down:

"One can only imagine the zilch level of concern for a compound like
chloroprene by President Trump, who had at his side when he signed an
executive order in February stipulating the roll-back of government
regulations the chief executive of Dow Chemical—“Andrew, I would like to thank
you for…the fantastic job you’ve done,” Trump told Dow chief Andrew Liveris,
then handed him his signing pen to keep as a souvenir."

Trump is the president. He should care.

------
strictnein
> "Many cases of cancer have occurred in communities on both sides of the
> river, though the Louisiana Tumor Registry claims the numbers are not higher
> than the national average"

So... what are we then supposed to gather from this statement?

~~~
delinka
We gather that the author did not acquire numbers from either side of the
river, the Louisiana Tumor Registry, nor anything representing the national
average.

------
hammock
Chloroprene is the monomer of neoprene, meaning that when neoprene breaks down
it creates chloroprene? Interested what evidence we have about the dangers of
neoprene for humans/the environment

------
nn3
So why do these sick people not get some lawyers and start suing?

Obviously there must be something stopping them, what is it?

~~~
bhuga
A family member of mine used to take medical malpractice cases from these
communities while I was growing up. She was routinely harassed and hassled by
whatever (exclusively white) sheriff of whatever town was the brother-in-law
of the doctor she was suing. Just driving around in these places trying to
drum up support for such a suit would be a risk. They have a way of arresting
you for imagined vehicular infractions right after the judges go home for the
weekend, then letting you out Monday morning as soon as you're arraigned,
where you can pay the bill to let out your impounded car.

If that sort of pressure can be applied to people working cases that affect
just one doctor in a community like this, I sure wouldn't want to to see what
kind of pressure the chemical companies could bring to bear.

------
singularity2001
I just love that caption "Crowd of about one hundred people" [Yes yes there
are probably 98 hidden behind the sign]

also since when is binary camouflage a thing for the military?

~~~
njharman
If you mean digital pattern camouflage, then since early 2000's for the USA
military.

------
beeeebo
You would be surprised that area is like what I imagine California is like
people are laid back and friendly and never forget a good turn or complement
and have the coolest accent it's a shame

------
narrator
We need to make chemicals somewhere. Where do we put the chemical plants then?
Maybe somewhere where nobody lives where the prevailing winds blow over the
ocean? The only place I can think of like that is southern Argentina, but
nobody lives there so how do you get all the plant engineers and workers into
the plant everyday? It's a tough problem.

~~~
jacquesm
> The only place I can think of like that is southern Argentina

I doubt the Argentinians will go along with that.

~~~
balladeer
I believe you are underestimating the capability of subversive diplomacy and
corruptibility of bureaucracy :-)

~~~
ryanmarsh
Yes, it's called Louisiana.

------
stickfigure
I skimmed it and noticed this: _Pentachlorophenol contains dioxins, which are
used in making chemical weapons, like Agent Orange_

Agent Orange is not a chemical weapon, it is a defoliant. Dioxin contamination
was a result of improper manufacture, not a deliberate ingredient. Read the
wikipedia page, FFS.

I hate it when this happens. Do I now have to question the rest of the
article?

~~~
jacquesm
> Read the wikipedia page, FFS.

Indeed:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Agent_Orange_on_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Agent_Orange_on_the_Vietnamese_people)

Relevant quote:

"Agent Orange is a chemical weapon most notably used by the US armed forces
during the Vietnam War, classified as defoliant. "

~~~
troisx
Just because some Wikipedia editor writes something doesn't make it a fact.
There are other relevant quotes in there from the governments of the U.K. And
US saying that it's not a chemical weapon.

~~~
jacquesm
GP explicitly references Wikipedia as an authority, that should not suddenly
be grounds to dismiss a reply.

The US saying it is not a chemical weapon is a bit like them declaring
'enhanced interrogation' not torture.

