Living on the Fenceline
Overview | Conversations with Advocates of Fair Growth | Living on the Fenceline
David Brignac
David Brignac, 42, is Sustainable Development Manager at Shell Chemicals in NORCO, Louisiana. A local resident who grew up in the nearby community of Kenner, Brignac is an affable man who is the front-line contact person between Shell and members of the adjacent communities. He is disarmingly frank in talking about the often-strained relations between Shell and the African-American residents of the Diamond subdivision of NORCO. A graduate of Louisiana State University, Brignac is a skillful diplomat, unerringly polite and respectful yet forceful in his defense of Shell.
Brignac states that Shell facilities meet state and federal permit standards and that Shell emissions are not causing illness in neighboring communities. He denies that there is such a thing as "Cancer Alley" and cites statistics to prove his case. He notes that Shell employees are healthier than average Americans.
While Shell provided a generous buy-out package (assessment plus 30 percent) for residents of the first two streets of Diamond in order to enlarge their buffer-zone, the company is making no similar offer on properties located on the back two streets of the subdivision. Brignac says that Shell is sincere about wanting to be a good neighbor but that it was important that the company treat the residents of Diamond no differently than those in other parts of NORCO. Buying additional properties in Diamond would require offering to buy additional properties all along the fence-line in different areas of NORCO, he points out. This, in turn, would diminish the population of NORCO to the point where it was no longer a viable community, he concludes.
However, as part of Shell's "Good Neighbor Initiative," Brignac sketched out a scenario whereby Shell might be willing to help market homes on the back two streets of Diamond and then buy them at market rate if they failed to sell within a reasonable time period. Shell would then resell the homes to new comers who had no qualms about living next to an industrial site, he said. Furthermore, as part of an initiative to improve the quality of life in Diamond, Shell might be willing to make home improvement loans that would be forgiven over a number of years. This would provide an incentive for residents to remain in the community, he observes.
Interview
David Brignac [DB]: Before we started our relocation program there were about 500 residents in Diamond. Let me describe how the [relocation] process works. Washington and Cathy Streets have about 75 residences or properties that were eligible for the program. Of those 75 about 50 have come forward to initiate the process. They come in and sign a form that officially requests an appraisal. So 50 plus have started that process and we have 33 what I would call 'agreements' signed. This is when the appraisal has occurred and then we make a worksheet up for them and we add 30 percent on the appraised value. There are other things we add on, for example, if they are a resident in the property we add on a $5,000 moving fee. And if they chose to demolish the property and clear the property themselves they can get an additional $5,000 or $7,000 if it is a brick home. So we work that worksheet up and if they like it and they want to move forward to selling we work up a formal agreement and both parties sign it. When I say formal agreement that is the point when we have a legal document now saying that we agree to this price and it is a matter then of moving forward to closing. We have 33 that have reached formal agreement. We have had 19 closings. Those figures I have given you are just in the Diamond area. As you might know we are also trying to acquire the fence-line properties on the east fence-line as well in the Good Hope area: the east side of Good Hope Street and the east side of NORCO Street. There, you have 42 eligible properties: 26 have initiated the process, 15 [agreements] have been signed, and we have had 10 closings.
Steve Lerner [SDL]: Will most of the people on the two front streets in Diamond agree to relocation?
DB: Yes, if I had to make a guess at this point I would say that the majority of the ones that have come forward and requested an appraisal will eventually sell. There are about 20 properties [that haven't initiated the process]. The ones that remain there are a couple with multiple ownerships where you might have one person in one family own five properties. So it is less than that in terms of the number of families.
SDL: What about the church?
DB: The church is going to continue on. Informally they have made overtures to us that they would like to purchase some of the property that we own around them because they would like to expand their parking. We don't think that will be an issue. We will be glad to support the church.
A long time ago we recognized, about 30 years ago, that it was not good to have people directly on the fence-line: we needed some kind of a buffer. So we started this purchase program a long time ago. But at the time it was just as properties would come up for sale we would buy it. So you can imagine a process like that drags on forever. You get a property here and two years later you get this one. It is hard to have a vision of where you want to go or when you are going to get there. So, in September 2000 we came forward with what we call our Voluntary Property Purchase Program. The idea behind that was that we wanted to accelerate the process of acquiring these fence-line properties in order to add this buffer. From the companies' standpoint, our vision was always that we want this space to provide a noise buffer and a visual buffer between us and the community. And we think that is important especially from a nuisance standpoint: you can imagine, you have trucks driving by, noise, and so forth. That is how we look at it. Now, talking it from the community's standpoint, our vision for what we do with that buffer, to a large degree we want the community to have the say. What do you want? Do you want trees? Do you want a walking trail? So we really want to get a committee representative of the community and find out what do you really want here and the company will be more or less the coordinator of supporting that effort even financially, to a large degree, but allowing the community to say what they want and have a buffer.
SDL: Are there plans to push the fence farther out and build new industrial facilities on the acquired land?
DB: Absolutely not. We are questioned about that often. I think the thinking is that me, Wayne Pierce [manager of Shell Chemical] and others may think that way and may be committed to that philosophy but what happens ten years down the road? I notice a concern [about this] so we are looking at different options to demonstrate our good faith. We are looking at perhaps donating this property to a foundation or to the Parish or to get it rezoned just to demonstrate to the community that long-term we do not envision any operations in this area.
The survey at this point ... it is not our survey ... we hired Mustafa Mourad, he is a community development specialist. He was careful to really engage the community to a large degree before he ever got started with this work. And actually he worked with the Civic Association [of NORCO] and they are sponsoring the survey. So we see it more as a community survey than we do a Shell/ Motiva [survey]. Now, naturally we have a lot of interest in it because we feel we can learn a lot about what the community has to say, because the purpose of it is to really understand what are the issues in the community, what are the assets of the community, what would the communities like to see from the companies in terms of communications, relationship, and so forth.
SDL: In a way there are really two communities: NORCO and Diamond.
DB: To a large degree I would agree with that. But there are people from Diamond on the Civic Association of NORCO. If you look at NORCO you make a good point: it is a divided community ... it has been for many years. The Civic Association ... to a large degree, has made a lot of efforts to reach out to the larger community. Sal, Digirolamo {president of the Civic Association of NORCO] has brought some membership in from Diamond. To be quite blunt you don't solve the kinds of distrust and separation issues that you have in NORCO very quickly. I think he [Sal] has tried to make things move in the right direction. He has made a little bit of progress, but to a large degree you are right the Civic Association speaks much more for the white community than for Diamond.
SDL: Have you purchased the Gaspard property?
DB: Yes, we call it the Mule' property because that is the family we bought it from. It is about 200 feet wide, about 11.5 acres an it cost $158,000. We have been negotiating on this river-front property, like we have on the fence-line properties for a long time ... it goes back 25 years or so. They call it the 'batture' -- that is the term for the land on the other side [river-side] of the levee -- between the levee and the river. The way land was divided up [in the old days] is that it runs in these long strips from the river to the swamp. So this one family, the Mule' family, owned this one piece on the river that goes back to the railroad tracks. In negotiating for this piece of property, just to give you a little more history on this, this is viewed as a [racial] dividing line in NORCO. The Diamond residents tend to look at this as this [Gaspard/Mule' property] is left here purposefully by the whites to keep us out or keep this dividing line. And if you talk to white residents there is probably some truth to that ... shamefully, but true.
The property, to be honest, is probably undevelopable. But it has been a problem from the standpoint that some people have said: 'This property is unsightly. Somebody should do something.' At a local Community/ Industry Panel meeting in NORCO it tends to be a common subject that somebody needs to do something with this property. And when Diamond residents go to the Community/ Industry Panel what we have often heard is, 'This is a racial dividing line and somebody needs to do something about it.' So this family [Mule'] says we will sell you this property, but guess what: if you want to buy this [the batture rights] you need to buy the whole thing.' And this, [the batture land] has some commercial value to us. It's on the riverfront and we have a dock here and a dock here so we have commercial interests here.
SDL: Do you want to build another dock?
DB: No, not necessarily. We don't have any plans to build a dock [on it] but families who own this property, what they can do is lease it to, say, a barge company. So then you have all these barges sitting here between your docks and you are trying to bring these ships and barges here yourself. So it could become a business problem for us. It is a safety problem. So we want to keep this out of the hands of other business developers, basically. To give you a little history of what has happened here up and down the river is a barge company will spring up and the next thing you know you have 50 barges sitting there. So, [to prevent that] we had to buy the whole property ... that was a condition of the sale.
The first thing we are going to do in February ... finally, I think this will be a step forward. We went to the Parish already, that is the local government ... because at the meetings it was clear that there was nothing we could do to get the owner to clean it up. So we went to the Parish and asked them: 'What are your requirements' for an undeveloped piece of land like this in the middle of NORCO? What would you like us to do? They asked us, on both sides of this [property], the Diamond side and this [other] side, they asked us to go 50 feet in from the border of the property line and not cut any trees but clean out the grass and the brush: basically clean the outer perimeter of the property 50 feet in all the way around. So we think, immediately, we are going to have a positive effect there.
That is the immediate thing we are going to do, but long term we think this [property] fits in with our vision of a green space in NORCO. Even though it is not on the fence-line as you can see [from the map] it is the last undeveloped piece of land [in NORCO] with trees on it. So we think, hey, if you think of a vision of some green space in this community, this would fit. Because we are going to own most of this property here you can imagine, just thinking out loud, some kind of walking trail that goes up this area and around this way through here, back on the levee. Or it can connect in with this area we are going to do also. So you can imagine a network of linear parks or whatever.
SDL: What will happen two the two streets of residents in Diamond who are left out of the relocation program? They have seen their community shrink as you buy out the first two streets and they have noticed that you have bought the Mule' property behind them. And it has not escaped their attention that over the years the chemical plant facilities have crept closer to them.
DB: That is not true.
SDL: They [industrial units] haven't moved closer to them?
DB: No. See this Fenceline right here. That is where the fence line has been since the 1950s.
SDL: Yes, but the people have been there a whole lot longer than that. There were people in Belltown who moved to Diamond who witnessed the plant expand up to the Fenceline. So in their lifetime the plant has moved toward them. It has not only taken the land they used to live on [and pushed them off it] but now has come right up to their front yard.
DB: I understand. I have heard that too.
SDL: So what is the deal? You are buying the two front streets and the green space behind them but you are not buying the back two streets. Residents are saying: 'We breathe the same air that the people on the streets that are being relocated breathe; and when the explosions and accidents happen we are affected by it the same way our relocated neighbors were. So why don't we get moved?
DB: Yeah. That is the six million dollar question.
It goes back to your vision of NORCO as a community. Believe me when you think about this I don't think there are any bad intentions on any side. There is a firm disagreement between some of the residents of Diamond and Shell. But I don't think it is because they are bad people or greedy people. When I look at Shell I think there is a genuine intention to want to do what is right for NORCO and for Diamond. So let's start there. We are committed to NORCO as a community and that is where it starts because NORCO has grown up pretty much around our plants. It is pretty doubtful that NORCO would be a town today if Shell wouldn't have come here.
SDL: Some of the people in Diamond beg to differ with that. A woman recently said: 'We were here first. When I was back in Belltown we used to clean the shallots and the pecan trees were there . . . ' There is an historical sense that their ancestors were living there on the land before this big industrial development happened.
DB: I will not argue against that but when we go back and look at historical photographs, for example, when we look at this property before there was a plant on it, the photographs from 1953 . . . it was bought in 1953 and the plant was started up somewhere around 1956. The photos from 1953 show very few structures on this property. Belltown is up here: there were a few houses up here ... so you can make that argument for a few people who lived directly on this property. Then you have the spillway here ... I don't know which year this was bought out by the federal government and made into a spillway ... but my guess is that some of the ancestors of the people living in Diamond lived over here [on the land where the spillway was built] ... I don't know for sure.
SDL: A number of Diamond residents can point to the place on the Shell Chemical property where they used to live. The boards from the house they live in came from over there. The question is when do you start counting from: when the plant was built or before that. Those who go farther back say: 'No, what happened was that industry was built where there were already people and some ended up in Diamond. And they are now saying that industry has become too big, that they have tried to live with it, but it has become too much. And they have a whole list of grievances about why it is too much: one, it smells bad; two it makes them cough, their throat burn, their eyes water, and they are worried that it makes them sick; and three, there have been accidents and residents have been killed, the roof of a tank blew off and came down in the playground, and some now say they are scared to death. So they say they want to get out. That is their truth. They see their community shrinking and families being divided. So they ask, if it is not about money, why doesn't Shell buy us out?
DB: We see the community of NORCO as an historic community. We see it as a community that really grew up along side of us. We see it as in a lot of ways as the success of NORCO as a community is tied to the success of Shell and vise versa: the success of Shell is tied to the success of the community. So we have a strong commitment to the community of NORCO, the whole community. When we are looking at buy-outs and what we want to do in NORCO, we don't want to do anything that we don't think is good for NORCO or good for Diamond. I can elaborate on that.
We drew boundaries a long, long time ago on the fence-line, where we thought we wanted to own property to create this buffer. And we drew the boundary basically where it is today: in the middle of Cathy Street and the areas here, here, and here. So we stuck with the historic boundaries. And the reason we stuck with it ... and believe me I would love to make people happy and buy them out. But the point being, if we establish that these are the areas we want as a buffer, and we extend the buy-out in Diamond, we don't have good logic to do that. We don't need it for a buffer so why would we buy it? For some other reason. We can't get an understanding of how we can rationalize it and we think that if we do do [buy] it very quickly we will say, well, we expanded it on this side, in fairness of the community we need to expand it on this side. Now what happens [then] is that you are buying out huge chunks of NORCO.
In reality when you look at Diamond most of the residents are on the two streets that we are not buying [Diamond and East Streets]. We have like 160 homes there [on the streets not being bought out] and before we started the buy-out [on the front two streets] there were probably 60 homes. So now you are buying out such large chunks of NORCO that you are really threatening the integrity of the town. By buying out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of residents you start getting a lot of opposition ... not just from people in NORCO saying you are buying out too much property but you have schools here, you have businesses, you have politicians ... you are creating a problem that you don't have to create, basically. So we think it is not good for NORCO, from that standpoint.
We also think that if you look at Diamond, the company is not blind, we know that there are socio-economic issues in Diamond. When you ride through Diamond it becomes immediately obvious that the homes are not as nice as in this [other] part of NORCO . . . there are issues there ... socioeconomic issues. I can talk to you a lot about things we plan to do in that area but it gets back to if you have people living in Diamond with socio-economic issues then do you really solve the root issues by buying them out and moving them somewhere else? I don't think so.
SDL: Residents say: 'My issue is that I am afraid to live here and I don't feel physically good living here. The financial issue they have is that they need a buy-out that will allow them to buy a house of a similar size in a place where they are not afraid and are comfortable breathing the air. They say they don't want a baseball park, swimming pool or a greenbelt; instead they want to get out. They feel they want to leave because it is scary living there and it is making them sick. That is what residents report. It would be expensive to buy out more people and it might set a precedent that Shell would not be eager to endorse.
DB: There are those things but also look at the impact you have on the community. There are [Parish] ordinances now where if you have a big industry, a chemical plant, for example, you have to have a buffer of I think 1,200 feet or about a quarter of a mile.
SDL: So it would require the purchase of more than the first to streets in Diamond?
DB: Yeah, if you were building a grassroots facility. That is the key. We have a community, an old community, that has been here a long time. Say Shell has some big fabulous plan to expand our industry ... which we don't, of course ... so let's consider [imagine] buying out all of NORCO so we can expand. And by the way here is hundreds of millions of dollars so we can execute the buy-out. I still think that is impracticable because there are too many people here who love living here and who don't want to live anywhere else. You can imagine opposition if we said we wanted to do something like that. I will grant you the last place you want a big community is between a refinery here and a chemical plant here. [But] That is the way things happened a long time ago and were set in motion. What do we do now? You are wrestling with issues that are quite challenging and even when you want to do the right thing it is not always clear what that is [laughs].
SDL: If the survey had asked: 'Do you want to be relocated?' you would have gotten an overwhelming vote of people who say that instead of putting money into buying a greenbelt or some other beautification effort ... put the money into moving us out. Diamond is lobbying for relocation.
DB: We don't have that data yet. We know that there are some residents who want to relocate under any circumstances. We know there are some who want to say. We want to hear from the majority who, for one reason or another, haven't spoken.
SDL: Why not ask them if they want to relocate?
DB: We will and we can but I don't think a survey is the right way.
SDL: It is a relevant question. You could go door to door and ask.
DB: It is a relevant but then you create this big expectation that we will do it. Let's be realistic about this: you are new but they know your brother [Michael Lerner] has been here, they know Anne Rolfes, [president, Louisiana Bucket Brigade] so they see this as an opportunity for us [Diamond residents] to really push our issue. So naturally you are going to hear that side of the story.
SDL: I am open to hearing other sides. Please introduce me to people who have a different hit on it. But when I ask people I talk to about their neighbors ... . I would bet if we asked people if they want to leave or not if Shell bought them out . . . you would find a very high percentage of people would want to relocate.
DB: That is possible given that if you look at the fence-line program that we just concluded, we paid well above market value. There is a reason for that: we wanted those properties; we had a business reason for wanting them. So people got in their heads: 'Oh, I can make double or triple the value of my property.' So of course, even if you gave me 25 percent more ... I am very happy ... . I live not far from here in La Place but if someone came today and offered me 25 to 30 percent more [than my house is worth] I'd sign up today. So if you ask the question differently, if you asked the question that if someone were willing to give you what your property is worth, would you then leave. I mean, get out of your mind that Shell is going to give me this big bonus because they gave it to the fence-line people. Let's talk realistically, now: would they still go? I don't know: they might.
In my mind, if you are convinced that we are hurting you with chemicals and we are going to have another explosion in the next few years that could impact you and you really want to move badly maybe you would take ... if your property is worth $50,000, maybe you would take $50,000 and go somewhere else and do what you can, either rent a place or buy another place. The reality is that even if we would do something for the other two streets {Diamond and East Streets], it wouldn't be at the premium of the fence-line properties were bought because we have no business case ... we don't want that property [the back two streets of Diamond] for a greenbelt.
SDL: There are a lot of residents of Diamond who are worried about their health and want to leave. They represent, I would think, a liability to Shell in that here are a bunch of people who are unhappy living here so the next time there is a release of an explosion, you will hear from them again. So just from a business perspective it strikes me that it is one thing to have people living next to you who either work at the plant or have relatives who work for Shell; it is quite another thing to have a group of people living next to the plant who don't work for Shell and feel they are just on the receiving end of all the fumes. I see that there are two different communities here and so maybe treating them differently would make sense.
DB: You are treading on thin ice there. Motiva is a little different because they only have operations here [at the refinery]. [At] Shell Chemical we have them here, on this side, and here. So it is critical for Shell Chemical to maintain a sense of fairness with the community. Even though they are two communities we don't want either community feeling that we are showing preferential treatment to the other side. So that is very delicate.
SDL: The people in Diamond I interviewed feel there is [already] preferential treatment and the preferential treatment is going to the white community because they are the ones with the jobs.
DB: That is an issue and we can't deny it. There are not many [Shell] employees from Diamond. Now, I can tell you from our history that when we have had half a dozen cases where we hired someone from Diamond and guess what happened over a two or three year period? They began to reap some of the economic rewards and they moved out. Believe me we have tried very, very hard to hire from Diamond because we have a strong focus that we want to hire local; we want to hire from NORCO, and we want to hire from Diamond because they are our neighbors. And to a large degree it has been very difficult, I'm being very honest here, to find Diamond residents who meet our qualifications.
The way we work is, say we put out 15 operator positions, you know how many people come apply? Thousands: two to three thousand. You can't interview that many people so we try to make some kind of cut using the test. You take the test and get down to 20 percent of the original [number of applicants] and then you select people for interviews. It is a big process and believe me we know those issues that we have to work on. It gets back to some of the things we are working on. I think you will find with this company [Shell], here in NORCO and in the company as a whole, is that we are really sincere. We want to help address some of the inequities that have been here historically and we are going to spend a lot of money too.
I can put myself in the shoes of someone in Diamond, I really can. I have worked in Diamond for a year and a half so I am starting to understand these issues real clearly. If I am living on Diamond or East Street and I am African American and I don't work for Shell nor [do] my relatives, I can begin to understand why I wouldn't like Shell and so forth. But how can we as a company ... somehow we want to get beyond that. We want to say: 'If you give us a chance we think we are going to really help you.'
SDL: They [residents of Diamond] have been here a long time. Many Diamond residents have been here 50 to 70 years. So it would be a hard sell to ask them that they give you a chance. I can hear them say: 'They have had a chance.'
DB: I know that is reality. So we have some good initiatives.
SDL: How would Shell's initiatives change the lives for the better of the remaining residents of Diamond [who do not currently qualify for the relocation program?]
DB: OK. We have several things. One of our fundamental beliefs at Shell is the way for upward mobility for people from the socio-economic standpoint is education. So that has been one of the things that stood in the way of us hiring more people from Diamond. So what we did is we had a retired African-American schoolteacher, Pat Aguillard, who went into Diamond and did an educational assessment. Margie [Richard] worked with her on doing an assessment by interviewing almost a hundred residents of Diamond. [They asked:] What are some of the issues around education? What came out of that was some of the things you would see in any community. They [Diamond residents] were really concerned about their children and their children's future and their children's education. There were other issues, some dealing with drugs, cropped up. And so forth.
Pat Aguillard took that assessment and went to the [local] School Board and we said: 'Design some educational program to help us address some of the issues specific to Diamond ... because we think there are issues specific to Diamond.' I think you are right: there are two communities. So the School Board went off and they came back and recommended this program called for 'Adult Education' and 'Even Start' for children. They recommended a program where you can educate adults on some of the basic skills people need to get good jobs: basic mathematics, reading, and writing. They can also get a GED if they don't have a high school education. Also they can bring their children if that is a problem and there is a program for their children.
So this is what they recommended. The facility we want to have this program in is on Apple Street it called the Adult Learning Center. So Margie Richard said: 'You may have an issue with transportation.' And so we told the School Board: 'Throw transportation into the proposal.' So they came back and we are looking at four or five full time members [workers]: two or three are educators. The price tag was $375,000. And then just about a month ago the Shell Foundation in Houston came back and said they would fund it for the first year. So we are going to get this thing moving ... we are going to get it going. So we say, hey, this is one way we can really help the people of Diamond. This will help socio-economically.
But how do you get people to get more of a sense of living in a nice place. We just concluded that fence-line property purchase program. Next week we are going to have focus groups with some [residents] living on Diamond, East [Streets], and some living on the white side of town. The purpose will be that we have a couple of ideas on things we would like to talk about for [the] next steps on housing. We don't want to move forward without getting residents involved. What we are thinking about is two things. The concept is home improvement loans. The concept works like this: we would make a loan to a resident who wants to improve their home. Basically the loan would be forgiven ... pick out a number ... say $2,000 a year. So the concept would be that if somebody said: 'Yeah, I would really like new floors or a new air conditioning unit and it comes to $10,000; in five years [at $2,000 forgiven a year] they wouldn't owe us anything.
Or say if somebody wants to leave they can borrow the money to fix up their house and if they sell it right away they would pay us back just the capital that we put into it [with no interest]. But if they live here [the loan would gradually be forgiven. That is a way we could really demonstrate that we are serious: we want to help people, we want to improve their quality of life, and we are serious about being a good neighbor.
Another concept we are looking at ... again, I hesitate to say too much because we don't want the community to say: 'Hey, Shell came up with another program for us.' We would rather work with concepts and then get with residents and say: 'What do you think of this? What are the issues? How would you like to see this changed?'
SDL: Do you have a budget for these programs?
DB: We are too early in the process to even think about budget. We are still thinking about how to do this. Should it be for all NORCO? Would it be for the new fence-line areas? The people who are closest to us now? I don't know what the criteria would be.
Another idea is something we call Value Protection. This is a little more complicated. If you [resident] really want to go we [at Shell] are serious about being a good neighbor. If you really want to go we will help you market your home. We will get it appraised; and we will [help] market it. We won't market it but we will pay Prudential or somebody to ... we will work it through the same office we have here. And if after a certain amount of time the house hasn't sold, we would buy it at the appraised price with the intention of selling them not turning them into a greenbelt. We figure someone who came to buy it would be someone who wanted to be there.
SDL: That gets into the issue of what these properties are worth. There are two ways to look at a house: one is to appraise the value of the house in isolation; the other is to appraise it in terms of its location. There are residents of Diamond who feel it has been a hardship living here and therefore what they feel is fair is not the low value of an assessment because they are next to a chemical plant and refinery ... Whose factory is it, they ask? It's Shell's. That's the problem: it is Shell. 'I have a nice house it just happens to be next to Shell.' So what seems fair to some of those I spoke with is [to be offered] enough money to buy a comparable-sized house in a place away from the refinery and chemical plant.
DB: I am not a real estate expert. What I like about market value is if we buy the house we can resell it. That [what Diamond residents you spoke with are proposing] is a different program: that would be a relocation program. The reality is that there are people living closer to this plant than the homes in Diamond. See where these trees are [points to map]? There is a new development here. They are building big-old new homes here. There are people all over NORCO who like living in NORCO. We say, yes, there is a history with Diamond where many are convinced that I can never be happy here. We don't believe that means that nobody can be happy here at all because we have seen too many examples all around the rest of NORCO
What you are seeing is that the community is changing. We have about 70 active Shell employees who live in NORCO. There may be almost an equal number of Motiva employees out of a total population of about 4,000. What I'm getting at is that these plants used to employ a lot more people than they do now. What with automation, instrumentation, and technology, now, the numbers of employees have dwindled. So you have a lot fewer employees living here today than before. There are about 140 active employees and more than that number of retirees so NORCO as a whole is becoming less connected to Shell by direct employment.
We plan to talk with some focus groups about this next week and the purpose would be: let's throw a few ideas at you and you tell us your ideas and let's talk about this. There all kinds of combinations you can think about [in the Value Protection program]. Say somebody offers you not market value but 80 percent [of your homes value]; the company may say: 'We will chip in the rest.' It will help you leave and help someone who wants to come in here come in.
SDL: There are a certain number of people that might appeal to but there are others for whom their house is pretty much all they have and they are able to 'get by' because they own their house. That is their financial reality. They are on a fixed income, they are retired, and they can't go take out a note [mortgage] on some other house. So that wouldn't work for them. They would need to get enough money for their house that they could buy a comparable house somewhere else.
DB: I understand what you are saying.
SDL: I understand you have a 'compassionate exceptions' policy. Can you tell me what that is and whether you have exercised it?
DB: What we have said is that we have been pushed for a very long time about extending it [the relocation policy] to the four streets. This has been going on for a long time as you might imagine. One of the arguments put forward by Diamond residents and one of their strongest arguments is that 'I have a relative living here or there and if my daughter sells here and there is no one to take care of me ... ; or vise versa and the mom leaves and the daughter stays ... how can she take care of her mom when she is ten miles away. So what we said is that we don't know all the circumstances of families in Diamond. We said: 'If you have a unique circumstance that you would like to come talk to us about we are willing to listen and consider this on a case by case basis.' But we stopped short of saying that we are going to buy out the other two streets. We said if you think you have a situation that is unique then come talk to us. So we just said we are willing to listen.
SDL: That is pretty vague.
DB: Yeah.
SDL: Is it a 'compassionate exception' [policy only for those] where hardship can be demonstrated? For example: an elderly woman whose daughter is being relocated and there will be no one to take care of her?
DB: We haven't had anyone come to us with that circumstance. Typically our response would be on something like that ... what you will find is that the offers [from Shell for properties] on Washington and Cathy Streets have been very attractive in terms of the offers made versus true market value. They have been very good. We made a decision about a year ago that ... the Diamond residents had a complaint that if you appraise my property on the fence-line as not worth as much because we are right next to the plant . . . so what we agreed to do ... we wrote a set of special exceptions that were appraiser instructions. The appraisers were instructed that when they appraise a property on the fence-line, they should not use other fence-line properties to compare it to. We instructed them to use, preferentially, properties in the central part of NORCO. This is the kicker: and any property in the program was to be rated 'no worse than average.' So now what you see ... I'll give you an example. We have one property in the program that is basically uninhabitable with broken windows and the place is falling apart but it is 1,200 square feet so you compare it to a 1,200 square foot home somewhere in NORCO ... and NORCO is a pretty strong real estate market. And you rate it no worse than average and this house came out at $80,000 plus. Incredible. The point being if you look at it from a real estate standpoint it is very attractive but there is more than just that to look at. What happens often is what you describe that maybe I have a relative ... What we have told people is, hey, it is such an attractive real estate deal that you should consider taking the offer and we can hold off on your closing until a property becomes available somewhere else in NORCO or somewhere nearby ... so we try to work with people this way. We don't just arbitrarily say: 'We are going to buy out momma too.' There are lots of alternatives and things to talk about. That is why we have the office [voluntary Relocation Program office] on River Road. We brought in Prudential 'community interactive consultants' and they have a lot of experience in these community buy-out programs all over the country and they really know the business.
Another example might be a person in Diamond who lived in a house but is only one-third or one-fifth owner. So, even though it is a good deal, when you divide it up five ways ... what am I going to do. Well, there are different options: you can move the home. Or, even if it is one fifth you might have $25,000 and you can take it and buy a lot somewhere and have the house moved. So there are lots of options like that.
SDL Those preferential appraisal instructions you did were just for the two streets on the fence-line?
DB: That's right.
SDL: And that same offer is not likely to be replicated elsewhere?
DB: No.
SDL: So if people on the back two streets do decide to do this Value Protection program what they would be looking at is the appraised value whatever that is. And that would work for some people and not others.
DB: I know that is true because even at the inflated value we had different kinds of issues even though it was a good deal it was very difficult for some.
We also have a 'Community Trust' program. Both companies Motiva and Shell donated $500,000 each to start a community trust fund. The defined goal is to improve the quality of life in NORCO. So we have a community committee that meets to basically decide where we are going to make the grants. That is separate [from the other programs]. We have already had one round.
SDL: Was any of this money related to the one million dollar fine?
DB: No, this is completely separate from that. No, sometimes when we get fines we will do an environmental project. The state, in lieu of us making some big cash payment to the state they will say, if you do an environmental project or something they will do [allow] that. But this [Community Trust program] is not in any way connected with that [fine].
These are the 2001 grantees: Volunteer Fire Department, jaws-of-life rescue equipment; revival of NORCO Christmas parade; NORCO Elementary School, promotion of literacy in student K- 3 using home visits; parks and recreation, lighting for the baseball field -- that is the field in Diamond, the only full-sized baseball field in the Parish. It has 90 foot bases lines. So it is unique in that respect. So this is going to fix that up.
SDL: The racial divide is on the minds of the people in Diamond. One of the lingering senses of hurt surrounds some of the Shell facilities that they didn't feel invited to use.
DB: You mean from years ago?
SDL: Yes. When you talk to people they say: 'Yes, Shell had the swimming pool, bowling alley ... To this day there is a swimming pool in town where black people can't go.
DB: The only pool in NORCO I know is Sun Villa.
SDL: It is not a place where black kids are able to go swim.
DB: Right. My guess is that it is probably a private club of some sort.
SDL: But, historically, is what I am being told accurate? There was a moment there when it was not just the people of NORCO and the way they handled racial issues; it was also Shell and the way it handled the racial divide. And that included the bowling alley, swimming pool, gym and cinema on Shell property [that were segregated]. I wonder if looking back on it if there are some lessons to be drawn from it or what you are trying to do now.
DB: It is a good question.
SDL: Do you feel partially responsible as a corporation in that respect: that this was a kind of company town and the company town facilities were, in essence, segregated?
DB: Unfortunately, the area you are talking about, I wouldn't doubt it. I don't know it first hand but I wouldn't doubt that that is true. As you know the civil rights movement really struck home down South around 1965. There was a lot of racial turmoil. Integration occurred around here in 1969. So, I wouldn't be surprised at all if pre-1969 that there was probably a lot of segregation and a lot of people thinking they were doing the right thing. As far as the corporation, now, I have never seen the corporation come forward and say: 'Yeah, we did some things that by today's standards were totally wrong and we admit it.' I have never seen anything like that. But, to make that even more complex, the people [staff] who were around back then are all gone. So it is rare now to find an employee who started pre-1965.
SDL: I don't see what that has to do with whether the corporation can look at its history and draw some conclusions about the way it acted on these issues.
DB: That is a good point.
SDL: What I am thinking of is now you have some money [for improving the quality of life in Diamond and NORCO] and you are putting it here and there. There are some opportunities to do some integrated projects.
DB: You're right and you are hitting on some things here where we recognize the reality that just because we have good intentions doesn't mean that something is going to happen and it is easy and it is going to go well by any stretch [of the imagination]. It is very much connected with the past. So a lot of this is [that] you have a lot of distrust, a lot of bad memories, but I guess there is a hope that eventually we can overcome some of this stuff. How? Maybe you hit on something here. Maybe if the company goes back and researches its history and makes some statements maybe that will help. I don't know. But today, the people I work with in Shell and the management are very much committed to diversity, to fairness, to treating people with respect and dignity. So, I think we are getting our act straight in terms of those things but how do we over come our past and not just our past, the past of Louisiana and its history of segregation?
SDL: I thought I'd bring it up because when I talk to Diamond residents they say there was this sense that they were not welcome in Shell's facilities. And there is still a sense of that to a certain degree. I think that sense was somewhat mitigated when black kids started going to the local integrated school and began to grew up with some white kids and started having some friends. It doesn't mean that people cross the [residential segregation] line but it does mean that when they meet at the grocery store they can carry on an interaction. But I wondered about the company-town side of this where you have a segregated community; and you have these amenities that the corporation brought into the town in a segregated setting.
DB: What is fascinating about this is that if you look at NORCO, NORCO is not unique. If you look even in this area, if you go up and down the river here, particularly in these small, old-time communities like NORCO, that is the way it is. La Place, where I live, is a bigger town with probably at least 25,000 to 30,000 [residents]. A lot of the neighborhoods [there] have grown up within the last 15 to 20 years so it is very integrated.
SDL: Not in the back-end of the Cambridge subdivision [of La Place], which is all black.
DB: Right. There are still areas where only blacks live. But I can't hardly point to a neighborhood where it is all white. That is the difference.
SDL: I'm not pointing fingers here. Where I live in Washington, D.C. there is a lot of residential racial segregation. But I wanted to touch on the health issue, which I understand is very touchy. There are people in Diamond who talk about their symptoms: problems breathing, asthma, respiratory machines in the house, burning eyes and burning in the back of the throat, headaches and dizziness, severe allergy problems that sometimes go away when they leave Diamond. So there is a lot of anecdotal stuff that it is distressing to live here 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and have to close the door and all the windows when the air is bad outside. And then other people say there are a lot of people who have died of cancer and that is scary to us. [They asked themselves:] 'Does that have something to do with the plant? We think it does.' I know there are regulations about what you [Shell] are allowed to emit that you have to deal with. But I wonder if you have taken a look at this from the health survey end and said: 'We really want to know if our facilities are having a negative effect on the people around here. Have you looked at that?
DB: I'll tell you what our plans are. We haven't gotten really far into it. I can tell you what we have done so far, what we are doing, and what we are going to do. Let 's start with cancer. You have probably heard the term 'Cancer Alley.' We have seen over the last couple of years several studies come out that would show cancer in this industrial corridor is no higher than anywhere else in the country and in fact if you look at it [cancer rates] for black males, black females, and white females it is statistically lower. White males it is statistically slightly higher. That is the only category that is higher but every other category is lower. If you put everybody together it was probably about the same. Now, you wonder this myth or this thing about "Cancer Alley' is not supported by the data so where did it come from.
SDL: This data comes from where? The National Cancer Institute or the Centers for Disease Control?
DB: No, the state keeps records.
SDL: I would like to see that data.
DB: It comes from the Louisiana Tumor Registry.
Back in the 1970s, when I was in college at LSU, they had a real bitter union/management strike ... This company VASF ... the union put up billboards to the effect that this was 'Cancer Alley' and VASF is treating us unfairly. So the slogan got going at this time that this was cancer alley. There has been no study that ever showed that there was more cancer here than anywhere else. And even in our own employees we have done studies of cancer incidence that is people who work in the plant every day the studies don't bare that out either.
SDL: So you don't have a higher incidence of cancer among your workers than the national average?
DB: No. In fact, our own employee studies show that in terms of mortality and life expectancy our employees tend to live longer than the average in the U.S.
SDL: I think, in general, the employed population in the U.S. is healthier than the average.
DB: That is probably true ... . So, we don't see any evidence that we are causing cancer among our workers. That said there are a lot of other things to consider. Cancer is only one thing to look at so we are going to do studies and we want to do studies with people ... If we tell people we have done studies it is meaningless to people in the community because there is not the trust there. So what we are starting to do and we have already started to contact people from the American Heart Association, the Center from Disease Control to see if we can get some third-party people from the health field who would be willing to help us with studies including studies of cancer and respiratory disease. So that will be our approach. We don't know exactly how it would be structured but that would be the desire, to look at NORCO. We are updating our studies of our own employees for cancer incidence and cancer mortality. We would also like to look at NORCO specifically.
SDL: Do you look at respiratory problems as well with your employees?
DB: Not that I am aware of.
SDL: Wouldn't that be a logical extension of that?
DB: Yes.
The way we operate the plants is with a permit from the State Department of Environmental Quality. The way the permits are structured, they look at your plant and all the numbers of what they call fugitive emissions components from valves, flanges, pumps, and tanks. And when you know all those components you can plug it into a program and it will tell you what your emissions are. They are not going to permit you if ... you take these emissions in this model and you look at different wind directions and so forth ... it has to be that when the emissions hit the fence-line they are below what they call they ambient air standards. The ambient air standards are based on ... if you look at the whole year period and you look at the average amount of exposure from a certain component over a year that is the limit. So they average it.
SDL: Which is not to say that there can't be an accidental release ...
DB: That is correct.
SDL ... where people get a big blast of it [air pollutants].
DB: Right.
SDL: That would seem to be the experience of people in Diamond that there are days when it seems perfectly fine and then there are days when it is really thick and it smells like hell and their throat feels bad and so on. So I think people experience that differently.
DB: Right. I agree. I agree that there are days when there is odor. We have an effluent treater at the West Site. I don't know if you know how they work but they have biological activity. So you take these effluent waters and they contain small amounts of sulfides and ammonia and trace hydrocarbons. They go through a biological process where bacteria eat all these contaminants so on the back end you wind up with clean water.
SDL: But it smells like hell.
DB: Yeah, and sometimes biological stuff gets clumped up in certain parts of the equipment and it goes septic so it really stinks. It smells funky.
SDL: But there are also, if I am not mistaken, chemical odors [fumes] from various chemicals you work with.
DB: We have releases. And we report those and it is public record. But in all of 2001 we have only had two incidences of complaint ... two people calling in and saying: 'What is going on? Or I want to make a complaint.' We have had worse in the past. And we have worked real hard to try to ...
SDL: Then there is the Louisiana Bucket Brigade with Anne Rolfes and others. They have people out there with buckets catching air and sending it off to be analyzed. Do they not periodically find stuff in the air that is above and beyond regulatory limits?
DB: We are not exactly sure. [Laughs.] We have repeated this that we welcome ... if they find something, tell us because maybe we have a leak that we can go find and correct. But, we are not made privy to the data unless sometimes it will show up in a newspaper article.
SDL: They don't tell you? That seems a disconnect.
DB: No. What we are going to do is [erect] an anemometer project outside the fence in NORCO. It is going to be a three-pronged partnership with the companies, the state Department of Environmental Quality, and the community.
SDL: Are they going to be close to the ground or up in the air: where are they going to be?
DB: The ones I have seen, I have only seen a couple of examples in Baton Rouge, but it is usually a couple of trailer facilities and something that comes out maybe ten feet and a tall thing that collects meteorological data. Where we are with that is we went to the DEQ [State Department of Environmental Quality] in November and gave them a conceptual plan of how we would do this. They said go do it but when you figure out the details come back to us. And so we are forming two teams right now. We have a technical team that is going to look at what chemicals do we want to look for, what kind of technology are we going to use. You can go with continual monitoring which is probably a little less accurate but which won't miss any event. Or there is a more accurate way that catches a sample every six days. So there are a couple of different routes you can go.
There will be another team, which I will sit on, the communications team. The communications team is going to be chartered with [answering the questions]: how do we present the data, collect the data, and where do we put it? Is it a website, leaflets, pamphlets, or do we go to community meetings? How do we package the data and how do we communicate it to people? That team will have residents on it. The teams are forming now and we are hoping that by the end of April both teams technical and communications will have a plan together. And then maybe go to DEQ and say here is what we want to do in more detail and hopefully they will put their blessing on it and then the implementation will be pretty quick it only takes a few months to get air monitoring equipment. So my target is September to catch the first set of data and do the first communications in October of this year.
SDL: Will some of the monitoring be done in Diamond?
DB: I don't know. The technical team is going to decide that.
SDL: I would think it would be a good idea.
DB: Well, yeah. And that is what is going to happen. What is going to happen is the technical team will have a Shell person, we will invite someone from DEQ but they probably will say you guys figure it out and come talk to us. And we are looking for a third-party technical consultant in whom the community has some faith. So what is going to happen in the next meeting of our Community/ Industry Panel, a person who will facilitate for us, Susan Hunt, she has been facilitating that panel for about a year and a half, she is going to have a list of options for a third-party technical person. And then the Community/ Industry Panel will help pick who that will be. In terms of the communications plan we know we have to have someone from the Concerned Citizens of NORCO working with us. Susan Hunt is working on who that is.
What that gets at is that we know one of the big elements of mistrust is: 'What are all these chemicals in the air?' So, well, let's go do an air monitoring project and see what is out there and we will talk about it. If there is something in the air we are committed to go fix it or work on it.
SDL: I saw a video that included Wilma Subra and she was talking with local residents saying there were dioxin releases way above permissible levels.
DB: Here? Wilma has talked to us about many things but not dioxin. You might be thinking of southwest Louisiana, Lake Charles.
SDL: You don't have that problem here?
DB: No. I mean if there is it is news to me. But Wilma has been active in that area too.
SDL: So, if you find there is too much benzene or toluene in the air or one thing or another this would go beyond the standard EPA/DEQ monitoring to another level of feedback for you.
DB: We hope it will help build some trust. Here is data ... What we suspect we will find is that day to day operations we have pretty good air. Getting back to what you mentioned earlier if you have an event or a leak or something you will pick it up.
SDL: Well, the fugitive emissions numbers are pretty high, aren't they?
DB: Yeah, well, it depends what you mean by high.
SDL: In comparison with other plants?
DB: No. In fact I can show you some information.
SDL: Don't you have more fugitive emissions than non-fugitive emissions?
DB: When you report this data to the state you have to report your fugitive emissions, you have to include your accidental releases, and you have to include what is coming out of your flaring vents. So you take all those things into account. This needs to be updated but you have your 2000 data and if you look at the air -- this is in millions of pounds per year -- and you can see it is going down significantly. In fact, we use 1998 as our base year when we made a public commitment, taking 1998 as the baseline; we were going to reduce from 1998 over the next three years by 30 percent. We have already done that. In fact Motiva has done 50 percent and we have done 35 percent. But we are not stopping there. We know it is important and we are going to do more. And we are going for ISO 14000 [certification], which is going to put a requirement on us that we continue that downward trend.
This is not just air emissions this is air, land, water, and deep-well [injection] for 2000. You can see it dropped off in a big, big way and what made this big change was we got out of deep-well injection in 1989 so the water and land emissions went way down. Here is air; you see in 2000 we didn't make a whole lot of progress versus 1999. In fact if you look Shell Chemical went up slightly and Motiva went down. That wasn't real emissions; we basically traded components. We took some ... it was kind of a paperwork thing. I suspect what you will see from the 2001 data is there will be more than this. We made some changes and are making some this year that will show a really, really significant improvement again.
SDL: Do you have this broken down by different chemicals?
DB: Yeah. You could get that yourself on the Environmental Defense website. This data is on there. You can compare by companies. You can say tell me the top ten benzene-emitting sites are in the United States. Or anything. It will show it by chemical.
SDL: Talk to me about accidents. Looming large in the mind of Diamond residents are three different accidents: 1973 when Mrs. Washington and Mr. Jones were killed; 1988 when the refinery blew up and killed seven men; and more recently when the roof of the chemical tank landed in the playground. How do you address the fears of those who saw an elderly neighbor and a young man running a lawnmower burned to death; and those who saw a big piece of metal equipment land in the middle of a playground. I understand that operating a plant on this scale you do the best you can and periodically bad things happen. That is one thing when you are spending eight hours a day at the plant at work. It is another thing when you are lying in bed at home asleep and this thing next door to you goes haywire. So how do you address the fears of those people?
DB: Well, I don't know how you do it. But I know from a plant standpoint we don't look at it as every once in awhile it is going to happen. We look at it as ... we investigate these things. They don't just happen. There is a series of events that take place [which cause an accident] that are preventable. We go from a premise that accidents ... whether it is someone falling out of a chair and personally getting hurt; or a piece of equipment catches on fire and you have some sort of explosion ... all these things are preventable. You have to have strong, strong safety programs in place not only for your own employees' sake but for the community as well. So what we do here is we devote a lot of time to safety. And regrettably we have had some significant incidences: the ones you described are the biggest ones we have had. I am very confident that our safety record is going to improve and continue to improve. I am confident that we have some management systems that are being put in place that are going to dramatically reduce the likelihood [of accidents]. But I can't tell the residents that we will never ever have a big event. So, I don't know how you deal with that fear. I don't have a good answer.
SDL: In a way there is a self-selection process where you get some people who can live with the possibility of an accident and some people who can't. And those people who can't live with the fear move if they are able to move away. But the situation I have been encountering is there are a number of Diamond residents who financially can't move without help. Their house is their only wealth and they can't sell it so they stay. So they feel kind of trapped.
DB: Yes.
SDL: In terms of the evacuation what I heard from Diamond residents was that on the white side of town there were many streets that provide ways of getting out of town because the streets go across the tracks. In Diamond, however, evacuation is problematic and you have fewer routes out and those that do exist either lie right next to the plant or they go out through the spillway, which is periodically filled with water. How do you address that?
DB: That is a tough one but we are working on it. I'll tell you what we are doing. Just to support what you said if you look at this map what you see is that the main routes out of NORCO are Airline Highway here, River Road, or this takes you into the spillway, or you come this way up Apple Street. So Apple Street is the main north/ south through-affair.
SDL: And Apple Street runs fairly close to the refinery.
DB: Right. If you look at Diamond and there is an incident where they have to evacuate there is a street here, First Street, that comes to Apple Street or you come to River Road and go either west or east.
SDL: Well, you can only go one way if the spillway is full.
DB: That's right. So the issue is real: they [in Diamond] don't have as many escape valves. So what we committed to, as a company, is that one thought is this levee could be used. But you look at it and you can't cross this railroad track. The railroad has some kind of transformer box here or something. We reached conceptual agreement, we had a meeting a couple of weeks ago where we had representatives from Diamond, representatives from all of NORCO, we had some of the Concerned Citizens of NORCO at the meeting, Gaynel Johnson was there, Margie [Richard] who is called the community advisor was there, and we reached conceptual agreement to proceed with a couple of things. First, let's get this levee ... it is in pretty decent shape but you would have to be able to get across here ... even if the spillway is flooded. It improves some. The other thing we agreed to here back of the plant there is a road here along the back of the plant so conceptually what we would like to do is come off this street and around the road back here. So, say there is a big event here or here or on the river, people in Diamond can still come through here to the levee and we would put a ramp up the levee and they could go out this way. That doesn't solve all the problems because what if there is an event here and the wind is blowing this way ...
SDL: But why can't there be a way across the tracks through Diamond itself?
DB: That has been brought up time and time again and it gets back partially to the racial issue.
SDL: NORCO residents who don't want another way for blacks to get into their community?
DB: Right. But it is not just that. It is part of it. It is also that in Louisiana we don't have a very good record ... there are a lot of accidents with rail crossings. So the railroad is very resistant to putting a new one in anywhere because there is a liability associated with it.
SDL: There is a crossing on Apple Street.
DB: Yes, but it has big arms that go across it.
SDL: Wouldn't it be handy to have those in Diamond also?
DB: It would: I'll grant you that. Anyways, what we said is we are going to do this and we will have another group involving residents, the Parish head of the Department of Emergency Preparedness ... they are going to get together and talk about what scenarios are not covered by this route or one of these other routes. And do we need another route somewhere? Everybody was in agreement that these plans will help but they won't solve all the problems.
On the route across the track you have the racial issue, you've got the railroad that is going to be resistant to granting a permit. I wouldn't rule it out but from our standpoint you are looking at taking a public road, basically, across a track, so we see that this is not a Shell/ Motiva issue. This is more a Parish/ Department of Emergency Preparedness issue. If indeed it turns out that this makes sense and we need to do it, the Parish needs to really drive it. We will be involved and we can help but realistically it is a public works thing. You have public streets and a railroad.
SDL: It would be a Shell/ Motiva issue if there were an event and people weren't able to get out. Then it would be a big Shell event. So you have an interest.
DB: We have an interest and we will do what we can but we don't see ourselves as a driver of that.
SDL: Two people were killed in this unfortunate accident that happened in 1973, which a number of Diamond residents have described to me in some detail. It left a powerful imprint because here was someone in her house asleep who got burned up and someone running a lawnmower who was burned to death ... . From talking to residents they have the sense that not only was this scary to them but also the sense that there was not adequate compensation surrounding this. I wondered if you had picked up on that?
DB: I've heard it.
SDL: You've heard it. Would you comment on it?
DB: The only comment I can make is that it was unfortunate but it happened in the early 1970s. We know for a fact it happened. We are not real clear on ... I have no knowledge on what kind of compensation we had. There is not a lot we know about it. It is almost 30 years ago.
SDL: You don't know if there was any compensation?
DB: No. I have heard that ... not from Shell but from a person outside Shell ... that there was minimal compensation.
SDL: Again, it speaks to the question of whether or not the people at Shell care about the residents of Diamond and when something bad happens how are they treated. And it was a long time ago but it looms large in the history of Diamond. There is no monument there but it is something that people feel strongly about. Would you try to find out for me if there was compensation and if so what it was?
DB: All right.
SDL: Because I would like to address that. I know it is a delicate issue but I think I need to ask the hard questions. So that is all the questions I have. I want to thank you for being so frank with me and taking the time to talk with me. I have this short-term project doing interviews here for a report for Commonweal I am working on. I am also a journalist and have written books as you have seen.
I wonder if there is a book about how industry is dealing with the whole fence-line issue. The environmental justice movement is interested in this clearly. But from a national [policy] perspective we don't seem to be very organized about how we plan for or deal with people living next door to big industries. Have you seen some good thinking being done about this? Have you read about this? Obviously this is an issue you are involved with. Do you have a book on your [book] shelf about 'fence-line communities?'
DB: No. But just getting a sense when we go to trade meetings and we see people in our industry and our competitors and so forth, we really believe what we are doing with the Good Neighbor Initiative and [the] many elements I talked to you about today are really in the forefront. We don't hear our competitors coming close to some of the things we are doing. That is a good sign. I know we have our struggles. It is not easy and there are many hurdles we still face. But the level of commitment in terms of dollars, programs, and people who are willing to work on this -- we don't see it with other companies or [at least] not the ones on the Gulf Coast.
You mentioned environmental justice and I have heard you use that term and I have heard Michael [Lerner] use it on many occasions. I reminded Michael that when you think of environmental justice I know it is defined as a minority group bearing a disproportionate share of pollution or being close to a plant. But that doesn't seem to fit NORCO at all. If you look at NORCO as a town you can make the argument that the whole town is basically a fence-line community and it is 80 percent white. So if anything the whites are bearing the disproportionate share. So in my mind it is not fitting in the environmental justice profile.
SDL: If we looked at it statistically the racial breakdown of the country is 12 percent African American. So the proportionate amount of African Americans would be 12 percent and here it is about what 18 percent. But I see your point and take your point and I think it is true that white people are exposed to some of the same dangers and chemical exposures that African Americans are exposed to here in NORCO. It so happens that this little African-American community of four streets is very close to the fence-line [of two plants]. You can take a photo from almost any place there n[in Diamond] and see the plant right next door. So there is a center of NORCO and Diamond is not it. And I think if you looked at it nationally there is a disproportionate number of African Americans who live next to heavy industry and highly-polluting industry particularly when you look at the [hazardous] waste sites.
DB: I wouldn't argue with that.
SDL: There is a pretty substantial literature on that I have looked at [and written about]. But you are right that this is not uniquely a racial issue here. Which brings me to the question of whether you have set up some interviews for me on the other side of town.]
DB: This guy Sal Digirolamo, he is confirmed for one thirty on Tuesday.
SDL: And he is kind of a spokesman ...
DB: There is not a mayor of NORCO; it is not a town. But if it were he would be it. So he would be a valuable person to talk to. And Sal has been real good at trying to build some bridges to Diamond. He is the president of the NORCO Civic Association. I think you will find him someone interesting to talk to. I also sent a note to Dr [Bob] Thomas at Loyola and asked him to call you.
I want you to know that we really want a good solution. We recognize that there is still a lot of tension, naturally, and you have discovered that. We want a good solution and we have been grappling with this for over a year now but it is still not clear to us what the solution is. We are working on this as something where we are committed to the long-term future of NORCO and Diamond. So I hope you leave with the impression that we are really sincere in doing good for people. It is not always clear to us how you proceed and maintain the integrity of your relationship with the larger community.
That is one of the things that has really changed, I think. We are willing to talk and listen and take the heat than we were ten years past. Lilly [Galland, Shell Chemical Community Relations Director] goes to Diamond and I do. Many times it is very uncomfortable circumstances but we recognize if we are ever going to resolve this thing we are going to have to build some relationships in Diamond.
(© Steve Lerner March, 2002.)