Living on the Fenceline
Overview | Conversations with Advocates of Fair Growth | Living on the Fenceline
Wilma Subra
Wilma Subra, 58, is a chemist who puts her expertise to work helping residents of fenceline communities who are either protesting the existence of a nearby industry that is exposing them to toxic chemicals or trying to block the construction of one adjacent to their homes. The daughter of an inventor, Subra learned technical skills from a young age working in her father's laboratory before studying to be a chemist..
To finance the pro bono technical assistance she provides to community groups, Subra does commercial work as a chemistt analyzing the chemical make up of hot sauces and other condiments manufactured in southern Louisiana. She works out of a small laboratory on a back road across from a field of sugarcane in New Iberia, Louisiana. An analytical chemist who won the MacArthur Prize for her work providing technical assistance to community groups in 1999, Subra is known as St. Wilma among residents of some of the communities she has helped.
Interview
Steve Lerner (SDL): How did you get into this business? What was the appeal of toxicology?
Wilma Subra (WS): My father had a plant and every summer I worked for him when I was in high school. I started after seventh grade. The plant ground oyster shells. He was an inventor and he invented a classifier that had a grinder. So you ground any type of material and it classified it into different particle sizes. A lot of the materials he sold were for paints and fillers and automobile tires and then the real small microns, like one to four microns, would be for cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. You could rub them between your fingers and it was just like rubbing silk because the particles were so small. It was near Morgan City, about 45 miles from here.
When people in the office took vacations I took their place. He had me learn all the book keeping and what everyone in the lab did. Then when I graduated from high school, I was the oldest of six girls, we all rotated through it. I always liked science so when I went to University of Southwestern Louisiana I took microbiology and all the chemistry courses; and that was when computer sciences were being developed so I took all those courses also. So it has always been science no matter what.
I went on to graduate school at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette in microbiology, chemistry and computer sciences all rolled into one. And I did classification of staphylococcus and ran a computer program on all the chemical and biochemical aspects of the organism. So I went to a whole bunch of hospitals and got infectious disease cases and then did the chemistry and biochemistry and developed a computer model.
When I had a year left in graduate school, my husband and I got married. He had just finished interning at Med Tech and he got a job in New Iberia so for my last year I commuted to Lafayette, which is 30 miles. Gulf South Research Institute (GSRI) was just starting up when I finished. It was designed to keep the brains in Louisiana. Everyone I went to college and graduate school with never thought about working in Louisiana: every summer they went and worked somewhere else for NASA or one of the big companies like IBM but not here. So the Gulf South Research Institute was a way of trying to keep the brains here. The legislature put it together but it was designed to have independent funding. They gave them a little money to start out with but, in true Louisiana politics style, they couldn't agree on where to put it. So they put it in three places: one in New Orleans, which did metallurgy analysis; one in Baton Rouge, which was the soft sciences all the engineers, the land use planers, the political people; and here in New Iberia they put all the analytic chemistry and animal studies. Each one [of the labs] was at an old Navy base or some government property that they could build on. So that is what the state gave us to start off with here. It was an old naval base that had been operated in the early 1960s.
So when I got out of graduate school they said that I would have a job but they didn't have funding [for my salary] because they had to get a grant. For the rest of that year I substitute taught but as soon as I took that job GSRI started getting the money. So I would teach in the morning and then go work out there in the afternoon and on the weekends to be sure that when I finished the school year I would have the job I wanted. I spent 14 years out there and when I left I was head of the Analytical Chemistry and Environmental Sciences section.
We did toxicology when there weren't toxicology programs at any university. We did projects with the National Institute of Cancer Research. We did all of the animal studies. We were doing acute and chronic bioassays for all the chemicals. We did fish toxicity. We did a lot of the monkey studies -- the primate studies. We did the Kuru virus, which comes from Africa where when the chief dies they each eat a piece of his brain and it has the virus and so the Kuru disease gets passed to the next generation. We did all the viral studies and all the tissue analysis.
But [at the same time] we were always having people come from the surrounding community [asking us to do analysis of chemicals they were being exposed to]. So we would do that on nights and on weekends. And then we did the early, early days of Love Canal before there were even Superfund sites. We did quick response projects for EPA. I would get a call on Monday and be told that I had to be in a town on Thursday where they have a high rate of a bunch of diseases. One of them was that Bluegrass Army Arsenal where the ammo crates from Vietnam came back to be decommissioned. And they had soaked the wood in so much pentachlorophenol that it was dripping out of the train cars. And this is one of the facilities that doesn't have any military people: it is all staffed by civilians from the poor parts of Appalachia. They gave them the wood from the crates and they took it home and used it to panel the walls, build bookcases, or burn in their wood-burning stove. So they were just totally exposed. They were big wood crates so it was nice pieces of wood. And it was just throughout the community.
So I had like a weekend to get the crew ready and get out there and set up a lab. We sampled their air, we sampled their wood, we sampled their blood, and we sampled their urine. And we were never able to go back [to the community] and say: 'This is what we found.' You were a code number but you didn't know your code number. We were doing it for EPA and the Center for Disease Control so they got the data. And I couldn't go back and say: 'You know, you have the highest level of pentachlorophenol of anybody tested and you really need to do something about it. So there was never anybody working on the side of the community.
SDL: Would the EPA tell them?
WS: No they would send a summary report that said: 'No significant impacts.' So no, it never went back into the community. The only good thing that came out of that was the log cabins the wood was treated with penta. And in Kentucky they passed a law that in order to sell a log cabin you had to have it tested. And if it tested positive for penta it was not available for resale.
SDL: I built my house in Vermont in the 1970s out of raw pine for seven cents a board foot and painted it with Penta.
WS: Because you didn't want it to rot.
SDL: I was told that is what you did. The wood is no longer on my house. But that probably was not a smart thing to do.
WS: No.
SDL: Even on the outside of the house?
WS: Yeah because it off gases. And you painted it.
SDL: Yes. So I got it.
WS: So I started doing a lot of those kinds of projects where I had to go and deal with the communities but never was able to give them the information. Even in Love Canal we couldn't deal with the homeowners. We would sample their air, their yards, their basements, but we couldn't deal with the homeowners. And these people had a right to know. So, in 1991 I left the Research Institute and opened my own company and I have been in business ever since.
SDL: Tell me about the business. What do you do here?
WS: To earn money I do food chemistry. We have a lot of hot sauce manufacturers: we have canneries and things like that. But I also do a lot of environmental work and I do small businesses. I am sort of like the problem solver. I don't want to do 200 of something and make a nickel of each one. There are enough labs out there to do that. I want to do the problem solving. So when someone has an environmental problem I get the call. And then night and day I work with citizens who call who have a problem. Some of them pay a little bit but most of the time they don't. And I help them oppose facilities like landfills and incinerators; or existing facilities that have groundwater pollution or surface soil [pollution]. I do a lot of spill responses like when a pit overflows into a citizen's yard and that type of thing.
SDL: So you have mobile equipment?
WS: Yes, I can take samples.
SDL: Do you analyze it?
WS: I do some of the analysis and some of the things I send off.
SDL: Before you were in a situation where you were unable to tell citizens what they had been exposed to because your work was contracted to EPA and others.
WS: Right.
SDL: That would have been a breach of contract.
WS: Yeah, right. So when I set up on my own it was to provide the citizens with information they needed to move the process forward. In the early 1980s in Vermillion Parish, [Louisiana], which is the next parish over and has a lot of waste sites, I started doing [sampling] water wells because I had gotten a call from a man whose wife was dying of cancer and his father was dying of cancer. And I did a number of different water wells. The health department called me in and brought all their big muckety-mucks in and said to me: 'You need to quit telling the people not to drink the water.' And I said: 'Why?' And they said: 'Because you are creating a problem that we do not have the resources to address.' And what I was doing was [analyzing for] four heavy metals which are associated with oilfield waste, which is what most of the waste in Vermillion [parish] was. And then if I got readings that were over the EPA drinking water criteria [standards] I would notify the health department. And they would come in and do the additional workup. But I was creating the problem that they didn't have the resources to deal with.
SDL: So what did you do?
WS: I just kept doing it and sending them the information and then they started following up and sampling those wells and found lots of other chemicals associated with it. In the late 1970s, working with those same citizens, before I formed my own company, we were able to get all those pits and facilities closed down: gates closed; not cleaned up. We were able to petition EPA and get three of them listed as superfund sites. The first time EPA sampled them was 1980 and it took us until the year 2000 to get three of them cleaned up. But we have been working through that process. The same responsible parties were at all three [sites] for the most part. And I have been working with them developing the data and sitting there with the citizens and they go: 'OK, we [the companies] will start doing the clean it up voluntarily because it is cheaper than Superfund [when the government comes in and cleans the site and then charges the company for the cleanup.] So we were working through the voluntary process on a number of them. But it only happened because the citizens have stayed involved and put pressure [on them] and because I have been able to give them the information. Yelling and screaming is not going to get it; you have to have the information.
SDL: Which were the responsible parties?
WS: Big oil companies: Exxon, Shell, Texaco, Mobil. Yeah. All the big oil companies.
SDL: So you have met Shell before.
WS: Oh, many times. Yeah. But I did work for them doing bio-monitoring because they were one of the few facilities that did bio-monitoring at the research institute. And it is like they would rather deal with me than someone who is just screaming and yelling because I can show them what I found and they can take it away and say: 'OK, well this is what we think.' And I say: 'Oh no, no, no. We are going to do more than that.' So I have worked with them for a long, long time. I have served on committees with them at the national level.
SDL: You got the MacArthur Prize for this work.
WS: Yes, in 1999.
SDL: What did they give you the prize for? What did it say?
WS: The prize was for working with communities. One community they named specifically was the people of Morgan City against the Marine Shale facility, which was a hazardous waste incinerator, which claimed to be a recycler. I had been working on that since 1984.
SDL: And what happened there?
WS: That facility went in as an oilfield waste incinerator in the [Governor] Edwin Edwards era. And the guy who started it was named Jack Kent and he thought he was going to have the only approved facility for oilfield waste in the state of Louisiana. He filed suit against the open pits and the landfarms.
SDL: So that oil companies would have to come to him with their wastes.
WS: They would have to come to him and he was going to be the only guy in town [who could process the wastes]. He got it permitted for oilfield waste and he formed a corporation in 1984 and in 1985 he got the permits and in late 1985 he opened. And he opened in July and in September he started taking hazardous wastes as a fuel and a bulking agent. This was the same guy who was going to the parish council and to the state government and saying he would never ever burn hazardous wastes only oilfield wastes. I don't know if you know that oilfield waste is exempt under the federal level from being regulated as hazardous.
SDL: That was a real trick when they got that through Congress.
WS: And from July to September he was taking only non-hazardous wastes. Every time the agencies went out and inspected they found violations. If you appeal a violation you can continue to operate. So he started throwing his money to attorneys. The cases and violations from 1985 were the ones in 1996 that a federal judge finally revoked his permit over.
I worked with the citizens to help them understand what was going on, what the emissions said, how to call in complaints to develop the data. He would say: 'Well, if I am not that then I am exempt.' And so we would go through all these regulatory hearings and we had to present all the technical information. We won every time in court and we won every time at the regulatory hearings and yet he was able to operate until 1996 because he kept appealing things and you can't shut him down. The feds finally shut him down in July 1996.
Then in September out of the woodwork comes this guy, Kevin Moody, on his white horse. 'I'm going to be the salvation.' But he was just a new face. Jack Kent still owned all the property, the facility. So Kevin Moody says that he is going to form this new corporation and we are going to negotiate with EPA because there were huge quantities of waste left and there were huge, huge, huge quantities of ash from the incinerator all over the place, which they had been told by a federal judge that they could only put in one location. They couldn't sell it: they were trying to sell it for reuse. So from 1996 to 1999 this new corporation negotiated and got a consent decree signed. Our present Governor fast-tracked the permitting process. With all the things wrong they got their permit. We participated in all the process. We took them to court. We won at the first step at the Appeals Court with a great decision. They appealed it. All those judges are elected. We lost. So since that time they couldn't find buyers. They had to do $60 million in improvements as part of the consent decree. And they opted out, two months ago, of the consent decree. The consent decree was dealing with how do you clean up the ash. We had asked them to clean everything up and then we would talk about a permit. They decided that they would let them have the permit to operate and the money that they made they would use in the cleanup. So they vacated the consent decree and now Jack Kent doesn't have any money. But the permit is still intact.
SDL: Are they operating?
WS: No because they haven't spent $60 million for the clean up. But two weeks ago the guy with American Airline who is one of the big stockholders of Phillips and he is supposedly bought it. So now we are petitioning EPA and DEQ to be part of the regulatory process because all he has to do is write a letter saying that he wants the permit name changed and he has a permit. So it just goes on and on and on.
SDL: It sounds as if it were a flawed process.
WS: Right. But if you don't have someone helping the citizens get the information into the process you are lost.
SDL: This must mean a huge number of meetings and appearances at regulatory hearings.
WS: Oh yes.
SDL: No wonder they call you Saint Wilma.
WS: That is just one of the sites [Laughs.]
SDL: Tell me about your involvement with NORCO and the Diamond community. How did that start?
WS: There is something in here [a clipping] about Bayou Trepagnier.
SDL: It sounds as if it should be a superfund site.
WS: But it won't be because it has a responsible party so it will be addressed under the superfund regulations but not as a superfund site. We start the new committee with EPA on Sunday on what can be done with the superfund process and I get to serve on that free of course.
SDL: Lucky you.
WS: Yes, but if you are not at the table you can't do anything about it. Everybody knew what NORCO was because before they built the interstate Airline Highway was the way you got from New Orleans to Baton Rouge. That or the River Road, which was windy, were the only routes. And there is a River Road on both sides right by NORCO. So everybody knew when you passed through NORCO how bad it smelled and how it made you sick. But in 1985 I was asked to go and taker a sample I think by Audubon -- it was one of the national groups -- and they had some sort of clean water action suit. So I went out to take one sample [at Bayou Trepagnier near NORCO] and analyze it for one heavy metal. There is sludge out of Bayou Trepagnier, which is as beautiful as molasses. So I go out there and it is the most gorgeous place in the world but when you put the paddle in all that industrial sludge comes swelling to the top. And it was a scenic stream so you couldn't snag it and you couldn't clear it. We went out in these small boats and you had to push these boats under fallen trees and you climbed over the tree with all of your equipment the whole way out there. Milton [Cambre] took me out the first time. I don't know if you saw the documentary documenting Milton's work. It was called Big Blue Marble and aired on PBS in the late 1980s. It talks about the early work we did on Bayou Trepagnier. It really shows you what it was like in the 1980s. It is totally different now with the hurricane diversion canal and the levee and all. In addition to taking the one sample I analyzed it for a bunch of heavy metals I also took depth samples to see how thick this layer was. And I found six feet of industrial sludge. So I mapped it down the stream. I developed the data so instantly they want to take my deposition.
SDL: Who?
WS: Shell. Because you don't have to get permission from Shell to go on the bayou.
SDL: Why did they want to take your deposition?
SDL: Because it was a court case from Audubon and if you take someone's deposition they tend to get scared off. They bring out their super-whammy attorneys and all that. After that I went to DEQ [the state Department of Environmental Quality] and said that they had to do something out there. The Secretary of DEQ closed me in his office with all of his people and he tells me that I didn't know what I was talking about, that there was no industrial sludge out there, there was no contamination out there, his people have been out there and have sampled and haven't found anything. But I worked for the Research Institute and we took samples and I personally took samples in all kinds of places. I know how to take a sediment sample and I know how not to take one. He thought he was just going to shut me up and I would go away.
I told them I would go out with their people and show them how to collect the sample. And after I told him that a number of times he said: "I'll tell you what. We will go out and try one more time and then if we don't find anything we will take you out there with us." He went out and he found it [the contamination]. He did a lot of samples and the heavy metals were even higher than the one sample I had done.
Then it turned out that Shell had been discharging well, they had been discharging from the 1920s until today. See it is a low-flow, no-flow stream. And so they [Shell officials] said: "Well if we have been discharging it has always been within our discharge limits so it is not our fault that it [the industrial sludge] built up. We have been meeting our permit." So it went back and forth and we brought people from the media out there. Milton was wonderful with his boat [showing the press around]. There were a couple of stations in New Orleans that did specials and then public broadcasting came down and did that big one [documentary] on Milton.
And then the 1988 explosion happened. And while all the attorneys were focused on the destruction of the houses in town and filing lawsuits I went out with Milton to the backside [of the Shell plant] and the discharge [coming out] was every color imaginable. When you go up to the fence there is a big impounded area where all the discharges are spraying up into the air and coming down and that is the headwater of Bayou Trepagnier. So you can stand there at the fence and watch all the discharge [coming out]. The flares are going everywhere because everything is out of compliance because the facility went boom. And here are all these colors [in the wastewater being discharged into Bayou Trepagnier]. They had this one little boom across it [the bayou] like it is going to catch it [the effluent] but everything is flowing down [past it into the bayou]. So we kept putting the pressure on and they said they needed to evaluate and see if they should do a clean up. In the meantime they transferred the discharge from there into the Mississippi so that increased the dilution factor so that they didn't have to clean it up.
SDL: Dilution is the solution.
WS: Right. And this was a low-flow, no-flow stream so they had to meet the [regulatory] limits. So there was no dilution [in the bayou discharge] as part of their permit. The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, Mark David, got it filed [in court]; Tyrone Foreman, who was a waiter at Antoine's, adopted this and this became his thing.
Then, sometime in the mid-1990s we got hit with 18 to 19 inches of rain and New Orleans flooded the pumps couldn't keep up -- and Bayou Trepagnier flooded. What happened was that six feet of industrial sludge fluffed up and got caught in all the [floating] vegetation. That is when they were doing the film with the French singer that Zachary Richard narrates. We were doing that film and I was supposed to go out and film with them but two days before my son graduated the city went under [water] and we couldn't go out. So we went out the next week and you could still see where all the water had been. The water was still high. All the sludge had flown out on all this vegetation. So I took a sample of the vegetation with the sludge on it and it had high levels of heavy metals. They kept arguing that it was there on the bottom [of the bayou] but that it wasn't going to move. But every time you had a rainfall event this stuff would get fluffed up and then eventually settle back down. We are still arguing about what the remedy is going to be.
SDL: When you talked to Shell did they say that they weren't letting anything out into the bayou now?
WS: Right and that there was no risk [from the industrial sludge already in the bayou]. We sat in meetings where they were doing their risk assessment and doing samples and sampling deer and all these things all the vegetation. You see at some point they dredged it, way-back-when, and piled the sediment on each side so some of that has high heavy metals. All the terrestrial animals are picking that up.
SDL: Do people fish back there?
WS: Yeah, all the time.
SDL: Are a lot of them residents of Diamond?
WS: Yes. But they won't tell you that. When you pass on the interstate and you see those camps -- when you are over Ponchatrain -- that is where Bayou Trepagnier flows out [into the lake]. And there are all these affluent people who have their camps there and catch all the crabs that have high levels of heavy metals.
SDL: So it is not just the poor that get it?
WS: No, it is not just the subsistence fishermen.
SDL: So that is what initially got you out there to Diamond and NORCO.
WS: Right, to Milton [Cambre's] house and to the community. And then when the explosion happened in 1988 they couldn't tell them what to do: whether to leave or to stay. You couldn't get any information. And then when we did the discharge analysis you could see how much destruction it had done to the community. So I started talking to people in Diamond. Then a couple of years later I started finding out information about the emissions [from the Shell plants]. The Toxic Release [Inventory] came out for the first time in 1988. Then we started giving them [local residents] presentations about what was emitted [in the water and the air] and this is what the company tells us. And I made them [Diamond residents] keep journals of what it smelt like, what it felt like, what their symptoms were. Then I would come back and I would compare the releases to what they had in their journal so they would know that every time I feel like this this is the chemical [that is causing the symptom]. So every time I feel like this they had a big release of benzene. So they would keep the journal and I would come back and give them a presentation on it.
SDL: Was this through the Concerned Citizens of NORCO?
WS: Yes, it was Margie [Richard] it wasn't called the Concerned Citizens then but it was the people in the Diamond community. We would do the workshops at the churches.
SDL: So you came in through Milton but you ended up in the Diamond community.
WS: Right. And Milton will not tell you that because Milton cannot afford to say that. And this committee we put together on the risk assessment of Trepagnier Bayou, Milton was a member but it was not the Milton I go out on the Bayou with. It is the Milton who is in the room with an industry and he is retired from one of the industries.
Then in 1994 we started the Common Sense Initiative when Carol Browner [former EPA Administrator] looked at the compliance histories of the industrial facilities. There were six industrial categories or sectors, as we called them, which had the worst compliance histories of all the industries in the United States. So she put together the Common Sense Initiative. And the interesting thing is that we can't talk about those things with the new Administration because they get all bent out of shape.
I was appointed as one of the NGO [non-government organization] representatives on the petroleum sector. So I stayed on it from beginning to end. It ended in 1999 when Clinton was going out. The new Administration then folded it into NACEPT [National Advisory Commission on Environment, Policy and Technology], of which I became vice chair. So the three industrial sectors that had not "graduated" were rolled under NACEPT and I was co-chair of the committee under NACETP that dealt with the industrial sectors and those three were petroleum, metal finishing, and printing. The others had "graduated."
SDL: So despite the change in Administration there was some continuity.
WS: Right. And the member of the petroleum refinery who got appointed, one of them was Margery Richard. And we started doing a special project there [in Diamond] after I gave a presentation about what it is really like in one of these refinery communities. And then we got a special project dealing with what the community is experiencing vs. what the industry perceives is happening. That is sort of what has led up to this relocation deal because it started putting data together, it started putting incidents [on record]. I started doing composites of the accidental releases and the TRI [Toxic Release Inventory], and looking at the trends, and making the industry real nervous because I was putting it into a form that the community could understand.
SDL: And they didn't like that at Shell?
WS: No, not at all. It is easy to sit and say: "We are in total compliance." And if nobody can do anything about it who is going to challenge that?
SDL: But you are there saying
WS: this is your own data. This is what your data is showing. And then I did this report that led up to that project that showed the accidental releases and what Shell reported and what the community was experiencing.
SDL: And did it show that the chemicals Shell reported it was releasing matched the symptoms the residents were reporting?
WS: Right. It matched the releases with the symptoms of the citizens. And so that is how we got the process moving.
SDL: It does seem, in many instances, that industry is successful in being able to say, as Shell has, our workers are healthy and they are the ones in closest contact with these chemicals.
WS: Exactly.
SDL: And they can say that they are basically meeting the regulations [about releases] and who is to say that they are not?
WS: Right.
SDL: What was your reaction when you heard that Shell had reversed its position and decided to offer residents of the back two streets of the Diamond subdivision of NORCO the opportunity to relocate.
WS: We have been doing this for the past several months, working with the community and some of their allies as they sat down at the [negotiating] table with Shell. The way it started was that it looked as if Shell was sitting down at the table only to be participating not to offer anything. So it looked as if they were trying to engage the community and work on the 'Good Neighbor Initiative' but in fact they weren't coming to the table without anything [about relocation]. And then we came up with a specific date to come up with a proposal after a meeting at which they said that there was no way this [relocation of the back two streets] was going to happen. At then end of that meeting they went around the table and asked us in one word to describe the way you felt and I said: 'Disappointed.' We had participated in this process and gone through all of this and suddenly they announce that 'no.' And after that we will come forward with a plan.
SDL: At that same meeting Anne Rolfes described herself as 'determined' but you were 'disappointed.'
WS: Yes because we participated and if they weren't going to come forward with something then why would they enter into the negotiation? And bear in mind that the community doesn't understand the negotiation process that you go through. After that they gave us a date by which they were going to come forth with a proposal. Before that they said that there was going to be an exceptions policy [for people on the back two streets who wanted to be relocated. So we said we needed to develop the criteria for exceptions. I suggested a couple of little things [to residents] and that was presented to Shell at the next meeting and Shell said: 'This doesn't look like an exceptions policy this looks like a program.' All I was doing was putting out the criteria that I had heard from the community. And they said 'no' and then they said they would come back with something and I expected them to come back with something for a minimal number of people who had immediate relatives who were moved. So I was truly impressed that they came back with a program that was viable for anyone who chose to move.
I talked to the reporter from the Times Picayune and she asked what were the downsides of relocation. And one of the downsides is that you are tearing apart the community fabric. But the other one is that you find yourself living in what you perceive is a better economic class but it also costs more to live in that class. So even though they offer this money you will have higher utility bills, higher taxes, a lot of additional costs that if you were on a fixed income in Diamond you could survive on. And it may not be survivable at that level in their new location.
SDL: There is also the fact that the network of family and friends who were providing services for them is gone.
WS: Right.
SDL: There were people out there in Diamond with buckets taking air samples and at one point they caught MEK in the air sample. How important t was that in moving the negotiations along to a successful conclusion?
WS: Right, the day of the MEK pressure vessel over pressurization. Let me tell you about that day. That was the day Shell says I hurt them the worst. NEJC [the National Environmental Justice Council] was meeting in Louisiana and the Petroleum Refinery sector was meeting somewhere in Texas. And then there was this release from the pressure vessel and it was on the radio and they diverted the school buses. They took that sample that afternoon.
SDL: Denny Larson?
WS: Yeah. As it turns out there were two accidents that morning and Wilma can sit down at the table with them and say: "OK, let's talk about this." So I looked at what was phoned into the emergency response agencies and I looked at what was submitted to the state agencies. But I took that sample and listed the chemicals in it and I listed what was released on each side of town and in fact the MEK was released on the west side near where the sample was taken but a whole bunch of the other chemicals were only released on the east side of town. The chemicals on both sides of town were getting into the air right here so that meant that the chemicals that we were able to collect in that bucket came from over here and exposed all those people. I presented that at one of the public meetings that the Common Sense Initiative where Shell had brought out all the white community and Shell said that was when I hurt them the most.
SDL: Was that because the white community could see that they were in the path?
WS: Yes. And the data from these two facilities was their data. All I took was the bucket sample and matched it with their data.
SDL: So you think that was key.
WS: They said that hurt them the most. I think what was key was always having information available to the community and always showing it to Shell, showing them that we knew that what they were telling the community wasn't correct.
SDL: It couldn't have escaped the notice of officials at Shell that you are on all these national EPA panels.
WS: Right. One of my best panel members was a Shell representative from Houston who said: 'In the beginning Wilma and I hated each other and didn't trust each other.' But in the end we were able to work together to get a lot of programs implemented and to deal with the issues in this community and a number of other communities about what is going on in that community and what does Shell have to do. He was one of my greatest supporters. He was ready to do the buy out [relocation in Diamond]. He wanted to know what the residents wanted and I said: 'They want to be relocated.' And he said 'Well, what will it take.' We had these huge conversations after the data was developed. He and I did a presentation on the impact Shell was having on this community at Common Sense Initiative meetings all around the country. And he had worked out the terms.
[Subra goes off the record talking about some of the tensions that emerged between activists working with Diamond residents.]
SDL: I know you feel that some of the activist groups were more involved with their own agenda than in solving the problem of the local community. But were there also groups that have been helpful?
WS: All the groups have been helpful. And you need that momentum. But you don't need it to where your agenda becomes central. And that is what has happened historically in Louisiana. In the early 1990s when all the funders got together and said that they were going to put a lot of money into Louisiana, the funders were driving the agenda. The funders were saying that they were going to put money into Louisiana and these were the things they were going to fund. But when we tried to get money to provide technical assistance to the community the funders say: 'We don't fund technical assistance.' We fund the campaign. So the communities are in desperate need of help but the funders are driving the agenda. For the most part the funders were scared to death of coming to Louisiana because there is all this infighting with all of the national groups that have a presence here.
SDL: It is sad.
WS: Yes it is because it is the people in the community who end up suffering
SDL: How would you assess Shell's behavior on dealing with the Diamond community and coming up with a resolution?
WS: I would say that since the Common Sense Initiative started in 1994 they have been much more willing to open the door a little. They have wanted to do it on their terms but they have been able to open up and start engaging. When Michael [Lerner] came in and brought the funders last summer Shell officials were willing to meet with the funders but not the 'activists' or the community [representatives]. I went in with Michael but everybody else had to stay at the gate.
SDL: I saw a film of that.
WS: Right. And then when we started meeting on this thing then they allowed Anne [Rolfes] and Monique [Harden] so they started opening up over time. But when anything goes on that they don't like or that they don't have control of they start drawing back. When we started the Common Sense Initiative and started giving presentations on what it is like in the communities and when we did presentations on NORCO, people would tell us someone needs to do a sociology study. Someone should write this up not as a technical issue, not about the chemistry, not as an environmental issue, but the social behavior. And I think that needs to be done. Who can do it? I don't know. Not only Shell's behavior but also how the community engages or doesn't engage and what roles others play when they come in to help the community.
SDL: Do you think Shell deserves credit for having agreed to help relocate this community?
WS: Absolutely. We couldn't have done this without them.
SDL: They could have stonewalled this.
WS: Absolutely, if they were willing to take the heat and all the media exposure they could have not done this.
SDL: Do you think this relocation program that Shell is offering suggests a precedent? They finally agreed to provide financial assistance to those people who want to relocate. Does this have implications for other fenceline communities around Shell facilities or around other similar petrochemical and chemical plants?
WS: Yes and no. We have had two real big ones [relocation programs]: one near Dow, across the river from Baton Rouge; and one near a Georgia Gulf facility is part of a procedure in court. At Dow a lot of the people worked for Dow but a lot of the people were just unhappy living there and it was finally just easy to move them and they moved them into another community so it is like Morrisonville Two. You would have thought that when that happened that everything else was going to happen but it just doesn't. And those probably were in the mid to late 1980s. So yes and no.
The people of New Sarpy [near NORCO] are now saying: 'Well, we are sandwiched between Shell and Orion so we want to go. So [the agreement between Shell and the Diamond residents] will probably help them except that the corporation they are dealing with is not a deep pocket corporation. It is one guy corporation. And Shell having deep pockets made the relocation there possible. In the case of Exxon in Baton Rouge they bought out their company town that was established in the 1920s. Shell and Exxon are the two old refineries. The rest of the stuff started arriving in the 1940s as part of the war effort and then in the 1960s. But Shell and Exxon [formerly Standard Oil] were the two old refineries and they were company towns. They were white and the workers walked to work and went home and ate lunch. Then, as those workers got more affluent, they moved further away and the community around the plants degraded and it became African American. In the case of Exxon they would buy out blocks or three or four blocks to expand [their industrial operations]. They would say they were buying it out as a greenbelt, they would get everybody out -- it wasn't a choice you had to move -- and then they would suddenly be putting a new [production] unit there.
SDL: How could it not be a choice?
WS: They would put pressure on everybody and buy everybody out because they wanted the land for a new unit.
SDL: Yeah, but if I owned a house
WS: They can put enough pressure on you. This is Louisiana: this is politics. So then they have a new fenceline community when they put in the new unit and they kept doing that and expanding. So when they did a buyout it wasn't because the community was always upset; it was to expand.
SDL: A lot of the residents of Diamond believe that is what is happening with Shell and that they say they are creating a greenbelt but that they will eventually expand their operation s into that area
WS: Right. Nothing is going to prohibit Shell from doing that. They said they would offer money if the residents tore down the houses. I asked: 'Is Shell not looking at resale of any of these houses?' And they said no that they wanted it torn down. Now if Shell bought out these houses there is nothing to prevent them from reselling them. And if someone buys that house with the knowledge of what it is like [being next to the plant] then they don't ever become eligible [for relocation] unless some catastrophic event happens because they bought it knowing what it is like. And there is nothing to stop the people on the white side of town from wanting to live in those houses if there were no African Americans around. Did you see the new subdivision [being built on the white side of town]?
SDL: Yes, I toured it.
WS: Isn't that the most amazing thing?
SDL: It seems extraordinary that someone would want to build a house there.
WS: They are closer than Diamond to the incinerators and the wastewater impoundment, which is the big problem in terms of odors. They are closer to incinerators that put out more than a pound of dioxin a year that they need to reduce to meet just the maximum standards. They are right there.
SDL: I asked David Brignac if Shell puts out dioxin and he said no.
WS: No, they don't, because Shell doesn't own that unit anymore. They sold those units off to Resolution. It is how you ask the question. The data is there. It is Shell's data that the EPA put out.
SDL: So they just sold it to someone else.
WS: They sold it to Resolution. I was afraid that the majority of this side [of the Shell Chemical plant] would be sold to Resolution and all of a sudden there wasn't going to be a deep pocket. Shell owns part of Resolution so it is a paper transaction: there is a paper corporation that now owns this with no [financial] depth. And suddenly there wasn't going to be a deep pocket to pay to buy these people out.
SDL: So how much of this is now owned by Resolution?
WS: A bunch. Resolution on the west side [of the Shell Chemical plant], which makes epychlorhydrin. The epychlorhydrin is a chemical that causes testicular dysfunction. Notice what they sold? OK. Shell has maintained the MEK unit and the utilities but not the incinerators. They still have waste going into it but they didn't maintain it.
SDL: So Shell can say that this isn't ours?
WS: Right, it is owned by Resolution's.
SDL: Is it run by Shell employees?
WS: Yes.
SDL: So they have their waste going into equipment that is operated by their employees but they can say that the pollution that comes out of it is not our responsibility?
WS: Right.
SDL: That is outrageous.
WS: When I serve on these committees I made this point. See, this is the fenceline, OK, and we have Toxic Release Inventory [data] on this and it used to be Shell refinery. OK? But now it is Shell Chemical and that is what they make; it is Motiva with their 50,000 barrel-a-day refinery; it is Dow polypropolyene plant; and it is this guy who used to be TEJAS. So, my argument is that when you do pollution prevention and you do tracking [of where toxic chemicals come from] you have to track from the footprint of the fenceline. And if you don't know that then you see huge reductions in emissions.
SDL: So that is when David Brignac shows me his chart of how Shell emissions have been radically reduced
WS: And the reason for that is that they sell off units. And if you don't know that when you start looking up data you look up Shell [and it appears that there have been radical reductions in emissions]. You don't look up Dow and Resolution and all these guys and then bring it all back together. And that is what is happening.
SDL: That is really slick.
WS: But you see Wilma can sit at the table and do this [calculation which shows the total emissions]. Wilma can bring this kind of chart to the table where it shows how many release got reported to LEPC [Local Emergency Planning Commission], which is the parish. And I put together a table of Orion, Motiva, Shell, Resolution, and Shell Chemical. Events [during which there were releases]: total 248 days.
SDL: Orion is outside the footprint.
WS: Yes.
SDL: But if you look at the total exposure of people in the area you would have to include Orion. Is that what you are suggesting?
WS: Yes. What I did was I got a stack of reports this high and I have got a lot more breakdowns than this. So when I sat in a meeting with Shell and Motiva and I did this the manager of Motiva he almost corroded. And I go, 'Guys, you all report this. I have your reports.' So just this one table blew them away. Granted, Orion is way bad and the people over in New Sarpy have to live with this. But when you step past Orion, look How many days are the people exposed to excess emissions? This doesn't count the permitted ones and out of compliance with the permit. Look at what these communities are living with.
SDL: What I think a lot of people don't really understand is even if you go and visit these communities on a bad day it smells bad and you get a headache. But I still find it very hard to grasp that people in the white community say they are used to it. And Sal [Digirolamo] takes you on a tour and shows you all the people who are 80 or 90 years old and says: 'If it is so dangerous here why are there all these old people who have lived here all their life?' One response would be that we are not talking about the people who died.
WS: Right.
SDL: And the second response would be that we are not talking about what diseases the old people are living with.
WS: Yeah.
SDL: Then you go on the other side of town and you get this long list of symptoms and stories about people who have respiratory problems or cancers. So while I can come to you and you can say: 'These toxic chemicals are being released, we have samples of them, we can look in their reports and see the huge numbers of pounds that these people are exposed to, how are we to know what effect it is having
WS: And every time we try to do a medical study and we get all these experts, they can't agree on what we should do and how we should do it.
SDL: It seems as if we are going at this problem one community at a time.
WS: Right.
SDL: It is going to be hard to fight this big a national problem one community at a time. We would have to have a lot of Wilma Subras around to do this work for free.
WS: Right.
SDL: And there are tens of thousands probably hundreds of thousands of places where there are issues similar to this. So, if we don't have a system of monitoring the health in an effective way that shows these exposures and these health effects, then what are we left with? We are left struggling community by community with inadequate resources to do this.
WS: This is what should have pushed it over the edge. When they were supposed to do their worst case scenario we have been arguing for a long time for [extensive] buffer zones in order to give everybody time to react. St Charles parish has a buffer zone for new industrial facilities. This data was prepared for each of the industrial facilities and I serve on panels and the EPA was telling industry that there were going to be look-up tables. So a little meatpacker who uses ammonia is going to look it up and get a 25 mile buffer zone; or a swimming pool or a water treatment plant with a ton of chlorine industry is going to come back with little itty bitty zones and they are going to look really bad because the small guys are going to use the look up tables. When we were beginning to do the local emergency planning commission and we were planning for these chemicals everything was rated at ten mile [buffer zone] because they used a program that only went out to ten miles. So every time you plan for an accident if this vessel ruptures it is rated for ten miles. Well, when we moved to [looking at the buffer zone for worst case scenarios for industrial facilities] the program that they had been sold recommended an area greater than 25 miles. So the worst case scenario at all of these big facilities was 25 miles. Twenty five miles [from the Shell plant in NORCO would take you to] downtown New Orleans. So then the companies say, wait a minute. Say this vessel cracks open we have all these bells and whistles: we have sprays and we have alarms. So industry wanted to take all of this into account and do a second analysis and call it 'Planning Cases. This analysis would take into account what they personally had at each of their facilities. So they came out with Planning Cases. [Subra shows me a diagram of a 'planning case' for Shell's NORCO facilities.] This is the spillway, this is Diamond, this is the refinery, and this is NORCO. Look at how many of the vulnerable zones completely cover the community of NORCO. Now this does not have [include] the facilities across the river whose vulnerable zones also come over here. This is just the ones on this side of the river.
SDL: So Diamond is completely covered by more vulnerable circles than any other area, isn't it?
WS: Yes. But if you were an insurance person and you were going to sell a policy to this company would you sell a policy on accidents? We thought the insurance industry was going to drive them to making sure that the buffer zones were as big as their vulnerable zones.
SDL: In this case that would mean moving all the residents of NORCO.
WS: Yeah, not just Diamond.
SDL: And some stuff across the river.
WS: Yes. And you can bet that the people across the river will be the last to be notified. They can be running around like crazy [after an accident] on this side and they won't even think about them. And again remember that when the accident happens whatever way the wind is blowing that is the [vulnerable] area. So we had thought at the national level that this was going to drive the buffer zone and that the insurance industry was going to drive it.
SDL: And it didn't happen?
WS: Not then. The industry rolled out this data in little meetings with sheets of paper. And you got to go to a little table with your sheet of paper and they told you how wonderful it was and how it had all these bells and whistles. And then before it was made public and put on the internet they said that terrorists were going to use this information so no one could have access to it. They then set up a reading room where you could go look at it three files at a time. You can't make copies of anything. But I have the information from the rollout so it is not illegal for me to use this and make this. But anybody else who gets it from a reading room cannot take it and do something like this [make a map of it].
SDL: So I cannot copy it and put it in a book or article?
WS: Yes you can. I gave it to you. So you can get it from me and use it. So that is why it didn't get used because the lid got slammed on it. Dan Borne of the Chemical Association said that Greenpeace made Louisiana a target. I objected to what Greenpeace did in that they only did the planning for the worst case. They had these 25 mile circles all the way down the river. I wanted them to use this. Industry can easily come back and say: 'Well, we have bells and whistles.' I wanted them to use this kind of data. They had access to it but they chose to use the worst case and not the planning case.
SDL: Shell's own planning case, which requires a considerably smaller buffer zone than the worst case scenario, shows that they should move all of NORCO. Is that right?
WS: Yes. This is the chemical; this is the worst case. Shell Chemical west site. Twenty-five miles for the chlorine, worst case. And then this is what they came up with in the planning case, epychlorhydrate .31 miles.
SDL: They didn't say anything about chlorine?
WS: No.
SDL: If you have a cloud of chlorine gas it could cover a lot of ground.
WS: Yes. So they are saying that these people should not live here.
I have given this presentation to the African-American community. No one on the white side of town wants to hear it. They hear it when I do it in the Common Sense Initiative meetings of which they are also members. But the other part of the answer to your question is that you have to remember these people work or worked for Shell. Their pension and their insurance are all tied to Shell. Now, not Shell, but some of the other facilities, make the workers sign an agreement that they will not talk bad about the company they worked for or any of the other industrial facilities in the area. If they do their benefits will be cut. And they also have to sign a letter that says that they didn't sign the first letter. That they won't tell anyone that they signed the first letter.
SDL: Does Shell do this also?
WS: I don't know it for Shell but I do know it for a large number of other facilities. So suddenly you have these people who live in NORCO -- and it is a beautiful little town and it does not have New Orleans high crime rate. There are lots of oak trees and lots of Virgin Marys [statues out on the lawns]. And suddenly every time Shell has a controversial meeting all their people come out and support Shell 100 percent. Shell has done a lot to put money into the community activitiesAnd so this is a really nice little town but everything they have depends on Shell. So are they going to speak out against Shell and risk losing their retirement?
SDL: No, but I think also the peer pressure is one of the most significant factors on the white side of town.
WS: Shell has let them know what is acceptable and what is not. Shell rules their lives. And because they are such a small, sandwiched [boxed in by industry], community Shell sees them all the time. So it is not like they took their retirement and they are somewhere else. They are right there under the eyes of Shell all the time. And the most telling thing is that none of the Shell managers live in NORCO. They all live out. So that is why it is going to be real difficult to do medical monitoring because the people who work in the industry are not going to be willing to do it because they can't afford to do it.
SDL: This gives new meaning to the phrase 'company town.'
WS: And it is a company town.
SDL: Would it be your guess that since you know there are these [secret gag rule] arrangements in other chemical facilities that the behavior you see on the white side of NORCO suggests some similar arrangement between the residents and Shell?
WS: Yes. Absolutely. And seeing how Shell can call them out to meetings. So our hope was that we could engage the white community especially if we got air monitoring then we could deal with these issues on the white side of town.
SDL: All of this does suggest that a more generic solution is required.
WS: The generic solution is this vulnerable zones approach.
SDL: But that is for accident not daily emissions
WS: Right, but if that is the area they can impact in an accident, then they are also impacting some part of that area during all of these accidental releases [that occur] during normal operations.
SDL: So it is a proxy for dealing with the daily problems.
WS: Yeah.
SDL: And do you think that the planning case map is good enough in terms of protection or do we need to go to the worst case map?
WS: I am taking it at face value and saying if this is what they say then this is as much as they can control. OK? And if you take that [what they say] then there shouldn't be people living in that area.
SDL: But do they take into account that sometimes the best laid plans don't work out? I went to Bhopal after the Union Carbide disaster and looked at women's health issues there and that proved that sometimes the safety mechanisms don't work. That suggests a larger area should be protected.
WS: But do I fight to say this is wrong to be closer than this. Or do I take this and try to make them belly-up-to-the-bar and do something about it.
SDL: Sure, I understand that approach tactically. But if we are looking for a sensible plan the buffer zone might be larger.
WS: Oh sure. Absolutely. I can't get the data they used to come up with these numbers because that is all their engineering calculations and the law didn't require that that be made publicly available. So there is no way we can hire an engineer to go back and verify [their calculations].
SDL: This strikes me as somewhat dangerous work you are doing. Does that ever occur to you?
WS: Oh yes and I get threats.
SDL: From whom?
WS: Small operators as opposed to the big guys. We moved here September a year and a half ago and before that we had two trailers on the other side of town that we were in since 1981. And we kept getting broken into and broken into and they would eat the food out of the refrigerator in the kitchen and they would just mess up stuff and take the microwave and the fax machine. And the Sheriff said: 'Someone is harassing you. This isn't like a druggie who is breaking in. This is somebody who is harassing you.' So it got to the point that every time we would call with a new break in they would ask: 'Did they eat the food? It is harassment.' And they never found anybody. Then we had an alarm system put in and then they cut the alarm wire in the middle of the night because the alarm company calls you and the Sheriff and you have to go out there with the Sheriff and you have to go through the whole place. It got to the point where my husband would say when we went out in the middle of the night: 'Who have you been harassing lately?' [Laughs.]
SDL: So this happened a lot?
WS: A lot. Now it hasn't happened since we moved here but I live right here. We also have a black community right next door that is heavy into drugs but it is not heavy into the environmental issues. But I quit working at night late. When the kids were small I would pick them up from the nursery or from school and bring them home, do homework, feed them supper, put them to bed, and then go back out to work and get whatever I had to finished. And the Sheriff would make a round at night. They don't do that any more. So I quit working by myself at night; I bring paperwork home. I just don't put myself in the position.
SDL: Do you duplicate data?
WS: Yes. We had a computer stolen. I was fighting an oilfield waste treatment facility and the two owners, who I had been giving a real bad time by providing the community with the information they could use to try to get the facility cleaned out. They came in to visit one day unannounced and as one of them would talk the other one was scooping the place out. So then my computer got stolen. They carefully slid it out, they unplugged it, they took the computer, they took all the disks, and they didn't touch anything else. So after that we locked up the backup.
SDL: Did you lose the data?
WS: Yes. But we had more copies of everything.
SDL: You had hardcopies elsewhere.
WS: Yeah. So we lost it on the disc but we had other copies. So now she [Subra's assistant] does backup on everything and we lock it up. The other part is that the Governor wanted to put his papers in the Louisiana State Library and so the University said that if we take your papers we have to take some from the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.
SDL: Why was that?
WS: I think they just wanted a balance. I don't know. So they call me and say if you ever want to send anything to the repository they are taking papers. So when I moved I sent 60 feet of documents. So there are 60 feet of my documents on working with communities that is in the LSU library all catalogued. So that is a good backup as well.
SDL: Are there other people around the country doing similar work that you are doing?
WS: Some people are doing a little bit of technical assistance but not a lot. Most of them don't have the ability to do it because they don't have the resources.
SDL: And you are able to fund it by doing this food analysis work?
WS: Yeah. And the MacArthur [award] helps. They can call me up and say this is what is going on [in our community] and I tell them well this is what you get [documents]. Right now I am doing this thing for a Reverend in Louisville, Kentucky and I told him this is what you go get. And he came back with a few pieces and I told him thank you and I wrote up a memo telling him what else he had to get. (Insert below goes here.) And he found out it would require copying three three-ring binders and he said: 'Well, I can't do that.' And I said that if he wanted me to tell them what they [the industry] was proposing then that was what I need. So he called me back three or four times and then this other person called and I said I needed the application [for the permit] and she went and found out how big it was. And there was a copy at city hall and a copy at the library. So then she called and they had it at the environmental agency at the legislature so a staffer called me and I told them this is what I need. She called the agency and they made her a copy she lives in Saint Martinville so that Friday afternoon they delivered her a copy and I said I'm coming home and I will pick it up. And I had the two grandbabies to pick up and I went by her house. That weekend I had the grandbabies all weekend and I reviewed the application, put together a presentation on this is where we are, this is how we got here, and this is what is being proposed. My husband drove me over that Tuesday night and I did a presentation and left them with copies of the pertinent parts. And they have been going wild ever since. They had what they needed. They had to know how the process worked, what was being proposed, what the emissions were, where they were in the permit process, where they had to go from here. I went back and did another meeting in the adjacent community and again handed out copies and they had the wherewithal to work the issue. I talk to them three or four times a week and they give me updates but I don't have to hold their hand. I gave them what they needed to know to fight the fight they have to fight.
He went to the various agencies and obtained the data. Once I received the data, I compiled the information into a presentation. Separate briefings were held with the community, the industry and the state and local agencies. I helped him develop a strategy and it is being implemented. The industry knows we are working and have reduced their accidental releases.
A gentleman from DeQunicy contacted me regarding a proposed carbon regenerating facility. I told him I needed a copy of the permit application.
SDL: But wouldn't it make sense to have this institutionalized in some way? Wouldn't it make sense to have, say in the Environmental Protection Agency, some funding for toxicologists who are available to communities in different regions of the country?
WS: There is a program that EPA has that is called Toxic Substances Research Center. And they fund it in different sections so this is the south and southwest section. LSU is part of it and Rice is part of it and Texas A&M. EPA funds it and those are the universities they give it to. And they get the money to do technical assistance to communities. OK? I am now going to serve on their board because I have been on the outside screaming and yelling and going to EPA conferences of these groups and telling them: 'You guys, it is not working.' They cannot be advocates. These universities get huge amounts of money from these industries.
SDL: It says right here that this guy is the Chevron Professor of Engineering.
WS: And he is the one who heads up this one. This is LSU. I did this project I have been working with these people in Granville Bois, it is an oilfield waste landform it is a Native American community. And the people have all had health impacts from the emissions from this landform. A landform is just cells that you dump the waste in and you plow it back and forth or you sling it up in the air so there are huge emissions of benzene and toluene and hydrogen sulfide, and sour crude and all this stuff.
SDL: It is a way to get this stuff up into the air.
WS: Right, to volatilize it: you truly sling them up into the air. OK. This guy and his assistant showed up at a meeting where I had gotten the EPA to work with a state senator from that area who was an Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor. His wife was Native American and I was telling him what the issues were and what they needed to look at. And they [the EPA funded group] wrote like two or three page reports and so in all of their brochures now they [say they are] provided technical assistance to the community of Grand Bois. They go into a community and they want the community to engage them. The community doesn't know the questions of what to ask them to do. They do a little piece of something but they can't be advocates. And then on their check off list they check it off.
SDL: So this doesn't allow the person doing the work with the community to be an advocate and to tell the community what the relevant questions are.
WS: And they can't do anything primary: they can only base it on existing data.
SDL: They can't go out and take a sample.
WS: No. They can say: 'These are the regulations and this is what the regulations provide.' So I have been fighting them from the outside. They asked me two months ago if I would serve on their board. And I said I had to do this because if I can't do it from the outside then I have to see what is going on from the inside.
SDL: The EPA does this kind of thing in other areas, in land use planning, and I have seen it be quite effective when the funds actually do go to the community groups and someone comes in and explains to them that this is what you have to do.
WS: Like the technical assistance grants with superfund. The EPA gives the money to the community and they hire their own adviser who becomes an advocate for that community. That works. But in this process the community doesn't know what it ought to be asking and there is nobody out there trying to help them figure out what it is.
SDL: Do you find this all discouraging?
WS: No, because when we get a win it is wonderful.
SDL: Do you consider this Diamond agreement a win?
WS: Yes, very much so. It [the agreement between Shell and the residents] has a lot of down sides. The people in the community are going to go through a lot of stress but they are under a lot of stress now. But it was for the betterment of that community not to live on that fenceline. And Shell paid for it. We could easily have had to relocate all those people with no money just having to help them figure it out Other communities I have tried to help them figure out how to get relocated by getting a non-profit to come in and purchase the houses so they can relocate. And that is tough. So I think it is a very big win.
SDL: This is extraordinary work that you do.
WS: I just take it day at a time.
SDL: It must be exhausting.
WS: Yeah, but when you get a win it is really good.
SDL: Do you find yourself getting sick from exposure to the pollution when you go to these communities and you are exposed to these things?
WS: Oh, yeah, like this Grand Bois, I get sick every time I go there. They are standing there like it is normal and I get sick every time I go. And when I go to Diamond to make a presentation I know they know that I am coming but it still makes me sick. Oh yeah, I get sick every time I go.
SDL: Do people get used to their exposure to these toxics?
WS: You don't smell it any more but you don't get used to it. You still get the health impacts. But because you don't smell it you don't associate it [the pollution] as a cause [of the illness]. Most of the people don't smell it any more. You can go into a community and say: 'God it was just horrible coming under the bridge.' And they say: 'We don't smell it anymore.' And that is the danger because you don't know when to run. But it still makes you sick you just don't have the association.
SDL: After looking at the chemicals being released from Shell and looking at the symptoms the people were experiencing in Diamond, do you think that it is reasonable to assume that in addition to the symptoms that the people are experiencing that there are significant chronic and degenerative diseases that are caused by Shell's toxic releases.
WS: It is not going to be [statistically] significant because it is not a big enough population to be significant. But yes, absolutely: look at what they are being exposed to. The air emissions now are nothing compared to what they used to be before the Clean Air Act came in so these people were living in that community when you had no controls over these emissions. Now it is real hard to say that that was 20 years ago and that exposure caused this cancer. But if you would look at the total health impact to that community over time it would show but you don't have access to that kind of information. Most of them [Diamond residents] didn't have access to health care. I have done projects with the Health Department where you looked at death certificates and people don't die of cancer they die of pneumonia or heart failure. They don't die of cancer.
SDL: So the autopsy isn't done?
WS: Or the death certificate isn't issued for the thing that brought them up to the point of dying. So if they didn't have medical care then the only thing they would have is a death certificate, which doesn't accurately portray what their medical condition was. So there is a lack of ability to get to the information that we need in order to be able to say that in Diamond or in NORCO there have been this number of people who have these conditions because the people on the African American side of town didn't have access to health care. They just don't go to the doctors.
SDL: The agency that it would seem is most directly responsible for protecting the health of the residents of Diamond would seem to be the state Department of Environmental Quality.
WS: No, they don't protect health. The Health Department protects health.
SDL: But they do issue the permits for industry to operate.
WS: And each permit is supposedly calculated on the basis of not causing an impact to health. But if you look at a permit and you assume that those levels are protective and then you look at the permit and you look at their compliance history, [it turns out that these companies] are always over the permit. [In addition] if you look at the accidental releases and upsets they are always on top of the permitted levels. [Furthermore,] if you look at the leak detection programs they [show] another huge quantity [of toxic releases over and above the permitted amount of pollution]. So [even if] the permit limits would be OK based on health what actually comes out is huge leaks [over and above the permitted amount of toxics the facility is allowed to release].
SDL: What I am getting at is that somebody is dropping the regulatory ball here. It shouldn't be up to the residents of Diamond, with all of their problems making a living, to be figuring out what levels of toxics they are being exposed to from the adjacent industry. So who is dropping the ball here? Is it the state Department of Environmental Quality? Is it the state Department of Health? The EPA? Do we just go up the list? Shell?
WS: Ok, we have a lack of political will. Our governor supports industry so if the environmental agency and health department do their job it is going to demonstrate that the industry he supports is impacting the community.
SDL: So you think the message goes from the Governor to the agency officials that we need this industry and don't make it impossible for them to operate.
WS: Absolutely. [Under the previous governor, Roemer, there were a lot of inspections and enforcement at industrial sites] but now [under Governors Edwards and Foster] it has just dropped to no inspections. If you talk to the guys [state inspectors] out in the field at the regional office they will tell you: 'I go to this facility, I find all these violations, I write them up, and as part of the process, I make them sign it and give them a copy. I send it to Baton Rouge to the central office and nothing happens. Then it is time for me to go back to the same facility because I am supposed to go on a certain schedule. I go back and I find the same violations and more. I write them up and give the guy the copy and he laughs at me. I send it to Baton Rouge and nothing happens.' And you do this over and over again. Baton Rouge does not do the enforcement. The guys in the field are doing it. And they are saying: 'How many times can I go back to this same facility. They start laughing at me.'
The other thing is that when there is an accident or something and you call it in they notify the facility so that when the inspector gets there it is all attended to. Now we have EPA internal investigators. They are staying at bed and breakfasts all over these places. It is really cute because all the ladies at these bed and breakfast places will tell you about the great guys that are staying there and doing all the clandestine stuff. But they get in boats in the middle of the night and they are convicting people of illegal things that were turned into the agencies when the inspectors inspected but no enforcement was ever done until these guys came along from EPA. Without EPA we have nowhere to turn. We write memos to EPA all the time asking them to come in and asking them to take over because the state is not doing their thing.
SDL: And do they sometimes do that?
WS: Under Clinton they did. Under the guy who is up there now [President George W. Bush] they are told not to do it. Where did all his support come from? [Oil and chemical companies.] So EPA is not the savior they were before under this president and unless we have EPA we have nobody. We have nobody but we still work with EPA, we still write to them, and we brief them on what is going on. There is a guy who is in charge of enforcement who was there under Clinton and he still does really good stuff but he has to watch what he does too. It is very frustrating but you have to put the information together in a small enough package to make the point and make them want to do the right thing. I don't know if you have seen the Baton Rouge station but there has been an expose this week on Dow and the workers are now coming forward and telling how they dump all this stuff on the ground and the officials are saying: 'Not to our knowledge.' Or: 'We may have been doing it but we are not doing it any more.' And the workers say: 'We are still doing it. We are out there every day and we are still doing it.' So we petitioned EPA to come in because DEQ wasn't doing anything. EPA is doing some enforcement and we have to constantly brief them about what is going on and telling them that we really need you guys because DEQ is not doing their job. But it is just like pushing this rock up a big hill.
SDL: How do community people react when they get all this information together and then find that the regulatory system isn't really working to protect them?
WS: When a new group forms the first thing they learn is that their elected officials were not elected to protect them. They always thought when they went and voted that the person they elected was out there looking out for their interests. And then they find out when they get involved in an issue that their elected official is out there looking out for the people who gave money to the campaign. Then they say: 'We don't understand why these agencies aren't doing their job and how our elected officials are not doing their job. So that is an education. The next thing they learn is that the agencies don't have the political will to do their job. So out of this comes leaders in each group and people who say: 'I am going to change the system. I am going to run for office and get in there and make a difference.' The mayor of New Iberia started as a recycling person. We have a number of state representatives who were involved in a landfill in their backyard and ran for office. We have people who have given a huge amount of time school board members who found out that a school board allowed a school to be built on top of the dump. They were not going to have that. People joined water boards where there was water contamination. So these people then start making a difference. There are people in Diamond Marjorie [Richard] is getting old, she's getting tired but there are some of those new ones who are going to make a bigger difference than just getting relocated. They are going to get involved in systems and make changes.
SDL: This is empowering when something works.
WS: Right. But the political system is not out there to look out for their best interests. Especially when I go over into Quincy where the mayor had made a deal to bring in this incinerator. So now it is the citizens fighting the mayor. It is a local fight.
SDL; How many of these communities are you involved with?
WS: Four or five hundred. They will get their issue attended to and three, four or five years later I will get a call say: 'Remember me? Well guess what is going on in my community.' But they need a little bit of help. They don't need you to do it for them. And that is the thing over in Diamond. Those people needed help to help get them what they wanted. We shouldn't be in it for what we could get out of it; we should be there to help them out.
SDL: How many years have you been doing this?
WS: My business since 1981. Before that I was at the research institute.
SDL: How old are you?
WS: 58. And my kids grew up coming to meetings sitting in the back with their coloring book and juice and cookies and my grandchildren are doing the same thing.