HOUSTON — Leon Dillard gripped the solar panel tight, sweat stinging his eyes as he scaled the sun-baked roof for the first time. His adrenaline racing, he remembered making sure his harness was clipped not once, but twice. He’d never climbed up onto a roof before, let alone with a 50-pound panel of metal and […]
Environmental Justice
Posted inEnvironmental Justice
An Explosion Left a Black Town Contaminated. Politics Are Stunting the Cleanup.
On the banks of the Tangipahoa River in South Louisiana, thick oil slicks and chemical odors ripple across the water. Five weeks after an oil and lubricant facility exploded, sending oily soot as far as 40 miles away, Black residents still complain that the chemical smell is so strong that it wakes them up in […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice
In This Black Louisiana Town, Forests are Browning and Animals are Dying
The forests that once sheltered the small town of Roseland are turning brown. A month after a sprawling oil and lubricant facility exploded and rained down slick black droplets all over this predominantly Black town in rural Louisiana, the trees are sick. Federal officials said there’s no threat to human health; however, independent tests recently […]
Posted inAir Pollution, Climate Change, Environmental Justice, Extreme Weather
Pollution is Driving Climate Disasters And The Government Plans to Stop Tracking it
Homes in Jefferson County, Texas, still bear the scars of Hurricane Harvey: black and blue tarps cling to rooftops. Families in historically Black neighborhoods navigate a slow, unequal recovery from the 2017 storm, and in 2022, the federal government found that the state discriminated against Black and Hispanic residents when doling out flood mitigation funds. […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather, Politics & Policy
How a $5 Billion Federal Project Could Sink the Lower Ninth Ward Forever
Willie Calhoun knows how to live with water. His home, cradled between the Mississippi River and a patchwork of canals, is split by the surging, ever-present current. But it wasn’t always that way in the Ninth Ward. Before the largest canal known as the Industrial Canal was built, the stretch of land between the river […]
Posted inAir Pollution, Environmental Justice, Politics & Policy
Soot, Sickness, and Silence: A Black Louisiana Community Is Still Struggling After an Explosion
ROSELAND, La. — For 11 days after an oil and lubricant factory blew up less than a mile from her home, Millie Simmons could not stand outside for more than 10 minutes at a time. “I could hardly breathe,” the 58-year-old child care worker said outside her home on Sept. 4. Soot and an oily […]
Posted inClimate Change, History, Rural Issues
The Army Took Their Land. Decades Later, This Black Community Still Wants It Back.
HARRIS NECK NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Ga. — Over the course of what was a scorching, yet typical May day across Coastal Georgia, Willie Moran made it a point to stop and take a deep breath at every sight of water. Looking out across the estuaries and salt marshes teeming with wildlife, he repeatedly reminded his […]
Posted inAir Pollution, Environmental Justice
Explosion at Louisiana Oil Plant Leaves Black Community Coated in Toxic Fallout
ROSELAND, La. — Tyreik Taylor had barely wiped the oil from his hands when the sky behind him lit up. Fifteen minutes after the 26-year-old drove home, a roar thundered from the plant where he helped mix chemicals for motor oil and had just punched out. Fire consumed the air, the collapsing metal groaning and […]
Posted inExtreme Weather, Partner Content, Uncategorized
What Was Lost: Neighborhood Sounds After Hurricane Katrina
As part of Capital B’s coverage of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina later this month, we’re proud to present “What Was Lost,” a series of reflections by Louisianans who survived the storm, produced by our collaborators at Verite News. When I snuck into New Orleans after Katrina, the city was absent of sound. Not […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Partner Content
Inside the Memphis Chamber of Commerce’s Push for Elon Musk’s xAI Data Center
This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with MLK50. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. Marilyn Gooch was already skeptical about one of her newest neighbors, xAI’s supercomputing facility, when her cousin walked across the street in June with a blue mailer from the […]