ROSELAND, La. — First came the oily sludge that spotted homes, waterways, and gardens. Then the stomach aches, headaches, nosebleeds, brain fog, and dead chickens and fish that pastor Marvin Vernon began tallying in his notebook.
Vernon joined other residents this past Saturday morning to protest what they describe as official neglect and a “cover up” in Roseland. The same day of the protest, documents became public via a Freedom of Information Act request, supporting their assertion.
Yet a little over seven months since the processing facility for Smitty’s Supply — an oil, fuel, and lubricant distributor — exploded in the rural town, federal, state, and local governments have publicly maintained that the chemicals released during the explosion pose no “imminent threat to public health.”
However, five days after the August explosion, the Environmental Protection Agency’s on-scene coordinator wrote in a document that the toxins released in the fire posed a “grave threat to human health” and that the hazardous substances were “unsecured in the environment.” Publicly, the government never expressed this belief.
Since then, the impacts on residents have only increased. In February, a chemical spill from a processing facility related to Smitty’s coated ditches feeding the drinking water supply in toxic runoff. Some residents told Capital B that they were never alerted to the spill, which slowly spread for weeks as the corrosive liquids tore through the town’s water line. This left the majority-Black community where more than half of residents live in poverty without any water for days.
In the days after the February spill, Patricia Thomas, a 66-year-old who lives on a fixed monthly income of $450, said her water was coming out black. Since the explosion, she has racked up over $1,000 in damages to her trailer home, lost a cat to an unexplained sickness, and watched her garden die.
“It is not fair,” she said, while holding a sign explaining that the fumes have also caused her headaches.
The disaster unfolding in Roseland echoes crises in majority‑Black and working‑class towns across the country, where oil and chemical plants sit just feet from homes and schools. It’s colliding with a shifting federal safety regime and exposing the gap between regulation and protection. The Trump administration has moved to weaken accident‑prevention rules at chemical plants and reverse drinking‑water standards for chemicals spilled from industrial facilities into waterways.
“We’re doing everything we can,” Vernon said, “but it keeps getting worse.”
The EPA did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication.
In Roseland, Vernon has spent his days handing out donated water and warning neighbors not to “sign away their rights” as a class-action lawsuit moves forward. He is concerned about a toxic legacy that could outlast him.
“Nobody is educating the people about the potential danger down the road,” he said, a few days after passing out 840 cases of donated water to his neighbors.
Nor are they educating residents about the dangers they’ve already faced, he said. The February water contamination was far from the first threat to their drinking water. Documents released by the state last month showed that the toxic stew that seeped from the August explosion contaminated local water supplies with at least 24 “forever chemicals” in water supplies, including one chemical at roughly 3,250 times above federal drinking water standards. The results sat in state files for months, even as crews pumped contaminated runoff offsite and officials assured this majority-Black town its air and taps were safe.
Scott Smith, a water contamination expert who came to national prominence for uncovering the severity of the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment in 2023, the situation in Roseland is “unprecedented.”
“It’s as if you have the East Palestine train derailment and explosion combined with the BP oil spill,” he said.
A spokesperson for Smitty’s Supply said the company “understands the concerns of community members” and is “committed to transparency and ongoing coordination with regulators.”
A protest, seven months in the making
About 60 residents gathered at 8 a.m. on April 4. By mid‑morning, the grass and gravel lot outside the deteriorating location of the former town hall felt like both church and command post. Speakers shifted between prayer, including a rendition of “Amazing Grace,” and political strategy. Children weaved between adults with American flags and poster board signs about their school, their lungs, and their futures.
They gathered to call for stronger state and federal mitigation help, soil, and water testing at the town’s elementary school less than half a mile from the Smitty’s Supply site and medical support for children and elders.
Vernon called on the EPA, the Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Congress to treat Roseland’s crisis like a disaster. “We need a congressional investigation,” he said.
meant for her family. Her daughter has had respiratory problems since the explosion, and Hart said she has emails and letters to prove that she and other parents have been raising alarms for months, despite school officials claiming otherwise.
“No parent should have to choose between their child’s education and their child’s health,” she said. If there was even a question of danger, she argued, “our children should not be there,” calling for students to be relocated immediately and the school shut down “until it’s proven safe beyond any doubt.”
Next to her, a jungle gym still bears stains of the oily, toxic sludge from August.
Her husband, Jody, has been monitoring the site by drone and described seeing a “constant release of chemicals” from Smitty’s into retention ponds that feed the Tangipahoa River.
“It just gets worse every day,” he said, explaining that he, too, has had health scares since the explosion.
“You always hear about politicians talking about rural America for votes. This is rural America, and look at how they really treat us.”
Pam Bean, Roseland, Louisiana, resident
The only politician to show up that morning was state Rep. Robby Carter, and the confrontation that followed his remarks crystallized how deep the distrust has grown. The lawmaker is also a co‑lead attorney on the class‑action lawsuit related to the August event, and used his time to urge residents to sign onto the suit. People cut him off, shouting that they were not there to talk about payouts or legal strategy but to demand clean water, medical care, and accountability while they are still alive.
“Half of us may be dead,” by the lawsuit’s conclusion Vernon told him. Carter left the protest before it was over.
Pam Bean, who came to the protest with her two granddaughters who attend Roseland Elementary, said the lack of political support has been “insulting.”
“You always hear about politicians talking about rural America for votes. This is rural America, and look at how they really treat us,” she said.
The compounding disasters in Roseland
Born and raised in Roseland, the 73‑year‑old Vernon left for a 20‑year military career before returning to work three decades in the local school system and eventually lead a church less than a mile from Smitty’s. The ongoing pressures on the struggling town has residents like him afraid for its future.
“I’m afraid the Roseland community could have the propensity of becoming a ghost town,” Vernon said. “Property values being weakened, long-range health issues — we’ve seen the same issue in other areas across Louisiana where people come down with cancer eight, 10, 12 years later.”
Environmental racism, residents explained, doesn’t just determine which communities are exposed to pollution and disasters; it also narrows the choices people have when they try to move away from it. One Roseland resident described losing their home in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and resettled in Roseland believing it would be safer. Another said they came to Roseland from their hometown in “Cancer Alley,” a stretch of Louisiana home to the most chemical facilities in North America, to escape the cancers and respiratory illnesses that stalk families there — and then this explosion happened.
“We cannot just sit here until we die,” Vernon said repeatedly at the protest.
Roseland Mayor Van Showers told Capital B he is doing everything he can about the worsening situation, but he is often operating in the dark and does not always receive information from environmental agencies himself. In February, he did make the active decision not to alert the town to the chemical spill. “We had no idea it would lead to this,” he said about the accident.
Millie Simmons, who said she has experienced headaches and respiratory problems since the explosion, told Capital B nearly two months after it happened that she had “no idea” there had been a spill at all.
CMS Chemicals, a subsidiary of Smitty’s, was responsible for the spill. The company told Capital B, “CMS followed all applicable regulatory protocols for reporting the incident to the appropriate state agencies” and that the decision to notify residents was the responsibility of public health and environmental authorities.
The chemical spill sent acetone, methanol, and toluene into the town’s water system. Toluene is a chemical connected with severe neurological, liver, and kidney damage when ingested.
This, coupled with the state labs that showed that every one of the 34 discharge samples taken from the explosion site contained “forever chemicals” at levels that blow past the EPA’s drinking water limits, is cause for concern. Forever chemicals have been linked to cancers, liver and kidney damage, immune‑system suppression, and developmental problems in children. State environmental regulators received the results in October, December, and twice in January, but they did not appear in the Department of Environmental Quality’s online database until March 2, shortly after the newsroom Louisiana Illuminator pushed for documents.
Smitty’s told Capital B that “there was no presence of PFAS in Smitty’s products” and that the presence of PFAS is “attributable to the use of fire-fighting foam used by a third party during firefighting operations.”
The PFAS-laced discharges are under active investigation by state and federal agencies, including the EPA’s criminal division and the FBI. But the chemicals, independent experts said, may have already migrated into aquifers and private wells over time.
In the meantime, Roseland parents are pulling medical records, documenting symptoms, and pushing to close or relocate the school; church members are planning trips to the Capitol and pressing for a federal disaster declaration, criminal charges, and long‑term health monitoring.
“It’s going to take grassroot efforts like this right here,” said Mike Showers, a director of the local NAACP chapter. “And let me just say that there was a rush [during the 2010 BP oil spill in Louisiana] to save all wildlife inhabitants, to save the brown pelican. But let me tell you, there’s no rush to save anything or anybody in the town of Roseland.”
Read More:
