An Incomplete Solution: Oil and Water
in Louisiana
Craig E. Colten
A series of major calamities in recent years has placed the national spotlight on the lower
Mississippi River industrial complex—a sinuous arrangement of petrochemical plants
and working-class communities set amid the sugarcane fields on the alluvial floodplain.
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita damaged offshore oil rigs and onshore refineries in 2005,
caused oil releases, and increased gasoline prices, thereby exposing the region’s significant
position in the energy economy. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon event showcased the
environmental costs of extractive activities; and the near-record Mississippi River flood of
2011 disrupted waterborne commerce and raised the specter of levee failures. As those
events displayed, this nationally prominent ensemble of industries occupies a location
susceptible to a host of environmental forces and a place where industrial activities have
produced dramatic consequences. Testing the environment’s capacity to absorb human
impacts has been going on for decades and has left enduring traces on the Louisiana
landscape.
Erection of petroleum refineries in this region began in the first decade of the twentieth
century, during a time of almost nonexistent environmental regulation. Yet, even in the
early decades of petrochemical growth, the state, its citizens, and industry acknowledged
both human safety risks and environmental threats posed by the arrival of this new enterprise. Industry took the position that self-regulation would minimize personal, property,
and environmental harm. Government bodies largely consented to this approach until
calamities revealed the accumulating human and environmental costs that had turned the
lower Mississippi River corridor into an environmental “sacrifice zone.” That term derives
from the study of traditional agricultural practices where cultivators deliberately degraded
one area to increase productivity in another area, but scholars have begun using the term
in explicitly accusatory ways to refer to areas degraded by modern industrial societies
in the pursuit of economic and military gain. Environmental degradation in the lower
Mississippi River industrial complex was not the result of a coordinated assault; rather it
reflected negligent behavior by industries and government authorities. And significantly,
those behaviors defied what contemporary trade literature presented as good industry
practice. Sacrifice zone here refers to the result of disconnected actions that over time had
Craig E. Colten is the Carl O. Sauer Professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana
State University.
I would like to thank Louise Cheetham for research assistance on this project and the U.S. Department of
Interior for inviting me to participate in its Strategic Science Working Group.
Readers may contact Colten at [email protected].
doi: 10.1093/jahist/jas023
© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].
June 2012
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an undeniable and lasting cumulative impact. I use it to emphasize that the drive
for industrialization and economic gain took precedence over environmental stewardship.
As refineries transformed crude oil into marketable products, operators and regulators
discounted the known costs of environmental damage.1
The gradual buildup of Louisiana’s chemical corridor, the dispersed geographic arrangement of the corridor, and the gargantuan diluting capacity of the Mississippi River all
contributed to decisions about plant locations, waste management, and, ultimately, to the
creation of a sacrifice zone. Over time, however, the number and size of petrochemical
plants and the increasingly hazardous discharges into the river forced a reconsideration of
the prevailing dogma of simply isolating dangerous facilities. Likewise, incremental
adjustments to pollution regulation proved inadequate as industrial growth and waste
releases greatly outpaced the capacity of on-site controls. Industry neglected to live up to
its proclaimed safety and pollution-control capabilities. Consequently, headline-grabbing
events became all too frequent, impossible to ignore, and drove public opinion and policy
toward tighter regulation.
This pattern had parallels in the Deepwater Horizon event. Offshore extraction operations had also grown slowly and prompted safety and environmental concerns, particularly after serious incidents. Officials at BP, the company drilling the well, claimed the
company had cultivated a “culture of safety,” but government reports indicate that the
company only inconsistently adhered to its own standards. Further, postcalamity statements by BP officials suggest that the company viewed the Gulf of Mexico as a limitless
environmental sink—or at least too big to harm. As with riverfront refineries, practices at
offshore sites suggest that application and enforcement of environmental safety controls
was uneven and that preparedness for a massive release lapsed between major events.2
Creating a Landscape of Risk and Injustice
Discovery of rich crude oil deposits in south central Louisiana in 1901 propelled the state
into the ranks of petroleum producers. Rapid exploration and development of the
Jennings field near Lafayette and subsequent discovery of abundant reserves outside
1
Cultural ecologists originally used the term sacrifice zone in reference to impacts caused by traditional agriculture. See Douglas Johnson and Laurence Lewis, Land Degradation: Creation and Destruction (Cambridge, Mass.,
1995), 20. For a work that portrays Ascension Parish, in the petrochemical corridor, as a sacrifice zone, see Robert
D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (Boulder, 1990), 106. His work is critiqued
as ahistorical in Jerry T. Mitchell, Deborah S. K. Thomas, and Susan L. Cutter, “Dumping in Dixie Revisited: The
Evolution of Environmental Injustices in South Carolina,” Social Science Quarterly, 80 (June 1999), 229–43. For a
work that makes the case that the military created a host of dispersed degraded landscapes, see Seth Shulman, The
Threat at Home: Confronting the Toxic Legacy of the U.S. Military (Boston, 1992), 8. For an update on the Jefferson
Proving Ground in southern Indiana discussed by Seth Shulman, see David G. Havlick, “Disarming Nature:
Converting Military Lands to Wildlife Refuges,” Geographical Review, 101 (April 2011), 183–200.
2
For statements by BP officials suggesting that they viewed the Gulf of Mexico as a limitless environmental
sink, a container for waste disposal that may be the air, the land, or water, see National Commission on the BP
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore
Drilling (Washington, 2011), http://www.oilspillcommission.gov/final-report. See also quotes, especially those
from May 14 and May 18, 2010, from BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward, “Tony Hayward’s Greatest Hits, cnn
Money, http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/10/news/companies/tony_hayward_quotes.fortune/index.htm. See
also Joel A. Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (Akron, 1996).
Craig E. Colten, “Too Much of a Good Thing: Industrial Pollution in the Lower Mississippi River,” in Transforming
New Orleans and Its Environs: Centuries of Change, ed. Craig E. Colten (Pittsburgh, 2000), 141–58; National
Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, Deep Water, ix.
Oil and Water in Louisiana
93
Shreveport positioned Louisiana as a prominent player in the burgeoning industry. In
addition to an abundance of accessible raw materials, several other factors contributed to
the industrialization of the lower Mississippi River. The massive river enabled oceangoing ships to navigate two hundred miles upstream, provided ample water for industrial
processes, and offered a seemingly inexhaustible flushing system for industrial wastes.
A formidable federal levee system provided essential protection from spring floods, and
sizable tracts of agricultural lands were available for modest prices. Despite claims by
boosters that the lower river corridor was a natural site for development, the indirect
federal subsidy in the form of levees, along with state policies that were exceptionally
accommodating, made a good location even more desirable. In such a setting, three
refineries selected sites along the lower river and initiated the industrial transformation of
the riparian landscape between 1909 and 1929.3
Industrial trade literature at the time offered clear safety guidance for the selection of
factory sites. For industries working with explosive or poisonous materials, such as oil
refineries, the standard principle was to avoid building adjacent to populated areas or to
acquire open space as a safety buffer. Standard Oil basically followed this guidance when
it selected a site just beyond the urbanized area of Baton Rouge. Likewise, two refineries
near New Orleans—at Chalmette and Norco—were well beyond that city’s boundaries
and thus safely buffered from major populations. However, the two downriver operations
were adjacent to rural communities typical of the lower-river agricultural settlement pattern. The locations of the three sites enabled them to avoid urban nuisance regulations
and to adhere partially to industry expectations regarding safe locations.4
Following an economic lull during the Great Depression, Louisiana’s petrochemical
industry grew considerably between 1940 and 1970. A major infusion of federal funding
during World War II enlarged processing capacity along the lower Mississippi. Near
Baton Rouge, War Production Board investments enabled construction of new artificial
rubber and aviation fuel facilities, and existing refiners expanded to meet wartime
demands. During the 1940s the petrochemical complex remained clustered on the northern edge of Baton Rouge and in the two refining nodes on either side of New Orleans.
In the absence of local regulations to the contrary, worker housing encroached on the
buffer areas and eliminated much of the original safety zones around the three enlarging
complexes.5
3
Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, Louisiana Petrochemical Industry Assessment (Baton Rouge,
1983); Alan G. Pulsipher, Accounting for Socioeconomic Change from Offshore Oil and Gas: Cumulative Effects on
Louisiana’s Coastal Parishes, 1969–2000 (Baton Rouge, 2006). Raymond Edgar Shanafelt, “The Baton Rouge–New
Orleans Petrochemical Industrial Region: A Functional Study” (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 1977); Robert N. McMichael, “Plant Location Factors in the Petrochemical Industry
in Louisiana” (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 1961).
4
On the standard principle of avoiding building adjacent to populated areas or of acquiring open space as a
safety buffer, see A. D. Smith, “Refining,” in A Handbook of the Petroleum Industry, ed. David T. Day (2 vols., New
York, 1922), II, 1–3; R. L. Kraft, “Locating the Chemical Plant,” Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, 34 (no.
11, 1927), 678–79; H. L. Miner, G. H. Miller, and P. V. Tilden, “Safety and Fire Protection,” in Chemical Engineers’
Handbook, ed. John Howard Perry (New York, 1934), 2446; Frank C. Vilbrandt, Chemical Engineering Plant Design
(New York, 1934), 30; and Charles Cuno, “Economic Factors in Chemical Plant Location,” in Chemical Engineers’
Handbook, ed. Perry, 2408. Scott Allan Hemmerling, “Environmental Equity in Southeast Louisiana: Oil, People,
Policy, and the Geography of Industrial Hazards” (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University and Agricultural and
Mechanical College, 2007), 294–301; Flynns Digest of City Ordinances (New Orleans, 1896), 296–98, 361–65,
991–96, 998–1001; T. Sambola Jones, comp., The Charter, Ordinances, Rules, and Regulations of the City of Baton
Rouge (Baton Rouge, 1905), 74, 137–38.
5
Shanafelt, “Baton Rouge–New Orleans Petrochemical Industrial Region”; McMichael, “Plant Location
Factors in the Petrochemical Industry in Louisiana.”
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Following World War II, chemical and metallurgical facilities assiduously pushed into
more rural locations. The process of site selection during this expansion adhered in some
ways to the isolation principle; however, several facilities acquired property immediately
adjacent to rural hamlets whose populations were predominately African American.
Given prevailing racial attitudes, those communities were, in effect, invisible to the floodplain developers. Production capacity grew both within individual plants and through
new plants rising along the river. Statewide, the number of refineries in Louisiana increased
from twenty-five in 1947 to fifty-seven in 1977, and the number of chemical facilities
rose from 147 to 236 during the same period. Manufacturing activity within the chemical
corridor experienced a tenfold increase in twenty years. That enlargement of industry
severely reduced any buffers, and new industrial construction was not inhibited by zoning
or other regulations from building near populated areas.6
A by-product of the growth in production was a corresponding rise in industrial
accidents. Despite an extensive safe-practice literature and on-site safety programs, the
complete elimination of accidents was impossible. By the 1990s the Baton Rouge–New
Orleans industrial corridor stood out as one of the most prominent zones of chemical
plant explosions. In addition to the threat from a deadly chlorine leak when a barge sank
during Hurricane Betsy in 1965, major explosions at the Shell refinery at Norco (in 1979
and 1988) and at the Exxon (former Standard) refinery at Baton Rouge (in 1989) caused
fatalities and inflicted damage on neighboring communities.7
Shifting racial demographics during the last quarter of the twentieth century, particularly near the Esso/Exxon facility in Baton Rouge, saw the out-migration of the white
refinery workers and the in-migration of African Americans, who found few jobs at
the adjacent plant. In addition, petrochemical plants expanded into rural areas—while
moving away from large metropolitan population concentrations. Both the rural and
urban adjustments juxtaposed industrial giants and poor African American communities
and added a new environmental justice issue to the question of industrial plant siting. The
loss of safety buffers had become obvious and the risk was spread unevenly.8
6
On industrial expansion into rural areas, which were often inhabited predominately by African Americans, see
Steve Lerner, Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor (Cambridge, Mass.,
2005), 17–28; and Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial
Pollution (Berkeley, 2002), 237–55. Shanafelt, “Baton Rouge–New Orleans Petrochemical Industrial Region”;
McMichael, “Plant Location Factors in the Petrochemical Industry in Louisiana.” U.S. Department of Commerce,
Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures, Area Statistics, 1947 (Washington, 1948); U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures, Area Statistics, 1954 (Washington, 1955); U.S. Department
of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures, Area Statistics, 1958 (Washington, 1961); U.S.
Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures, Area Statistics, 1961 (Washington, 1963);
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures, Area Statistics, 1965 (Washington,
1967); U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Manufactures, Area Statistics, 1977
(Washington, 1979); U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Industrial Pollution of the Lower Mississippi River in
Louisiana (Dallas, 1972).
7
On the rise of industrial accidents, see National Safety Council, Industrial Explosion Hazards: Gases, Vapors,
and Flammable Liquids (Chicago, 1941); and National Safety Council, Chemical Pipe Lines and Tanks as Causes of
Accidents (Chicago, 1941). Susan L. Cutter and John P. Tiefenbacher, “Chemical Hazards in Urban America,”
Urban Geography, 12 (Oct. 1991), 417–30; “Cause of Shell Blasts Sought,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 23,
1979, pp. 1–2; “Explosion Hit Town like a Hurricane,” ibid., May 6, 1988, pp. 1, 3. “One Worker Killed and
Several Hurt in Blast at Louisiana Refinery,” New York Times, Dec. 25, 1989, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/
25/us/one-worker-killed-and-several-hurt-in-blast-at-louisiana-refinery.html. Louisiana Advisory Committee to the
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, The Battle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana: Government, Industry, and the
People (Baton Rouge, 1993), http://www.law.umaryland.edu/marshall/usccr/documents/cr12en8z.pdf.
8
Raymond J. Burby, “Baton Rouge: The Making (and Breaking) of a Petrochemical Paradise,” in Transforming New
Orleans and Its Environs, ed. Colten, 160–77. See also Bullard, Dumping in Dixie, 103–10.
Oil and Water in Louisiana
95
Public and corporate concern over toxics, heightened by the discovery of tons of toxic
chemicals buried in a residential neighborhood adjacent to Love Canal in upstate New
York in the late 1970s and the deadly release of toxic chemicals from a manufacturing
facility in Bhopal, India, in 1984, manifested itself in two distinct ways. Citizen environmental-justice activists began voicing their opposition to industry and its toxic discharges
and dubbed the lower Mississippi region “cancer alley.” Local citizens engaged with
national environmental groups and labor unions, expanding their base of support and
drawing in disenchanted employees who previously had sympathized with their employers. Local news media began offering a more critical perspective as well. The image of the
industry became tarnished. During the 1990s collaboration among local environmental
groups, an official in the attorney general’s office, and Tulane University law
students forced the Japanese chemical manufacturer Shintech to retreat from its plan
to build a facility near a riverfront community in St. James Parish. While Shintech
ultimately developed a more remote site, Louisiana’s environmental-justice movement
has raised awareness of the relationship between industry and public health that stems
from geographic proximity.9
Amid the environmental-justice outcry, industry revisited advice offered half a century
before, and several companies created buffer zones adjacent to plants by removing neighbors. Dow Chemical, Exxon, and Georgia-Pacific all purchased residences adjacent to
their operations and in some cases helped relocate families. Their actions removed neighbors from chronic exposure and also greatly reduced off-site risks in the event of a chemical
plant accident. Additionally, these buffers minimized corporate risk from damage suits.
While the companies were subject to criticism for destroying minority communities,
residents in one community immediately adjacent to the Norco plant fought for years to
secure a company buyout and considered Shell’s acquisition of their homes a hard-won
victory.10
Creating a Sacrifice Zone
Just as with plant-siting safety, companies and trade associations involved in the petrochemical industry were also concerned with pollution. Discussions in specialty periodicals and manuals focused on individual plants, making scant reference to the
compounding effects of multiple operations in an industrial complex. By the 1930s,
trade literature cautioned plant builders to be wary of local pollution regulations and an
9
On “cancer alley,” see Barbara Allen, Uneasy Alchemy: Citizens and Experts in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor
Disputes (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 19–49; and Timothy J. Minchin, Forging a Common Bond: Labor and Environmental Activism during the basf Lockout (Gainesville, 2003), 103–5. For background on Love Canal, see Craig E.
Colten and Peter N. Skinner, The Road to Love Canal: Managing Industrial Waste before epa (Austin, 1996), 151–54,
157–61. On the Bhopal incident, see Minchin, Forging a Common Bond, 58–73. Abigail Blodgett, “An Analysis of
Pollution and Community Advocacy in ‘Cancer Alley’: Setting an Example for the Environmental Justice Movement
in St. James Parish Louisiana,” Local Environment, 11 (Dec. 2006), 647–61; Revathi Hines, “African Americans’
Struggle for Environmental Justice and the Case of the Shintech Plant: Lessons Learned from a War Waged,” Journal
of Black Studies, 31 (July 2001), 777–89. See also Charles A. Flanagan, “Mapping the Other Truth in the Shintech
Case: Emancipatory Mapping for Environmental Justice in South Louisiana” (Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University
and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2005).
10
Barbara Allen, “Cradle of a Revolution? The Industrial Transformation of Louisiana’s Lower Mississippi
River,” Technology and Culture, 47 (Jan. 2006), 112–19; Lerner, Diamond; Dow Chemical Company, A Diamond
in the Sugar Bowl: A History of the Dow Chemical Company’s Louisiana Operations, 1956–2006 (Plaquemine, 2006),
54–55.
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June 2012
increasing tendency for localities to sue polluters. The American Petroleum Institute
(api), the industry’s leading trade association, sought to deter government oversight and
maintain industry self-regulation. During the 1930s, api members collaborated on a
series of waste-disposal manuals. These publications downplayed the threat to public
drinking-water supplies and advocated “good practices” that called for plants to install
adequate treatment equipment. This guidance placed the responsibility on the individual
refiners and suggested that existing treatment capabilities were sufficient to handle the
problem.11
The relatively small size of refineries before 1940 and the Mississippi River’s ample
dilution capacity protected manufacturers against litigation and thereby minimized
deterrents to corporate investment in the corridor. A pair of federal inquiries in the
1930s noted that refineries were releasing untreated waste into the river but concluded
that the practice posed no serious threat. Likewise, the Louisiana government expressed
no alarm over pollution, other than with the Norco facility just upstream from New
Orleans’s water intakes. State regulations imposed modest restrictions on industrial
discharges to protect commercial fisheries in the 1920s and 1930s. In the absence of
dramatic fish kills, pollution regulation and enforcement remained minimal at the
state level.12
Without enforcement of its weak pollution regulations, Louisiana was unable to keep
pace with emerging public disapproval of pollution even before the massive World War II
industrial expansion. In response to growing public pressure, state legislators created the
Stream Control Commission (scc) in 1940. It advocated cooperation as a way to retain
industries and protect their payrolls, and it relied in part on industrial expertise to set
pollution thresholds. Touting its early accomplishments, the scc claimed its policy
resulted in an “almost 100% correction of that [pollution] from oil refineries.”13 Thus
on the eve of the wartime industrial build up, the state admitted that refiners had
created pollution but claimed that the scc was an effective response and had pollution
under control.
Federal investment in plant expansion along the lower Mississippi in the 1940s not
only produced vital war matériels but also contributed to increasing discharges that regularly exceeded the river’s dilution capacity. During the war, effluent regularly tainted New
Orleans’s potable water supply, and the scc acknowledged that refineries were a concern.
After the war, with falling production, the state reassessed the refineries’ pollutiontreatment efforts and concluded that the abatement efforts were satisfactory. By the early
1950s the scc suggested that pollution was only noticeable during low-river stages and
that “little remains to complain about regarding the effluent coming from this [Baton
11
Vilbrandt, Chemical Engineering Plant Design, 30; Cuno, “Economic Factors in Chemical Plant Location,”
2408. American Petroleum Institute, A.P.I. Manual on Disposal of Refinery Wastes (New York, 1930).
12
National Resources Committee, Water Resources Committee, Drainage Basin Committees’ Reports for the
Lower Mississippi Basins (Washington, 1937); National Resources Committee, Special Advisory Committee on
Water Pollution, Water Pollution in the United States (Washington, 1939), 65–78.
13
On the formation of the Stream Control Commission, see “Act 367: An Act to Create a Stream Control
Commission,” in Acts Passed by the Legislature of the State of Louisiana, at the Regular Session, Begun and Held in
the City of Baton Rouge on the Thirteenth Day of May, 1940: Constitutional Amendments Adopted at an Election
Held November 8, 1938, and a Special Session of the Legislature Held January 20, 1940 (Baton Rouge, 1940),
1369–74; and Louisiana Department of Conservation, Fifteenth Biennial Report, 1940–41 (Baton Rouge, 1941),
139–41, esp. 136.
Oil and Water in Louisiana
97
Rouge Esso] plant.” Such positions accommodated industry’s continuing reliance on the
river as a waste disposal sink.14
Escalating pollution problems, however, exposed the inadequacies of the system and
prompted a series of water-quality investigations. Federal studies in the 1950s asserted
that pollution was a pressing problem, but the prevailing view among state officials was
that pollution was a limited, localized issue; their permitting and enforcement actions,
which did little to impede uncontrolled discharges to the river, reflected this perception.
The state’s lackluster response continued into the 1960s. Following an industrial spill
that contaminated public water supplies in 1960, the state created a warning system
that placed the burden on water-supply operators to close their intakes and imposed no
penalties or new requirements on industries responsible for spills.15
A major fish kill during the winter of 1963–1964 created a nationally significant event
that served as the tipping point for a policy shift. Endrin, an agricultural chemical used in
sugarcane fields in south Louisiana, was responsible for an estimated 5 million fish deaths
that winter. Louisiana officials were unable to pinpoint the source and requested assistance from the U.S. Public Health Service. The federal investigation pointed toward an
Endrin manufacturer far upriver in Memphis, Tennessee, not lower-river sugar planters or
grinding mills. Occurring shortly after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
(1962), this event captured public attention. Congress conducted hearings on the calamity,
and the Public Health Service convened a public conference on interstate pollution of the
lower Mississippi. This event transformed public and government opinions about the
scale of pollution and recast lower–Mississippi River pollution as a regional problem that
could harm people, not just fish.16
Industrial pollution came under even more intense scrutiny in 1974 when a national
exposé reported that the New Orleans water supply contained cancer-causing organic chemicals and that the city’s residents had a history of above-average cancer rates. The exposé sparked
a debate among Louisiana officials and garnered considerable national attention as it cast the
Mississippi River as a waterway sacrificed for industrial gain. While the degradation of the river
14
On water pollution during World War II, see Louisiana Department of Conservation, Sixteenth Biennial
Report, 1942–43 (Baton Rouge, 1944), 172–73, 189; and New Orleans Association for Commerce, A Statement of
Facts concerning Resources of the New Orleans Region for Chemical and Allied Industries (New Orleans, 1942), 12. On
reassessments after the war, see Louisiana Department of Conservation, Sixteenth Biennial Report, 165; and Louisiana
Department of Wild Life and Fisheries, Second Biennial Report (Baton Rouge, 1947), 348–49. Louisiana Department of Wild Life and Fisheries, Fourth Biennial Report (Baton Rouge, 1952), 139. Louisiana Department of Wild
Life and Fisheries, Third Biennial Report (Baton Rouge, 1950), 367–68.
15
For federal studies during the 1950s asserting that pollution was a pressing problem, see U.S. Federal Security
Agency, Public Health Service, Summary Report on Water Pollution: Southwest–Lower Mississippi Drainage Basins
(Washington, 1951), 132–34; U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, Division
of Water Supply and Pollution Control, 1957 Inventory: Municipal and Industrial Waste Facilities (9 vols., Washington, 1958), VII, 70–80; and M. L. Eddards, L. R. Kister, and G. Sarcia, Water Resources in the New Orleans Area,
Louisiana: U.S. Geological Survey Circular 374 (Washington, 1956), 18. The lone application to release industrial
wastes into the river not approved was merely placed on hold until the applicant, California Chemical, produced
additional information. See Louisiana Stream Control Commission, Proceedings of Meetings (Baton Rouge, May
15, 1958–Sept. 22, 1966) (Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, Baton Rouge). Louisiana Wild Life
and Fisheries Commission, Eighth Biennial Report, 1958–59 (New Orleans, 1960), 170–71, 184. Louisiana Stream
Control Commission, Proceedings of Meeting (Baton Rouge, April 5, 1960), 203–4. On the state warning system,
see Louisiana Wild Life and Fisheries Commission, Ninth Biennial Report, 1960–61 (New Orleans, 1962), 197–98.
16
See “Poisons Kill Fish in the Mississippi,” New York Times, March 22, 1964, p. 79. Additional articles on the
fish kill include “U.S. Scrutinizing Mississippi Fish,” ibid., March 24, 1964, p. 32; and “Pesticides Fatal to Gulf
Shrimp,” ibid., March 26, 1964, p. 26. See also U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Conference in
the Matter of Pollution of the Interstate Waters of the Lower Mississippi River: Proceedings (4 vols., New Orleans, 1964).
Colten, “Too Much of a Good Thing,” 141–59. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Cambridge, Mass., 1962).
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was not a discrete calamity like an oil spill, the report and a related study by the Environmental Defense Fund proved to be critical impetuses for the passage of the Safe Drinking Water
Act (1974), which expanded federal authority from raw river water to municipal drinkingwater supplies. The notion that home taps were delivering toxic chemicals implied that not
only was the river being sacrificed but so too were those who drank from it.17
As federal pollution laws increasingly restricted discharge of toxics into waterways
during the 1970s, diversion of industrial wastes to land disposal sites expanded concern
to the banks of the river. Well before the federal Superfund legislation in 1980, which
identified abandoned hazardous waste sites, industry experts cautioned manufacturers
about the lasting impacts of toxic materials discarded in the ground. The National Safety
Council’s 1948 Industrial Waste Disposal and Bibliography on Chemical Wastes safety guide
advised chemical plant operators to keep a plan of past dumping grounds that could
impact future construction activity. Analyses of the persistence of organic chemicals in the
soil added impetus to this fundamental guidance by the 1960s. Although the river continued to serve as the principal sink and land disposal remained less prominent, industry
increasingly looked landward for waste disposal (despite knowing the threats associated
with it) after federal laws restricted releases to waterways. This change generally shifted the
dumping to off-site locations and liabilities to private contractors. Beginning in 1980,
federal investigators inventoried a string of chemical waste–dumping grounds near the
riverfront towns of Baton Rouge, Dutchtown, Sorrento, and Darrow, and a rural site near
Bayou Sorrel. The inclusion of these sites on the Environmental Protection Agency’s
Superfund list alerted the public that environmental damage was reaching toward residential neighborhoods. This unwanted intrusion into communities heightened suspicion
about the public health threats posed by the petrochemical complex.18
Chemicals released into the atmosphere further amplified public concerns. As the
Environmental Protection Agency began compiling its Toxics Release Inventory statistics
on industrial releases in the late 1980s, Louisiana’s petrochemical corridor helped the state
earn the dubious distinction as one of the nation’s top-ranked sources of toxic releases.
This inventory highlighted the downwind threat posed by airborne pollutants. By the end
of the century, the sacrifice zone encompassed water, land, and air, and the lower river
landscape bore the indelible scars of petrochemical processing.19
17
Robert H. Harris and Edward M. Brecher, “Is the Water Safe to Drink?,” Consumer Reports, 39 (June 1974),
436–42. On the effects of this exposé, see T. A. DeRouen and J. E. Diem, “The New Orleans Drinking Water
Controversy: A Statistical Perspective,” American Journal of Public Health, 65 (Oct. 1975), 1060–62; and Jean L.
Marx, “Drinking Water: Another Source of Carcinogens?,” Science, 186 (Nov. 1974), 809–11. “No Detectable
Threshold for Chemical Carcinogen,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 4, 1974, p. 26; “Bottle Water Sales Flow,”
ibid., Nov. 9, 1974, p. 4.
18
On Superfund, see Robert T. Lee, “Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability
Act,” in Environmental Law Handbook, ed. Thomas T. P. Sullivan (Rockville, 1997), 430–80. National Safety Council,
Industrial Waste Disposal and Bibliography on Chemical Wastes (Chicago, 1948), 3. Otis J. Sproul and Devere W. Ryckman,
“Significant Physiological Characteristics of Organic Pollutants,” Journal, Water Pollution Control Federation, 35
(1963), 1136–45. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Petro-processors of Louisiana, Inc., East Baton Rouge Parish,
Louisiana,” updated Dec. 2011, http://www.epa.gov/region6/6sf/pdffiles/0600442.pdf; U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, “Dutchtown Treatment Plant (Ascension Parish), Louisiana,” updated Jan. 2012, http://www.epa.gov/
region6/6sf/pdffiles/0600633.pdf; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Cleve Reber, Ascension Parish, Louisiana,”
updated Dec. 2011, http://www.epa.gov/region6/6sf/pdffiles/0600512.pdf; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
“Bayou Sorrel Site (Iberville Parish), Louisiana,” updated Jan. 2012, http://www.epa.gov/region6/6sf/pdffiles/
0600573.pdf; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Old Inger Oil Refinery, Ascension Parish, Louisiana,”
updated Dec. 2011, http://www.epa.gov/region6/6sf/pdffiles/0600572.pdf.
19
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1998 Toxics Release Inventory: Louisiana (Dallas, 1998); U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2000 Toxics Release Inventory: Louisiana (Dallas, 2000).
Oil and Water in Louisiana
99
Oil and Water: A Mixture, Not a Solution
Long before the Deepwater Horizon incident, industrial authorities warned corporations
selecting sites for new plants to beware of potential safety and health risks. Industry
trade groups and experts cautioned about building too close to populations and maintained that manufacturers could adequately manage their wastes without intrusive
government intervention. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century industry failed
to live up to its self-proclaimed capacities in terms of selecting safe locations and controlling pollution. Accidents and environmental contamination increased in tandem with the
growth of the lower Mississippi River petrochemical corridor, and government authorities
tolerated the ensuing damages that rendered the river and the land along its banks a
sacrifice zone. It took dramatic events, played out on the national stage, to force adjustments to the lax corporate and public policies toward safety and pollution.
Offshore operational safety and environmental harm came under intense scrutiny
following the spectacular failure of the BP Macondo well (drilled from the Deepwater
Horizon platform) in April 2010, and the subsequent federal inquiry produced conclusions that reveal striking parallels between the century of petrochemical processing along
the lower Mississippi River and decades of oil extraction in the Gulf of Mexico. The
federal commission that investigated the calamity in the Gulf of Mexico concluded:
“The Deepwater Horizon disaster exhibits the costs of a culture of complacency.”20
From their beginnings, offshore oil exploration and extraction impacted the state’s
coastal wetlands—with companies treating the Gulf of Mexico and the coastal wetlands
as an environment too big to harm. As the industry gradually expanded into deeper
waters and continued to enjoy lax government oversight, it engaged in short-lived,
sporadic emergency-response preparations and became complacent about the chances
of a major incident. While oil producers responded to dramatic events, their lack of
emergency-response capabilities and procedures for environmental damage control created
a situation where one platform failure could become a massive calamity. Obviously, the
drama of the Deepwater Horizon has placed outer–continental shelf drilling safety in the
public eye, but will that event be sufficient to inspire effective federal policy adjustments?
20
National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, Deep Water, ix.