Millions Of Pounds Of Extra Pollution Were Released Before Hurricane Laura’s Landfall



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Oil refineries in Port Arthur, Texas, on Aug. 27. Hurricane Laura hit an area with dozens of major refineries and petrochemical facilities.

Eric Thayer/Getty Images




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Hurricane Laura caused a fire at a chemical plant owned by BioLab in Westlake, La. The plant manufactures chemicals for swimming pools.

Gerald Herbert/AP


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Gerald Herbert/AP

Hurricane Laura caused a fire at a chemical plant owned by BioLab in Westlake, La. The plant manufactures chemicals for swimming pools.

Gerald Herbert/AP

LDEQ spokesperson Gregory Langley says the agency did not shut down any air monitors, but some monitors stopped worked during the storm. «There are five monitors in Calcasieu Parish and three in northwest Louisiana that lost power as a result of the storm,» he said Friday morning. «We are in the process of inspecting those monitors and getting power restored as soon as possible so we can bring them back online.»

Meanwhile, the EPA says it also has a mobile air monitoring laboratory it can deploy to monitor air pollution. The laboratory has equipment that can «detect low levels of chemicals in the air,» Jennah Durant, a spokesperson for the EPA region that includes Texas and Louisiana, explained in an email to NPR.

But as of Friday morning, the mobile lab was not operating in the areas affected by Hurricane Laura. Durant said the lab will be deployed if the Federal Emergency Management Agency requests it. FEMA said on Thursday afternoon that it had not asked the EPA to monitor the air.

«For many people, this is reliving all the horrors and the trauma of past hurricanes in the Gulf,» Declet-Barreto says.

The extra air pollution is particularly worrisome this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The virus is spreading considerably in both Louisiana and Texas.

«Many people in the city of Port Arthur already suffer with preexisting conditions like hypertension, chronic asthma, bronchitis, COPD, liver and kidney disease,» says Kelley, many of which make it more likely that a person could suffer a severe case of COVID-19 if they are infected with the coronavirus. «So, in our particular area we are very concerned about these toxic fumes from the refineries and about COVID.»

Decades of racist housing, zoning and environmental policies have concentrated industrial facilities, and their pollution, next to homes, schools and parks that mostly serve people of color and poor people. White Americans and wealthy Americans enjoy cleaner air, cleaner water and better access to health care as a direct result.

«We have sacrifice zones across the Gulf Coast,» says Mustafa Ali, a longtime EPA official in the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and the current Vice President of Environmental Justice, Climate, and Community Revitalization at the National Wildlife Federation. «They are communities of color and lower wealth communities that are often pushed into our most dangerous locations through redlining, through restrictive covenants [and] through zoning practices.»

  • Hurricane Laura
  • air pollution



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