Public Story
Inside Climate News: A Vast Refinery Site in Philadelphia Is Being Redeveloped and Called ‘The Bellwether District.’ But for Black Residents Nearby, Justice Awaits
Debbie Robinson, 58, who has lived near the refinery for over 20 years, has helped organize community efforts to further clean up the site. Robinson herself now takes a regimen of medication for lung disease, kidney disease, diabetes and asthma. “I was fine,” Robinson said. “And then all of a sudden I’m on an oxygen machine and I don’t smoke.”
“The closure of the 1,300-acre refinery here—once the largest on the East Coast—had been cheered as a major victory for those working at the intersection of equity, social justice and environmentalism. Yet in the three years since the refinery closed, the kind of sustained change sought by residents and environmental activists has proved elusive.”
“…residents—who, for nearly eight generations, have dealt with adverse health conditions—are worried about the lingering effects of the cleanup operations at the former refinery, which first opened five years after the last enslaved people were liberated by the Emancipation Proclamation.”
“Black Americans are 75 percent more likely than other Americans to live in fenceline neighborhoods like Grays Ferry and Point Breeze adjacent to sites rife with pollution and toxic chemicals, according to a 2017 report from the NAACP and the Clean Air Task Force. Black people have also been subject to higher levels of pollution than whites, no matter their income, the EPA reported in 2018. “
Written by Victoria St. Martin
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