Energy Company Plotted Gas Plant in Small Pennsylvania Town — But No One Told Residents
Lawmakers helped with a plan to put the natural gas export facility in already-polluted Chester, Pennsylvania.
Read the full story on The Intercept.
Chester, PA has become the target location for many industrial polluting facilities: a trash incinerator, a sewage treatment plant, and an oil refinery among other polluters. There is now a proposal for a new $6.4 billion liquefied natural gas, or LNG, facility to come to Chester.
I was honored to meet a few courageous members of the community in Chester who shared their experience living near these health hazards.
Margaret Brown
Born and raised in Chester, Margaret Brown is a mother of three and actively invested in supporting her community. Although her health and that of her family has taken a toll because of exposure to the pollution, Margaret always seems to have a smile on her face.
She’s had bronchitis since elementary school and often deals with nose bleeds, while all three of her children have asthma. Now living around the corner from the home she grew up in, Margaret frequently wipes down the surfaces in her home because of the dusty air in Chester. On her block, 11 out of 17 homes had residents who died of cancer—primarily lung cancer.
Margaret is now involved with CRCQL, a grassroots community-led organization leading the environmental justice movement for clean air in Chester.
Margaret Brown looks through old family photos in her home in Chester, Pa.
Rail cars carry materials to the Trainer Refinery between the Covanta incineration facility and the block of local activist Zulene Mayfield’s abandoned house.
Standing in front of the Covanta incineration facility, Margaret Brown says she wears a mask whenever she goes outdoors.
Margaret Brown organizes curtains in her home in Chester, Pa, while her dog sits in the kitchen.
Margaret Brown frequently wipes down the surfaces of her home because of the dusty air in Chester.
Margaret Brown said that 11 out of 17 homes on her block, as well as her mother, had residents who died of cancer, primarily lung cancer.
Darlynn Johnson
Darlynn Johnson has lived in Chester for 40 years. Her three eldest boys, aged 16, 14, and 13, all have asthma and regarding her one-year-old son Darriel, she says, “I’m pretty much sure he’s going to have asthma.” Her older sons have used various asthma meds as well as nasal spray, nebulizers, and inhalers. Darlynn herself has developed bronchitis over her years in Chester. She says her community fought to have the Covanta Incinerator stop driving up and down their street with trash and to bring it through other ways, but the smell and the health effects have not changed. She tells people to wear a mask whenever they go outside and that she can even notice a different smell from the various types of trash being burned.
Founded before Philadelphia, Chester, Pa., is a historic town that was settled in 1644.
Because Darlynn Johnson’s three older children have asthma, she says of her 1-year-old son Darriel, “I’m pretty much sure he’s going to have asthma.”
Darlynn Johnson and her son Darriel
Darlynn Johnson and her son Darriel
Darlynn Johnson
1.7 miles from the Covanta incineration facility, the Trainer Refinery contributes to the air quality concerns of the surrounding towns all within a few mile stretch along the Delaware River.
Quotes from The Intercept
“The proposed facility could have terrifying consequences for a city already burdened with intense health and economic disparities brought on in part by other energy facilities like the Covanta incinerator, Mayfield said. ‘This thing is so scary to me,’ she said of the LNG proposal. ‘Out of all the things we’ve ever fought outside of the incinerator, the safety issue for this thing is dangerous to me.’ ”
“ ‘Many of these projects are sited in and have disproportionate impacts on environmental justice communities and communities that already face disproportionate burdens with industry,’ Morgan Johnson, staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Intercept. ‘It’s certainly problematic, given the administration’s expressed goals on climate and environmental justice, when these projects have impacts that are so significant on those fronts.’ ”
“ Democratic state Rep. Carol Kazeem, who represents Chester but is not on the task force, testified against the plan at the May hearing…
‘My community, where I still reside along with my children and family, has been promised economic salvation each time an industrial plant is proposed,’ Kazeem said, mentioning Chester’s incinerator and its old paper plant. ‘It has happened a dozen subsequent times.’
What Chester did get, Kazeem said, was a 27 percent childhood asthma rate, a 19.3 percent infant mortality rate, an increase in health risks and illness among seniors, and loss of jobs and corporate investment. ‘What we didn’t get was the promise of permanent jobs, and also financial emancipation,’ she said.”
Read the full story on The Intercept.
The Covanta incineration facility
A mother of five walks with her children near the Covanta incineration facility in Chester, Pa., on June 28, 2023. All of her children have asthma, but their conditions worsened since moving from one area of Chester to this block a few years ago.
A mother of five who lives near the Covanta incineration facility in Chester, Pa.
Zulene Mayfield speaks at an action highlighting the dirty investments in polluting facilities in Chester, Pa., on June 10, 2023.
An action outside of the Covanta incineration facility hosted by Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living and Earth Quaker Action Team on June 10, 2023, in Chester, Pa.
An action outside of the Covanta incineration facility on June 10, 2023 in Chester, Pa.