The chemical triangle has been a core sector for the German chemical industry since the 1930's. Huge industrial areas are still operative at Merseburg, Schkopau and Bitterfeld. These are often powered by coal power plants. Huge landfills with toxic waste are visible in the landscape.
2. What environmental threats (from worst case scenarios, pollution and climate change) are there in this setting?
Mainly before 1990, the industry has produced an enormous amount of toxic byproducts that are partly stored in some of Germany's largest landfill sites and partly just leaked into the soil and underground water bodies. In Bitterfeld, the degradation of soil and water bodies presents an immediate risk for citizens that has given rise to the term “Bitterfeld-syndrome”.
The underground water bodies below Schkopau (near Halle) contain high concentrations of mercury and aromatic hydrocarbons (highly toxic) that are known to have leaked to the nearby village of Korbetha and also have to be continuously managed. Several landfill sites were constructed with inefficient barriers and are leaking toxic substances.
Former mining shafts are flooded after water management has been suspended, ruptures in the soil can cause earthquakes (Teutschental September 11, 1996) and flow-out of toxic substances. In Halle, unknown quantities of pre-products for mustard gas remain underground at the site of the former Orgacid-Werke in Halle-Ammendorf and toxic by-products of gas production remain on the site of the fromer gasworks on the Pulverweiden-island. The chemical plants that are still active and the coal power plants produce air pollution that affects the nearby villages and the greater area. This pollution is not adequately monitored by the state which defers responsibility to the companies, but doesn’t supervise them. The health impact was evaluated by Greenpeace to cause several dozen deaths a year, but that claim was never examined by state agencies. The old salt-mining shafts (eg. Teutschenthal, also in the nearby village of Zielitz) are use as storage for current hazardous waste from world-wide sources. The safety of these operations is highly questionable. In Teutschenthal alone there has been an earthquake (1996/11/11), an underground explosion (2019/11/08) and a continous flow of water through an abandoned shaft that has created a new salty lake.
3. What intersecting factors -- social, cultural, political, technological, ecological -- contribute to environmental health vulnerability and injustice in this setting?
The Chemical triangle lies in East Germany, a region still economically disadvantaged through its history as part of the GDR and the events after its collapse. The GDR system was completely dismantled by the Federal Republic of Germany and its uncompetitive industry was sold to western companies for very low prices by the “Treuhand” or completely torn down. This approach to unification led to very high unemployment in the east and to the pressure to take any work you can get or migrate to the economically more successful regions. The workers that were able to continue working in the often hazardous jobs in the chemical plants considered themselves lucky. The privatization process of the industry excluded heavily polluted assets that still have to be managed by the state. The companies that became the legal successor of the GDR “Kombinate” were largely exempted from taking any responsibilities for the toxic legacy that remains till today. Although the federal state has received a lump sum of 1 billion euros to take care of the contaminated sites, this proved to be insufficient to clean up the remaining toxicity. In addition, it soon became clear that some remediation efforts will continue indefinitely, mainly to prevent flooding and further contamination. There is no clear plan on how these measures will be financed by the economically weak federal state. Still, there seems to be a certain pride among institutions and citizens in the Chemical Triangle in their profession. During the GDR, the slogan “Plaste und Elaste aus Buna” was a famous slogan for the chemical products from the Buna Werke at Schkopau, near Halle. The football Stadium in Halle recently adopted the InfraLeuna company as a sponsor and is now called “Leuna-Chemie-Stadion''. This pride in the importance of the local chemical industry might facilitate turning a blind eye on its disastrous effects on the environment by state agencies.
4. Who are stakeholders, what are their characteristics, and what are their perceptions of the problems?
While small citzen NGO's protest the conversion of former mining sites to toxic waste disposal sites, corporations and state agencies have formed an "Environmental alliance" to promote environmentally responsible behaviour by corporations. Goverment agencies are mainly concerned with measurements of allowed concentrations of chemicals in air and water. As long as these are not exceeded, they assure the citizens, there is not cause for alarm.
5. What have different stakeholder groups done (or not done) in response to the problems in this case?
Remediation efforts of contaminated sites are in progress, but due to the extent of the contamination are often only containment processes rather than clean-ups. Private companies continue to store toxic waste in former mining shafts.
State of Saxony-Anhalt has exempted buyers of chemical sites from responsibility for the remediation of contaminated sites and has transferred that responsibility to state agencies, coordinated by the LAF, Landesamt für Altlastenfreistellung (State Office for Contaminated Sites exemption).
There seems to be a lack of supervision and regulation of private companies by the state and this is publicly critized by local experts.
The Federal Republic of Germany and EU don’t provide sufficient funds for large scale clean-up projects
6. How have environmental problems in this setting been reported on by media, environmental groups, companies and government agencies?
There has been constant coverage on problems of toxicity by local media, yet relatively little interest by larger, country-wide media. Coverage tends to focus on historically generated problems and implemented solutions rather than current pollution, but also covers some contemporary accidents and problems.
7. What local actions would reduce environmental vulnerability and injustice in this setting?
In some cases (mainly around Bitterfeld), the removal of larger areas of contaminated soil and water would held to stop the influx of toxic substances. The main reason why this is not executed on a large scale is the enourmous cost of such an operation. Not funds currently exists for such an enterprise. Also, there is currently no safe storage solution for such an amount of contaminated soil and water.
The removal of dams and other infrastructure in the waterways to re-enable the water bodies to flow in their natural ways would help eco-systems to better cope with the pollution.
Government supervision of corporations and their handling of toxic waste could improve further contamintion. Yet, because of a trend in germany politics to trust corporations to take responsible actions, supervision is currently very inconsistent.
8. What extra-local actions (at state, national or international levels) would reduce environmental vulnerability and injustice in this setting and similar settings?
The chemical industry would need to more tightly controlled by a stronger legal framework in Germany.
The parliament should adopt laws that legally bind companies to fund remediation efforts in the area they operate in and of the natural resources they profit from.
Additionally, the local state agencies should take a lot more measurements and closely supervise if corporations operate within this legal framework.
NGOs like Transperency International partly fill this niche and call for more transparency of government-corporate interactions (lobbyism).
9. What kinds of data and research would be useful in efforts to characterize and address environmental threats in this setting and similar settings?
In respect to toxic legacies and current pollution, Independent measurements of air and water quality are needed, especially of contaminated landfill sites.
A better understanding of the strategies local and federal NGOs use to hold the state and private companies accountable and how effective these strategies have been might help them to efficiently use their resources.
Better knowledge how corporations influence politicians could help to expose their strategies and to increase the likelyhood that stronger legislation to protect citizens and natural resources might be implemented.
10.What intersecting injustices -- data, economic, epistemic, gender, health, infrastructure, intergenerational, media, procedural, racial, reproductive -- contribute to environmental injustice in this setting?
Germany is a world leader in wealth inequality. In few other countries do the rich posess such a large part of the total wealth. By privatizing the profitable parts of Saxony-Anhalt's chemical industry while the public has to pay for remediation efforts and clean-up operations, the German federal as well as local government are deepening the gap between the rich and the poor. The intransparency of lobbyism in Germany enables powerful, yet often invisble influcence of corporations on government officials.
This is especially pronounced in East Germany, a region with a history of disadvantages which is not well represented in the federal government and thus becomes a giant trash can for toxic waste disposal from international companies.
1. What is the setting of this case? What are its assets?
Calhoun County is a rural yet highly industrialized county on the Gulf Coast of Texas, 150 miles south of Houston, 240 miles north of the Mexican border. It is the ancestral lands of the Karankawa, Esto’k Gna (Carrizo/Comecrudo), and Coahuiltecan (Native Land 2021)....
Today, somewhat paradoxically, Calhoun County largely leans far right politically, with over 66% voting for President Donald Trump in 2016 (DataUSA 2021). Conservative churches are leading voices in local politics.
Diane Wilson is also an important voice: a mother of five and fourth-generation shrimp boat captain that became an environmental activist following the publication of toxic release inventory data in 1989 (Fortun 2009).
Commercial fishing once sustained many residents of Calhoun County. Today, few people make a living fishing though there are high hopes of revival. In 2017, environmental activists for Calhoun County -- organized as the Calhoun County Waterkeppers-- settled a landmark citizens lawsuit against Formosa, winning $50 million USD to support environmental monitoring, research and education programs, and to rebuild the local fishing community. Plaintiffs brought literally buckets of evidence forward, supporting allegations of rampant and illegal discharge of plastic pellets and other pollutants into Lavaca Bay and nearby waterways from a Formosa plant in Point Comfort, directly on Lavaca Bay. The judge described Formosa as a “serial offender.”
The case was led by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, which describes the outcome as the largest settlement of a Clean Water Act suit filed by private individuals. The success is already shadowed, however, by plans to build a new port facility to support the export of shale gas from Calhoun County. The port project works against decarbonization and will exacerbate climate change. It also will involve deep dredging of Lavaca Bay, roiling mercury-laced sediment in one of the nation’s largest and most toxic Superfund sites, created by the operations of a now-closed Alcoa aluminum refinery, which released estimated 1.2 million pounds of mercury into the Bay in the late 1960s and 1970s. This is a combo disaster at its worst, when earlier successes in environmental protection are undermined by failed environmental protection today.
Calhoun County today is hazardous in multiple, intersecting ways. There are 12 facilities designated by the US EPA as RMP facilities because of the potential for off-site releases of toxic chemicals (Right-To-Know Network 2018).
Calhoun County is also climate vulnerable, atmospheric and economic. As the Gulf of Mexico heats, hurricanes are growing more intense, Calhoun County is also poised to become a new export hub from
Amidst this tangle of hazards, Formosa still dominates the landscape.
3. What intersecting factors -- social, cultural, political, technological, ecological -- contribute to environmental health vulnerability and injustice in this setting?
Many factors work against environmental protection and justice in Calhoun County. Formal education levels are low, as is access to health care. Calhoun County has a notably low score for “youth opportunity”.
5. What have different stakeholder groups done (or not done) in response to the problems in this case?
Diane is a fourth generation shrimper and mother of five In 1989, Diane was helping manage one of Calhoun County’s fish houses, where shrimpers brought in their catch. One of the shrimpers - with cancer boils covering his arms -- brought her a newspaper with news that Calhoun county had the worst toal letal topic missions in the United States -- in tonnage of mercury leaked into Diane's bays. The information was newly available through the US Toxic Release Inventory, a database mandated by the Community Right to Know Act, passed in the aftermath of the catastrophic 1984 chemical plant disaster in Bhopal India, which killed thousands immediately and exported nearly half a million people to toxic gas. News that her community was threatened maddening and motivated Diane, launching her incredible career as an environmental activist. Diane has won many awards, books have been written about her, and she has written three fabulous books herself. I recommend them all, and urge you to think about what provokes, supports and sustains the emergence of new environmental activists, particularly those who think of themselves as “nobody in particular,” the title of a hilarious, detail rich graphic story about Dain’s early activism. You can read the book in our archive, noting how our capacity to archive -- in databases like the Toxic Release Inventory, or social science archives like ours -- provide critical support for environmental protection. Environmental politics, in so many ways, is also data politics.
8. What extra-local actions (at state, national or international levels) would reduce environmental vulnerability and injustice in this setting and similar settings?
“Data divergence” describes different ways of characterizing a problem… Quiz/exam question:
In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, petrochemical company representative say that there is no connection between their operations and high rates of COVID-19 in the region. Scientists and activists say that there is a connection. This is an example of
This visual is from a Harvard-led (Wu et al. 2020), investigating the relationship between exposure to PM. 2.5 and COVID-19 mortality in the US. After the onset of the pandemic in spring, St. John Parish, Louisiana saw one of the COVID-19 highest death rates in the country (Kasakove 2020); in August, the Louisiana Department of Health reported 1,1442 cases and 92 deaths.
Kimberly Terrell, Outreach Director at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, further analyzed the data on request of the environmental justice group Concerned Citizens of St. John. Terrell particularly looked into the significance of underlying conditions. In her final report, Terrell notes low diabetes and high obesity rates. However, she emphasizes that the number of COVID-19 deaths in St. John is much higher than in parishes with similar obesity rates (Terrell 2020).
The visual was altered by Terell, adding geographic information (location of the Parish) and adjusted transparency to identify air pollution "hotspots" for fenceline communities along the river.
Witnesses were Mustafa Santiago Ali (Environmental Justice, Climate, and Community Revitalization, National Advocacy Center at the National Wildlife Federation), Jacqueline Patterson (Environmental and Climate Justice Program, NAACP), and Shay Hawkins (Opportunity Funds Association).
The Opportunity Index was developed in 2011 by non-profit Child Trends the Forum for Youth Investment to index communities on basis of their educational, economic, health, and other community-related indicators. The grade of C- hides layers of historical disadvantage in the region.
This visual originates from a Harvard-led (Wu et al. 2020), investigating the relationship between exposure to PM. 2.5 and COVID-19 mortality in the US. After the onset of the pandemic in spring, St. John Parish, Louisiana saw one of the COVID-19 highest death rates in the country (Kasakove 2020); in August, the Louisiana Department of Health reported 1,1442 cases and 92 deaths.
Kimberly Terrell, Outreach Director at the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, further analyzed the data on request of the environmental justice group Concerned Citizens of St. John. Terrell particularly looked into the significance of underlying conditions. In her final report, Terrell notes low diabetes and high obesity rates. However, she emphasizes that the number of COVID-19 deaths in St. John is much higher than in parishes with similar obesity rates (Terrell 2020).
From a distance, you see a white mound rising over green fields. 960 acres and 960m tonnes of radioactive phosphogypsum, moving 0.7 inches per day. Owned by the fertilizer-producing Mosaic Company, the stack is located in St James Parish. Residents through their activist organization Rise St James have been alerting Louisiana's Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) for years about Mosaic. The Guardian reports that if the stack falls, those tonnes of waste would seep into nearby communities and remain there for millennia.
Meanwhile, company spokespersons deny claims that the stack is moving. Mosaic even proposed vaporizing gypsum and releasing it into the air.
Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist, has been helping and organizing vulnerable communities in the Mississippi Delta by documenting and archiving the health effects of toxics for decades.
5. What have different stakeholder groups done (or not done) in response to the problems in this case?
Remediation efforts of contaminated sites are in progress, but due to the extent of the contamination are often only containment processes rather than clean-ups.
Private companies continue to store toxic waste in former mining shafts.
State of Saxony-Anhalt has exempted buyers of chemical sites from responsibility for the remediation of contaminated sites and has transferred that responsibility to state agencies, coordinated by the LAF, Landesamt für Altlastenfreistellung (State Office for Contaminated Sites exemption).
There seems to be a lack of supervision and regulation of private companies by the state and this is publicly critized by local experts.
The Federal Republic of Germany and EU don’t provide sufficient funds for large scale clean-up projects