This snapshot introduces the setting of Calhoun County in Texas, where toxic pollution from industries and climate change have combined to produce environmental injustice.
Lavaca Bay in Calhoun County, Texas, is one of the largest and most toxic Superfund sites in the United States. In the late 1960s and 1970s, a now-closed aluminum refinery released an estimated 1.2 million pounds of mercury into the Bay. County town Seadrift is also home to a Union Carbide plant producing ethylene oxide, a building block for plastics and a disinfectant. The plant produces cancer risks 160 times what the US EPA deems acceptable risk.
In 1989, Taiwan-based petrochemical company Formosa Plastics Corporation “slid in” Calhoun County, to cash in on cheap U.S. shale gas, a result of the fracking boom since the mid-2000s. An industrial worker, Dale Jurasek, noticed that Formosa was releasing massive amounts of plastic pellets into its wastewater. This was being discharged directly into Lavaca Bay. Plastic pellets are microplastics that aggregate other pollutants. Research has shown that levels of persistent organic pollutants, for example, can be more than a hundred times higher in plastic pellets than in surrounding seawater.
Port Lavaca has long supported the fishing industry in Calhoun County, especially shrimping, the most important fishing industry in Texas. Persistent toxic pollution in the Bay fueled by the fracking boom has lowered the bay’s productivity. Today, most of the local fish houses are gone, replaced by big businesses.
These questions can be used as prompts during teaching and sketching.
This blog post was written by EcoGovLab membr Prerna Srigyan, detailing an approach to environmental justice curriculum design that turns environmental problems into research questions and students to co-teachers. Read more