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Warming oceans may make ‘Nemo’ harder to find.
Heat bleaches sea anemones, too, causing the iconic clownfish to stop laying eggs. Here’s how.
Like coral reefs, sea anemones—with their flashy, tentacle-like polyps that waggle and wave in vibrant reds, greens, pinks, and yellows—provide homes and hiding spots for dozens of fish species, most memorably the orange clownfish made famous in Finding Nemo. Also like coral, rising water temperatures associated with climate change can severely weaken these anemones, causing them to expel the tiny symbionts that keep them alive and lend them color, a process known as bleaching.
That, it turns out, is just where trouble starts.
When anemones bleach, Nemo and pals get stressed out and simply stop laying eggs, according to new research published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. And scientists suspect that pattern may hold for untold numbers of other fish nurtured by either corals or anemones.
In other words, the mere stress associated with bleaching may be enough by itself to drive down many fish populations.
And, of course, bleaching no longer happens by itself.
Scientists also working with baby clownfish already have shown that shifts in ocean chemistry as the seas absorb excess carbon-dioxide—a process known as ocean acidification—can be unusually deadly. It scrambles juvenile fishes' brains, hampering their ability to see, hear, and smell. All that causes confusion, often leading them to swim toward—rather than away from—predators. The end result: they die far more often.
While few if any longterm studies have yet looked at just how bleaching and acidification may work in concert, scientists say they certainly aren't likely to somehow cancel each other out.
"Both bleaching and acidification are really stressful events separately," says Danielle Dixson, with the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean and Environment, who spent years researching clownfish and acidification, but wasn't part of the new bleaching study. "I can't imagine that when they both happen it's going to somehow be any less stressful." (Learn how breeding aquarium fish can help reefs.)
THE CRITICAL ROLE OF HORMONES
The most recent research began when an ocean heat wave washed across French Polynesia in 2015 and 2016. A team of scientists tracked 30 different species of anemones in a lagoon off the island of Moorea. That warmth didn't just cripple corals. For more than four months, it attacked and bleached roughly half of those sea anemones. So scientists sampled the fish living among these overheated anemones and compared them with fish living in healthy ones nearby.
The release of hormones is known to affect how everything from sea birds to marine iguanas weather the rapid upheaval associated with climate change. That's true for fish, too.
The team found that the creatures associated with bleached anemones were chronically stressed, showing high levels of cortisol in their blood, says study co-author Suzanne Mills, with the Center for Insular Research and Observatory of the Environment in French Polynesia. Reproductive hormones dropped in both males and females. Fish pairs from bleached anemones spawned less and ultimately produced far fewer viable young.
That could have longterm implications that could ripple through entire marine systems.
"The cascading effects of bleaching at the community and ecosystem levels will, and may have already, played an important role in population impacts," Mills says.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Mills and her co-authors figured out that of 464 coastal fish species in French Polynesia, 56—about 12 percent—depend on species susceptible to bleaching for food or shelter from predators.
"If these species suffer even a fraction of the impact found for anemone fish, then a short-lived bleaching event could decrease the reproductive output of at least 12 percent of species," the study authors wrote. Ecosystem-wide impacts "may be considerable."
Dixson says Mills' findings are "really, really solid." And while they may not be terribly surprising to marine scientists, it should be an eye-opener for the public.
And, of course, that's only one part of the equation.
"Unfortunately, we're never going to have a world where the oceans are acidifying but not warming," Dixson says. "And all of the data suggests that won't be good."
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Could techno-fixes and gene therapies really save the world’s coral?
A team of scientists and reef managers say it's time to consider 'riskier' and unconventional ways to save the world's coral habitats.
As the metaphorical canary in the global warming coalmine goes, the planet’s coral reefs are hard to beat.
Swathes of corals in all tropical basins have been hit by the longest mass bleaching event yet recorded that kicked off in 2014 and ended, at least officially, in June.
Fossil fuel burning is firmly linked to rising ocean temperatures that push the corals into a stress reaction – they expel the special algae that give them their colour and most of their nutrients. It’s not certain death, but it can take five to 10 years for even the fastest growing coral species to fully recover.
On Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one research group found the abnormally hot conditions that caused corals to bleach in 2016 were 175 times more likely under today’s climate than one that hadn’t been loaded with extra carbon dioxide.
In 2016 about 30% of all corals on the reef died. In 2017 James Cook University’s Prof Terry Hughes estimates another 19% died.
And all this as global warming reaches just 1C. What happens to coral reefs at 1.5C of warming – the target set by the United Nations Paris climate agreement? Or higher?
It’s under this stark reality that a group of 18 mainly Australian scientists and reef managers, including those in government agencies, have waded in with a controversial proposal in an article in the science journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Existing conservation approaches, such as improving water quality around reefs and imposing restrictions or bans on fishing, are not working, the article says.
Instead, the scientists argue: “New and potentially riskier interventions must be implemented alongside conventional management efforts and strong action to curb global warming.”
Those interventions include “assisted evolution” – a suite of techniques that have been commonly used in commercial settings (think of selective breeding in plants and livestock as one example) but are now being considered as a way to develop coral species that have better tolerance of the heat extremes that reefs are increasingly facing.
Another idea is known as “assisted gene flow” – and involves essentially moving coral larvae or corals that can cope with higher temperatures into areas where current coral species are dying.
Much further down the track, the authors also suggest developments in synthetic biology where beneficial genes are either created or selected from the same species.
Across all these methods, the authors write there are multiple issues, some ethical and some practical, that need to be much better understood. But the time to start is now.
For example, physically moving coral species could see dangerous pathogens hitching a ride. Or, once in place, transplanted coral could simply die because of a lack of adaptation to local conditions.
How do you select which species to “save” and which ones to discard? With those decisions, also come knock-on effects of the multiple marine species that rely on those coral habitats.
How would the public react to an “artificial reef” or the inevitable claims that scientists are playing God?
It could all get very messy and very costly.
Several leading scientists I’ve spoken to say a key danger in advocating technological fixes is that it could be an excuse to ignore what everyone agrees is the main game – cutting greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possibly.
The lead author of the new article is Dr Ken Anthony, a principal research scientist at the Australian government’s Australian Institute of Marine Science.
Anthony accepted that some in the science community could see the pursuit of unconventional methods as a tacit admission of defeat on the emissions front.
“But we need a philosophy where we don’t just give up,” he told me. “We do need two balls in play. We need to fix climate change and the more we can mitigate carbon, the better the chances that these things will work. It is not an either, or, situation.
“But we agree it’s controversial to talk about this … We have to start looking at the reef in an objective way. How can we protect habitats that protect species?”
James Cook University’s Prof Terry Hughes, a director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and also the convenor of the national coral bleaching taskforce, is deeply skeptical about the viability of many of the proposed techniques.
In particular, whether corals are developed in laboratories or are physically transferred from one location to another, the physical placement of corals on reef structures is “extremely expensive”.
He said: “I actually see this problem we are now facing – with back-to-back bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef killing about half the corals – that this is more a governance problem. What’s broken is not so much the corals – they don’t need fixing – but the legal frameworks, the politics and the institutions.
“We need to find solutions, but I don’t think growing corals is part of that. I think it’s about changing people’s attitudes and behaviours and getting carbon dioxide emissions down by transitioning away from fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Without that, nothing else really works.”
On this point, AIMS’s Anthony is in agreement. “The better outcome we get in terms of carbon mitigation, the better chance we stand with conventional and these new interventions,” he says. “I can’t imagine having success where you don’t have both. As I said, you have to have two balls in play and if you drop either of them, then it could be game over.”
Dr Mark Eakin, coordinator of Coral Reef Watch at the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, thought it was “responsible and necessary” to have open discussions about alternative strategies.
“Corals and coral reefs are now at a critical juncture,” he told me by email. “Conventional conservation measures alone are no longer enough. We need to be looking at all of the tools in our toolboxes.”
But critically, Eakin added: “The biggest danger of moving in this direction is the potential that some will see this as being a way to engineer our way out of the problem — using it as an excuse to not act on the rising CO2 that is the ultimate cause of the problem.”
Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a leading marine biologist and director of the University of Queensland’s global change institute, is a pioneer in coral bleaching research.
He told me there was a “movement sweeping the coral research community” in response to the massive and unprecedented bleaching at reefs around the world.
“The pace of environmental change is outstripping the natural ability of corals to keep up, and people are now operating under the terms that everything should be on the table. That’s reasonable.”
But he said each time the media reported on new technological fixes, there was a ripple effect among politicians looking for a way out.
“A solution might look good on paper and yes, you can grow heat-resistant corals in a lab, but nobody wants to talk about the economics. Once you scale these things up, they can become very expensive.”
One study looking at marine restoration projects found coral reefs were the most expensive to restore, with costs as high as $1.8m per hectare (the entire Great Barrier Reef covers about 35m hectares).
Hoegh-Guldberg offered up a “back of the envelope” calculation on costs.
The Great Barrier Reef is 40,000 sq km. If you were to grow a coral in a lab and transplant it every five metres at $5 each time, then this gives a cost of about $40bn, “and that’s just for one single species,” he says. Scale this up globally, and he says you easily get to costs in the trillions of dollars.
“We are in a desperate situation and we need to try all sorts of things because you don’t know what might work,” he says.
“But on the other hand, you can get distracted from the main game. The only economic way to deal with this issue is to reduce emissions and take up renewable energies at a furious rate,” he says.
“Clearly we have to think outside the box, but let’s not pretend the core issue is not reducing emissions. For coral reefs, it’s really the Paris agreement and 1.5C … or bust.”
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Far away from any witnesses, my small town is being poisoned by fracking waste.
In a tiny south-eastern Ohio town in the Appalachian foothills, the Hazel Ginsburg Well is holding waste from out-of-state fracking operations - a sludge of toxic chemicals and undrinkable water.
Some days, the air would smell acrid, sharp like bleach, and I would hurry from the car into the house. Other days, the wind seemed normal, unremarkable. I didn’t know why.
My south-eastern Ohio town in the Appalachian foothills is a small, rural place where the demolition derby at the county fair is a hot ticket, Walmart is the biggest store, and people in the even smaller villages surrounding the county seat must often drive for 30 minutes to grocery shop. We hold the unfortunate distinction of being the poorest county in the state: an area that is both stunning – rolling hills, rocky cliffs, pastures and ravines – and inaccessible, far from industry.
It’s here that fracking companies dump their waste.
The Hazel Ginsburg well, an injection well built in the hillside decades ago, was meant to deposit saline and sand underground into porous rock. For the last few years, however, the well has held waste from out-of-state fracking operations done in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other states.
A forgotten byproduct of fracking is the waste. What goes into the ground must come out: a sludge of toxic chemicals and undrinkable water, which trucks ship across the country. Far from the drill pads, far from the cities that profit from fracking, far from any city at all, the leftover wastewater is injected into the ground – my county’s forgotten ground.
These hills once held coal. Some still do. Though many of the mines have shut down, coal’s legacy remains. Some streams in the woods run red from the acid leaking from abandoned shafts. My step-grandmother, the daughter of a Kentucky miner, used to tell me stories of washing her clothes in red water, downstream from mines. Coal companies exploited employees like her father, paying him in company scrip and keeping him poor and exploiting the land.
A boy walks across polluted stream which runs by weathered barn on near Berea, Kentucky. Photograph: Bruce Dale/National Geographic/Getty Images
That kind of abuse continues. It has just changed shape.
Like the coal mines, which were often named to conjure up riches, fantasy and benevolence – the Century mine, the Freedom mine, the Rosebud mine – the injection wells of Appalachia have misleading, lovely names: Flowers well, Red Bird Injection well, Hazel Ginsburg. But the Ginsburg has a long history of violations, so many that the Ohio department of natural resources (ODNR) ordered it shut.
It was not.
It’s a pit well, which looks like an old swimming pool, covered by a tarp. No sign indicates the presence of chemicals, just a “no trespassing” sign on a gate across a gravel driveway, near a wooden shack where a security guard sits. Allegedly, the guard will snap your picture if you stop or turn your car around. The well is located in a residential area, with houses – some with swing sets – just down the road.
In 2012, Madeline ffitch (whose last name is traditionally spelled lowercase and with the double ff, as per family custom) was arrested there. Her arrest was part of an action by a local anti-fracking group, Appalachia Resist. The then 31-year-old’s arms were locked into cement-filled plastic drums just before the gates, blocking the entrance.
The protesters had thought carefully about who should be arrested – a landowner, a young woman, they decided. Thought also went into what she should be wearing: jeans, a ball cap from a nearby business to make her look relatable, friendly, local.
Two years later, a local business owner, Christine Hughes, co-founder of the Village Bakery, was arrested protesting against another well site, as were seven others – including several of her employees, the co-owner of an organic farm, and the co-owner of a local mill and seed company.
My town called them “the Athens 8” and they were hailed as heroes. Ffitch and her young family continue to protest wells, despite the attempts of the fracking industry to, according to her, “paint anyone who is organizing resistance around this stuff as outsiders or extremists”. Her husband, Peter Gibbons-Ballew, was arrested in a peaceful protest in 2016, while ffitch watched, their baby strapped to her chest.
“It’s clear that impacted communities, mostly led by older women, indigenous people, and people of color, are fighting back,” she says.
Our local economy now depends on tourism and farming – specifically organic farming, which requires extra and costly certifications and inspections. These lush hills are good for hiding wells, as they once secreted moonshine stills. But the long, humid growing season makes this part of Appalachia an ideal place for many crops and wild specialties such as pawpaws (green, mango-shaped fruits with sweet, white pulp), black walnuts, mushrooms such as morels, ground cherries, garlic scapes and ramps.
By contaminating the environment with chemicals, fracking wastewater wells may threaten agriculture as well as the cabin rental businesses which thrive here. Canoe and kayak liveries, zip-lines, stables and campgrounds dot the woods.
People rent to hunters; the county is legendary for its record-setting bucks. But in 2016, ODNR began selling off land in the nearby Wayne national forest, the state’s only national forest. ODNR auctioned the land not just for injection wells, but for fracking itself: for drill pads, for bulldozed roads, for heavy truck traffic.
Work began immediately, with 40,000 acres – of the 240,101-acre woods – set to be razed and fracked. That ceased almost as swiftly as it began. In April 2017, an unprecedented 3.0-magnitude earthquake struck the forest, in an area with seven utica shale fracking sites within miles. Fracking in the Wayne national forest has been suspended, pending further review.
The trucks, though, keep coming.
Day and night, tanker trucks carrying “brine” pull up to the injection wells of my county and unload waste into the ground. Deliveries to injection wells happen 24 hours a day, a volume which is simply stunning: nearly 29m barrels injected into the ground of Ohio in 2015 alone, four million of those to my small county.
It can feel remote here to outsiders. A long hour and a half drive to the airport. Across state lines to West Virginia for a Target. I believe that’s also what drew fracking companies here – fewer people to make a fuss, and the kind of people that others sometimes don’t care about: the poor.
I believe it is significant that states chose to bury their fracking waste in the hills of Appalachian Ohio, in a county with a median household income of $19, 855; it’s hard to know what goes on in these hills. It’s hard to see what’s behind the trees.
And it’s hard to get answers as to what exactly the tankers contain, what they shoot into our ground. Chemical and Engineering News reported studies that analyzed spills of fracking wastewater – wastewater intended for wells like those in my town – and uncovered chemicals including radium and lead, which can linger in soil for decades.
Jason Trembly, associate professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment at Ohio University, describes two types of wastewater from fracking. The first, flowback water, “comes up during the first days after fracturing is completed … [with a ] very similar chemistry as the hydraulic fracturing fluid”. Flowback water can be filtered, he says, and “nearly 100% of this water is reused”.
But the second kind, called “produced water”, has “chemistry which is significantly different than flowback water … In particular, the produced water contains a host of components which are potentially problematic”. Components of this second kind of wastewater can include “suspended solids (TSS), bacteria, naturally occurring radioactive material (Norm), dissolved solids, and hydrocarbons”, and contain “materials such as barium and strontium”.
Trembly is leading a local team which has received national attention for work developing a new technology to “clean” fracking wastewater using ultraviolet light, water softening techniques, and a high pressure reactor.
It makes sense to me that a solution to the wells might come not from outside, but from people like Trembly, working and living in Appalachia.
Partially because of isolation, and partially because of culture norms of stubbornness and self-reliance, people are used to doing things for themselves here – and used to the community helping the community, with a compassionate loyalty whose fierceness shocked me the first time the mechanic fixed my brakes for free out of kindness, the first time a neighbor left deer meat at my door.
Now it’s commonplace for me to shovel the snow from my neighbors’ place, or to drop off extra firewood at the driveway of rural friends.
I keep hoping more will be done to protect this place and the people who still live here, who build houses and try to maintain homesteads and plant crops and raise children who play on forgotten ground.
“You want to forget it,” begins the Appalachian-born Ruth Stone’s poem Garbage – but the fracking waste in the injection wells of Appalachia can’t be forgotten forever. It’s a dark secret that will bubble up, one way or another, before long.
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Hurricane Irma power outages trigger widespread sewage overflows.
Hurricane Irma has left a stinky and unsanitary aftermath with widespread sewage overflows from powerless pump stations and spills from overwhelmed treatment plants.
Hurricane Irma has left a stinky and unsanitary aftermath with widespread sewage overflows from powerless pump stations and spills from overwhelmed treatment plants.
Authorities said their sewers are vulnerable to mishaps caused by storms; the region’s flat terrain requires thousands of pump stations to keep wastewater moving.
Each station and adjoining pipes can hold a significant amount of sewage, but if pumps are cut off from power, the sewage eventually overflows.
“For a lot of people, life is getting back to some semblance of normalcy and normalcy as we know it involves using water, taking showers, washing dishes,” Orange County utilities deputy director Todd Swingle said. “One of the messages we like to get out that while we are in this recovery mode, any assistance people can provide by minimizing water they use and send to the sewer system is helpful.”
Winter Park and Orlando are warning residents not to boat or swim in city lakes; the full extent of contamination may not be known for some time as crews are taking cursory notes on overflows and only larger local governments are providing basic detail to state authorities.
Our priority is on recovery and getting all of the system functioning again as quickly as possible.
— Orange County's deputy utility director.
“Our priority is on recovery and getting all of the system functioning again as quickly as possible,” Swingle said. “As we do that, we record and take observations so that we can follow up with reports.”
The problem may not improve as power returns to homes and residents resume or increase water use, unaware their sewage may be winding up in an overflowing manhole.
Orange County’s utility department reported to the state that it has had “overflows from manholes and pump stations at multiple locations throughout its collection system.”
Swingle said specifics on those overflows would be available later.
During a public briefing Tuesday afternoon, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said: “Now, more than ever, we need citizens to conserve water. Our water reclamation system is working overtime.”
As Dyer spoke, sewage was surging from a dead pump station behind the Gallery at Mills Park Apartments on Mills Avenue in Orlando.
An apartment representative said a property-management company is responsible for the station; attempts to reach that company were not successful.
Now more than ever we need citizens to conserve water. Our water reclamation system is working overtime.
— Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer.
The flow swept across the popular cycling and walking path, the Orlando Urban Trail, onto South Lake Formosa Drive.
From there, the sewage flowed past the home of Dawn Hendrickson, who said she tried from early Monday to alert city authorities, hoping they would stop it or at least explain what was happening.
“There were people, dogs, pregnant women walking through this crap,” Hendrickson said. “All I knew was that it flowed down my street for two days.”
About 15,000 gallons of sewage was spilled, according to Orlando officials, who would not respond to requests for an interview. The city did provide written comments, including: “Our staff is also working with private lift [pump] station operators to help them fix issues and to keep them up and running as we are notified.”
There were people, dogs, pregnant women walking through this crap.
— South Lake Formosa drive resident Dawn Hendrickson.
The sewage flowing down Formosa Drive wound up in nearby Lake Formosa. That lake fronts the Mennello Museum of American Art and is connected to Lake Rowena, which fronts the city’s Harry P. Leu Gardens.
Health-warning signs were posted by the lakes and the Urban Trail, stating: “This water body is temporarily unsafe due to contamination.”
Even so, bicyclists and walkers ventured across the spill path, unaware of its presence.
By noon Wednesday, a private contractor, All Florida Septic, arrived to clean up the street, which was littered with drying toilet paper.
The crew doused the spill with disinfectant Simple Green, hosed it down and swept the muddy, sudsy water to the hose of a truck-mounted vacuum.
“We’ve got a lot of this going on now,” All Florida Septic manager Shane Kovacs said.
Orlando had 11 overflows by Wednesday evening.
Winter Park also struggled to prevent sewage escapes.
“These overflows are unavoidable with massive power outages,” city spokeswoman Clarissa Howard said.
Her city’s recommendation: “Keep water usage to a minimum. If you filled your bathtubs, do NOT drain them yet as this will only add to further overwhelming the sewer system.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, the city of Orlando had more than 230 pump stations operating with normal power, while 20 were being run with generators.
Of Orange County’s more than 800 pump stations, 450 had lost power. By late Wednesday, about 170 were still being run with generators.
The Toho Water Authority had a “sewer-related issue” at 23 pump stations out of the 411 stations operated by the Osceola County utility.
“At this time an undetermined amount of raw wastewater discharged on the ground,” spokeswoman Mary Rose Cox said.
It wasn’t just the many pump station where spills were occurring.
At this time an undetermined amount of raw wastewater discharged on the ground.
— Toho Water Authority spokeswoman Mary Rose Cox.
An Oviedo sewage plant reported a spill during Hurricane Irma of 1.1 million gallons of raw and treated wastewater.
Orange County’s enormous sewage plant off Alafaya Trail has had several spills, including one of 120,000 gallons and another of 250,000 gallons.
A county report said the sewage was pumped from ditches back into the plant.
kspear@orlandosentinel.com
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Deadly quake, Hurricane Katia a one-two punch for Mexico.
One of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in Mexico and a raging hurricane dealt a devastating one-two punch to the country, killing at least 61 people as workers scrambled to respond to the twin national emergencies.
Deadly quake, Hurricane Katia a one-two punch for Mexico
Christopher Sherman, Associated Press Updated 4:33 am, Saturday, September 9, 2017
One of the most powerful earthquakes ever to strike Mexico has hit off its southern Pacific coast, killing at least 32 people, toppling houses, government offices and businesses while sending panicked people into the streets. (Sept. 8)
Media: Associated Press
JUCHITAN, Mexico (AP) — One of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in Mexico and a raging hurricane dealt a devastating one-two punch to the country, killing at least 61 people as workers scrambled to respond to the twin national emergencies.
The 8.1 quake off the southern Pacific coast just before midnight Thursday toppled hundreds of buildings in several states. Hardest-hit was Juchitan, Oaxaca, where 36 people died and a third of the city's homes collapsed or were otherwise rendered uninhabitable, President Enrique Pena Nieto said late Friday in an interview with the Televisa news network.
In downtown Juchitan, the remains of brick walls and clay tile roofs cluttered streets as families dragged mattresses onto sidewalks to spend a second anxious night sleeping outdoors. Some were newly homeless, while others feared further aftershocks could topple their cracked adobe dwellings.
"We are all collapsed, our homes and our people," said Rosa Elba Ortiz Santiago, 43, who sat with her teenage son and more than a dozen neighbors on an assortment of chairs. "We are used to earthquakes, but not of this magnitude."
Even as she spoke, across the country, Hurricane Katia was roaring onshore north of Tecolutla in Veracruz state, pelting the region with intense rains and winds.
Photo: Rebecca Blackwell, AP
IMAGE 1 OF 12 Residents fearing aftershocks sleep on stoops outside their earthquaked-damaged homes in central Juchitan, Oaxaca state, Mexico, Friday, Sept. 8, 2017. This was one of the most powerful earthquakes ever ... more
The U.S. National Hurricane Center reported Katia's maximum sustained winds had dropped to 75 mph (120 kph), making it a Category 1 storm when it made landfall. And it rapidly weakened even further over land into a tropical storm. The center said Katia now is stalling over Mexico's Sierra Madre mountains and the maximum sustained winds are now down to near 40 mph (65 kph). It was expected to continue to dissipate over the course of Saturday.
But the storm could still bring life-threatening floods and a storm surge off the Gulf of Mexico, though the extent of Katia's impact was unclear in the dark of night.
Pena Nieto announced that the earthquake killed 45 people in Oaxaca state, 12 in Chiapas and 4 in Tabasco, and he declared three days of national mourning. The toll included 36 dead in Juchitan, located on the narrow waist of Oaxaca known as the Isthmus, where a hospital and about half the city hall also collapsed into rubble.
Next to Ortiz, 47-year-old Jose Alberto Martinez said he and family members have long been accustomed to earthquakes. So when the ground started moving, at first they simply waited a bit for it to stop — until objects began falling and they bolted for the street.
"We felt like the house was coming down on top of us," Martinez said, accompanied by his wife, son and mother-in-law.
Now, he didn't feel safe going back inside until the home is inspected. Right next door an older building had crumbled into a pile of rough timbers, brick and stucco, while little remained of a white church on the corner.
Rescuers searched for survivors Friday with sniffer dogs and used heavy machinery at the main square to pull rubble away from city hall, where a missing municipal police officer was believed to be inside.
The city's civil defense coordinator, Jose Antonio Marin Lopez, said similar searches had been going on all over the area since the previous night.
Teams found bodies in the rubble, but the highlight was pulling four people, including two children, alive from the completely collapsed Hotel Del Rio where one woman died.
"The priority continues to be the people," Marin said.
Pena Nieto said authorities were working to re-establish the supply of water and food and provide medical attention to those who need it. He vowed the government would help rebuild.
"The power of this earthquake was devastating, but we are certain that the power of unity, the power of solidarity and the power of shared responsibility will be greater," Pena Nieto said.
Power was cut at least briefly to more than 1.8 million people, and authorities closed schools in at least 11 states to check them for safety.
The Interior Department reported that 428 homes were destroyed and 1,700 were damaged in Chiapas alone.
"Homes made of clay tiles and wood collapsed," said Nataniel Hernandez, a human rights worker living in Tonala, Chiapas, who worried that inclement weather threatened to bring more structures down.
"Right now it is raining very hard in Tonala, and with the rains it gets much more complicated because the homes were left very weak, with cracks," Hernandez said by phone.
The earthquake also jolted the Mexican capital, which largely lies atop a former lakebed where the soil is known to amplify seismic waves. Memories are still fresh for many of a catastrophic quake that killed thousands and devastated large parts of the city in 1985.
The latest earthquake swayed buildings and monuments in the capital more than 650 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the epicenter.
Mexico City escaped major damage, though part of a bridge on a highway being built to the site of a planned new international airport collapsed due to the earthquake, local media reported.
The quake's power was equal to Mexico's strongest in the past century, and it was slightly stronger than the 1985 quake, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
However its impact was blunted somewhat by the fact that it struck some 100 miles offshore.
The epicenter was in a seismic hotspot in the Pacific where one tectonic plate dives under another. These subduction zones are responsible for producing some of the biggest quakes in history, including the 2011 Fukushima disaster and the 2004 Sumatra quake that spawned a deadly tsunami.
The quake triggered tsunami warnings and some high waves, but there was no major damage from the sea. Authorities briefly evacuated a few residents of coastal Tonala and Puerto Madero because of the warning.
In Veracruz, tourists abandoned coastal hotels as winds and rains picked up ahead of Hurricane Katia's landfall. Workers set up emergency shelters and residents were urged to avoid going outside or crossing flooded rivers.
"The arrival of (hashtag)Katia may be particularly dangerous for slopes affected by the earthquake. Avoid these areas," Pena Nieto tweeted.
___
Associated Press writers Peter Orsi and Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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After the flood, the monster that grows like ‘the Blob’ — and doesn’t die.
All mold needs is moisture, oxygen, a surface to grow on and a food source.
The Texas towns and cities inundated by Hurricane Harvey's torrential downpours are finally drying out, but the storm left a menace behind: mold.
Just 24 hours after a heavy rain, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and now many Texans can attest, the fungi can begin to grow and invade a home.
“Mold appeared almost instantly,” said Alan Tillotson of Cypress, a community about 25 miles northwest of downtown Houston. He and his wife, Vicki, returned to their neighborhood after having fled Harvey for most of last week. They started pulling off drywall and found big black circles of fuzz behind it. “We had it growing visibly on the materials we were removing. The goal is to get all the wet stuff out before it becomes a science experiment.”
Blossoming on walls, on furniture, on clothes and potentially in every crevice and corner of every soaked property, mold not only damages homes and businesses but affects human health. Exposure can trigger a stuffy nose, irritated eyes, cough or respiratory problems.
Mold is so ubiquitous because it reproduces and spreads via pollen-like spores that are lightweight and travel easily through the air, thus exposing people through inhalation and skin contact. Complicating the situation: Those spores can last a long time.
Indeed, all mold needs to survive and thrive is moisture, oxygen, a surface to grow on and a food source. Molds feed on dead, moist organic matter, including leaves, wood, cloth, paper, even dust. Smaller than the head of a pin, spores can hang in the air for hours — where they can be breathed or ingested.
Dead spores still contain allergens and so can affect health, which is why it's not enough to kill mold. It must be removed.
Tillotson said he and his wife have suffered no ill effects so far. They quickly ventilated rooms, opened windows and turned on fans. They have already had the drywall stripped down to the studs and their hardwood floors removed.
“The water came in so fast,” he recounted Tuesday. “We had no idea how high it would go. If I had to do it all over again, I’d have already moved away.”
Methods to remove mold run the gamut. There's simple, as in scrubbing with a fungicide mixed with bleach and water. There's also complicated, which can involve wet vacuuming or vacuuming with a high-efficiency air purifier.
Yet mold expert Nick Gromicko, founder of the National Association of Certified Home Inspectors, thinks some victims of Hurricane Harvey may not ever be able to remove all the mold.
“Mold can be hidden behind walls where spores are not detected, and mold can grow very rapidly within days,” he said. “Mold is literally a monster that grows like that vintage movie 'The Blob.' … It doesn’t die. If it has food and water, it will live forever.”
With thousands of homes and businesses along the Texas Gulf Coast unreachable for days — and perhaps uninhabitable for weeks or months — Gromicko said many structures likely can't be rescued.
“Where homes have been in standing water for so long, the cure for most of these mold problems is going to be a bulldozer,” he warned. “The homes are going to have to be razed.”
Among the steps the CDC recommends for getting rid of mold after flooding are:
Throw out items that cannot be washed and disinfected, such as mattresses, rugs and carpets, upholstered furniture and books.
Remove and discard wet or contaminated drywall and insulation.
Thoroughly clean all hard surfaces, including floors, wood and metal furniture, counters, appliances and plumbing fixtures, with hot water and laundry or dish detergent.
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VIDEO: A toxic tour of Houston from refineries to Superfund sites in wake of Harvey.
Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, Renée Feltz and Hany Massoud take a "toxic tour" of Houston's fenceline communities, led by environmental justice organizer Bryan Parras.
Petro Metro: A Toxic Tour of Houston from Refineries to Superfund Sites in Wake of Harvey
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In Texas, the devastation from Hurricane Harvey continues. At least 63 people have died, more than 40,000 homes have been lost, and as many 1 million cars have been destroyed. Meanwhile, the long-term environmental impact of the storm is just beginning to be felt. The Center for Biological Diversity reports flooded oil refineries and chemical plants released as much as 5 million pounds of pollutants into the air during the storm. On Friday night, another large fire broke out at the flooded Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas. Then, on Sunday, authorities set fire to six remaining containers of chemicals in what was described as a controlled burn. The company continues to refuse to inform local residents of what chemicals burned at the site. For more, Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, Renée Feltz and Hany Massoud take a "toxic tour" of Houston's fenceline communities, led by environmental justice organizer Bryan Parras.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Texas, where the death toll continues to rise from Hurricane Harvey. At least 63 people have now died in the unprecedented flooding. The damage caused by the storm is staggering. More than 40,000 homes have been lost, as many as a million cars destroyed. Meanwhile, the long-term environmental impact of the storm is just beginning to be felt. The Center for Biological Diversity reports flooded oil refineries and chemical plants released as much as 5 million pounds of pollutants into the air during the storm. On Friday night, another large fire broke out at the flooded Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas. Then, on Sunday, authorities set fire to six remaining containers of chemicals in what was described as a controlled burn. The company continues to refuse to inform local residents what chemicals burned at the site.
Well, this weekend, Democracy Now! headed to Texas. I went there with Democracy Now!'s Renée Feltz and Hany Massoud—both are from Houston. We went to get a closer look at the environmental and public health impact of Hurricane Harvey and related flooding. Houston, the Petro Metro, is home to a quarter of the petroleum refining capacity in the United States; include the entire Gulf Coast, and the percentage increases to half. Some of the major refineries in the region are run by ExxonMobil, Valero and the Saudi-owned Motiva. This weekend, we took a "toxic tour" of the facilities along the Houston Ship Channel, where plants spewed toxins into the air of nearby neighborhoods, so often poor communities of color. Our guide was Bryan Parras, organizer with the Sierra Club's Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign and t.e.j.a.s., Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services.
Our visit came as the number of people who have died from Harvey rose to at least 63, including the first reported death of a volunteer rescuer, who was also a recipient of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The body of Alonso Guillén was found Friday, after he disappeared Wednesday when his boat hit a bridge and capsized. His mother told the Houston Chronicle she tried to come from Mexico to the U.S. to bury her son but was turned away by Border Patrol agents. She said, "When we are with God, there are no borders."
As we begin our toxic tour in Houston, we stop by a fundraiser that was set up to pay for the funerals of four undocumented rescue volunteers who were killed when their small boat was swept away by churning floodwaters last Monday and ran into downed power lines. They were electrocuted—brothers Yahir Vizueth and Benjamin Vizueth, their uncle Gustavo Rodríguez-Hernández and their friend Jorge Pérez, electrocuted when they fell into the water. Another brother, José, survived, along with two British Daily Mail journalists who were also on the boat to document the rescue missions. All of them suffered severe burns. They clung to trees until they were discovered the next day, some 18 hours later. At Sunday’s fundraiser, we spoke to family member Stepheny Jacquez.
STEPHENY JACQUEZ: On Monday, around 3 p.m.—well, started that morning—they were out rescuing people, a group of five men. They went out on a different part of town to save families affected. There wasn’t enough, you know, boats on the water. They had a boat. They said, "Why not? We can help. We want to help." They saved a total of seven people, two families.
Then they heard that on the east side of town, towards Normandy and Wallisville, it was getting flooded horribly. So they said, "Well, now we’re heading that way to see what we can do and how we can help." On the way over there, they were trying to cross a bayou, and they lost control of the boat. I’m not exactly sure the details, but they lost control, of what we’ve heard, and wrecked with an electricity pole. They had to jump out of the boat. And when they jumped in the water, they all got electrocuted. Three of them were saved the next day at 11 in the morning.
AMY GOODMAN: And those three were the—José, the brother—
STEPHENY JACQUEZ: José Vizueth was saved. Two reporters from the Daily News U.K. were also saved.
AMY GOODMAN: Daily Mail?
STEPHENY JACQUEZ: Daily Mail. They were saved. They were also on the boat. Within the next day or so, we heard news of Yahir being found, one of the other brothers, one of the three brothers on the boat. Jorge was also found. And we were still missing two. They were found on Thursday. We took it upon ourselves. We gathered a search group, the family. There was around a hundred people in that search. Around 3 p.m., we found Gustavo behind a neighborhood. And the search continued. We were still missing one more, and he was found by boat.
ELIZABETH BARNABY: Hi. My name is Elizabeth Barnaby. These four guys were undocumented. You know, they didn’t have papers. That’s true. And they didn’t care. They still risked their lives, and they saved a lot of lives.
RENÉE FELTZ: So, we’re going to leave this fundraiser and get back in a car and head out on our toxic tour with Bryan Parras.
BRYAN PARRAS: So there are some relatives that are undocumented. And, you know, we’re fearful of any attention that they would draw to themselves by asking for help. And we’re in Texas. You know, people are very proud, don’t like to ask for help. But we need it. We all need it right now. Yeah, so, we’re in Denver Harbor right now, and it’s just north of Buffalo Bayou.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we’re going to continue from here, from this just terrible story of four young—four heroes who were killed as they were trying to save people, for you to take us on this toxic tour of Houston.
BRYAN PARRAS: Yeah. I mean, you know, this isn’t normally a stop. You know, I think this is emblematic of the very, very strong part of these neighborhoods.
We’re just driving on 610, and this is the on-ramp. We’re going north right now. And what you’re looking at is Manchester. This is the beginning of the Petro Metro, Amy. You know, this goes on for 30-plus miles, all the way to Galveston Bay, and then it even wraps around Galveston Bay to Texas City and then to Baytown, another, you know, onwards to Port Arthur, Beaumont.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about what’s happened to this industry in the midst of Harvey?
BRYAN PARRAS: Yeah. So, a lot of these plants had to go into emergency shutdown prior to the storm coming. And that’s a precautionary move, but it’s one that they know is going to happen, particularly if a hurricane is coming. And over the years, they’ve done nothing, you know, to prevent the toxic release of the chemicals that are sent out while these shutdowns are happening.
AMY GOODMAN: This area didn’t get flooded?
BRYAN PARRAS: This area, I don’t believe, got flooded. Yeah, it was OK. But the smells from all of the burn-off from many, many refineries is something that they had to contend with. And it’s something, you know, I could smell, even two miles from here.
[Editor’s Note: On Monday, August 28, 2017 the tejas team documented that Manchester was affected by high floodwaters. Flood waters were also documented running from the Valero facility into the neighborhood and Hartman park.]
This is Westway, yeah, and these are storage tanks. And I’m not sure what they have in here, you know? A lot of times it’s really hard to know what these facilities are doing. As we saw with the Crosby situation, they oftentimes claim that because of terroristic threats, it’s better to not inform the community. Yeah, we have folks who don’t really know what all of the threats are. And throughout the day, you know, they have to hear alarms and bells, and things go off that worry them. You know, they cause undue stress and anxiety.
We just passed by a house completely surrounded by tanks. And across the street is Hartman Park. And this is the only green space for the neighborhood here. And so, across from the park, literally, one street, is Valero, Valero refining.
So I’m going to stop here. And this is a friend of ours. Yudith Nieto’s grandmother lives here. And during the storm, I was getting messages from her aunt, because they were really concerned about the Crosby plant and how that might affect things here. And, of course, they were having to deal with the toxic fumes, as well. So I promised I would bring them some masks.
AMY GOODMAN: The smell here is pretty intense.
BRYAN PARRAS: Yeah, this is—this is every day, too. And this isn’t even as bad as it gets. You know, it’s intense. Yeah, and this is why I said, Amy, you know, this is the everyday poison that people have to breathe.
AMY GOODMAN: Is this every day, the smell in the air?
MARIA NIETO: [translated] Yeah, it’s very normal. Lately, they’ve been feeling it more so with the—in the nose, and the eyes get teary. It’s very normal for that type of reaction to occur with them. So they usually wear store-bought masks that are not necessarily as prepared for this type of exposure.
AMY GOODMAN: Did they warn you when they closed this plant down that more toxins would be going into the air?
MAURO NIETO: No.
MARIA NIETO: [translated] No one from the refineries or the spaces have told them. They found out during the TVs that they watch and family members that are on the lookout and let them know.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you just delivered masks to the Nietos in the shadow of Valero, this massive plant here in Houston.
BRYAN PARRAS: Yeah. You know, it’s shameful and really, really upsetting to think that families who live here have to make modifications and change the way they live, to shelter in place in your own home, Amy, to have masks on hand and to have painful reactions to just breathing, you know, the itchy eyes, the throats, the headaches, and that that’s an everyday experience.
RENÉE FELTZ: We’re going to exit our car here and approach some men who look like they’re working on fuel pipes that go over a bridge.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we’re going down to where they’re fixing the bridge and pipelines right around these facilities. Hi. You guys working on the pipeline or the bridge?
PIPELINE WORKER 1: The pipeline.
AMY GOODMAN: The pipeline. Getting it ready to go back online?
PIPELINE WORKER 1: Yes, ma’am.
AMY GOODMAN: What does it look like. What kind of damage did it have?
PIPELINE WORKER 1: Just real minimal, but we can’t comment.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened? What was the damage?
PIPELINE WORKER 1: We really can’t comment. I apologize. It was all from the storm, though.
AMY GOODMAN: Yeah.
PIPELINE WORKER 2: Storm water.
AMY GOODMAN: So, what role do you think climate change has to do with all of this?
PIPELINE WORKER 3: How much we sweat.
PIPELINE WORKER 1: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that would be a good place to start, to start dealing with?
PIPELINE WORKER 3: Nah. Save your money.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you guys working for Valero?
ENTERPIPE CONTRACTOR: No, for—we’ve been a contractor for Enterpipe, and we’re working with some job for Enterprise.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s wrong with the pipeline? What happened?
ENTERPIPE CONTRACTOR: Oh, well, just the water goes too high, and we moved the pipe over with the—over the—this pipe, we’ve got to set up. We move it over, and we’re trying to put it back in place.
AMY GOODMAN: Oh, because the water pushed it over?
ENTERPIPE CONTRACTOR: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: I see.
ENTERPIPE CONTRACTOR: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Are they going to be able to turn back the pipe—turn the pipelines back on soon?
ENTERPIPE CONTRACTOR: Oh, yeah, pretty soon, maybe in an hour or two. We’re going to be—
AMY GOODMAN: In an hour or two?
ENTERPIPE CONTRACTOR: In an hour or two, we’re going to be the same like it is before.
RENÉE FELTZ: We’ve heard that the factories and the refineries you’re showing us shut down, and that was dangerous, but now they’re starting it back up. Is that also dangerous?
BRYAN PARRAS: Yeah. The same thing that happened during the shutdown is going to happen again during the startup. And I don’t know how long that startup process lasts. But if you can imagine all of the liquids that are in the pipes that feed into the facilities, you know, all that’s going to have to get turned back on, and it’s going to take a good while for, you know, the system to be properly sort of running as it normally does. A lot of these facilities are not meant to ever stop. They just keep going. And so, that’s what causes, you know, the dirty burns and the problems—not to think that it’s safe at all when it’s running, you know, normally. It’s still putting toxins into the air. But when these other events, shutdowns and startups, happen, it’s even worse.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Bryan Parras of the [Beyond] Dirty Fuels campaign of Sierra Club, taking us on our toxic tour of the Houston Ship Channel, which continues in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Texas Flood" as performed by the Texas blues musician Stevie Ray Vaughan. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, we continue with our toxic tour of Houston, the Petro Metro, home to a quarter of the petroleum refining capacity in the United States. I was in Houston this weekend our Democracy Now! colleagues Hany Massoud and Renée Feltz, both Texan natives. Our guide was Bryan Parras, organizer with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign and t.e.j.a.s., Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services.
BRYAN PARRAS: We’re on our way to Baytown. Baytown is home to Exxon, you know, a very, very old plant. It’s the second-largest refinery Exxon has. And it was inundated with water during the storm. It may still be. I haven’t been there yet. But they had some massive flares that were documented by USA Today, and burning these chemicals that we were just talking about, you know, during their shutdown process.
AMY GOODMAN: And did the EPA give them waivers to burn all this out or all these companies to release toxins?
BRYAN PARRAS: Yeah. So, normally, in a regular situation, you know, they would be limited in how long they could flare. In this case, the EPA gave them a waiver so that there were no penalties for exceeding those time limits.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re looking at a sign that says "Kinder Morgan. Warning! Gas pipeline crossing."
BRYAN PARRAS: And just, you know, 20 feet behind it is someone’s home. You know, someone lives right here.
AMY GOODMAN: There’s not much regulation in Texas, is there?
BRYAN PARRAS: This is what people look at when they say there’s no zoning. These are the sorts of situations that happen. And just—we just drove by new pipelines, which makes me think that there have been some breaches, some leaks, something, you know, or else why are these pipelines here? It looks like they’re going to do some repair jobs right here in this person’s backyard.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re standing in front of a Motiva plant. Motiva is run by Aramco of Saudi Arabia. It’s the largest oil refinery in the country, right here in Houston, Texas. Right behind us is a warning sign for a pipeline that says Energy Transfer Partners. Energy Transfer Partners built the Dakota Access pipeline. We just passed pipelines or equipment for Kinder Morgan, Motiva, the largest oil refinery here, Energy Transfer Partners, which makes the Dakota Access pipeline, all within a few yards of each other.
BRYAN PARRAS: This is the concentration that exists here.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, directly next to a neighborhood.
BRYAN PARRAS: Yeah, and this is another predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood. This is the definition of a fenceline community.
AMY GOODMAN: As opposed to a front line?
BRYAN PARRAS: As opposed to a front line. So, look, here’s a nice little flare. And so, yeah, there’s a distinction, right? When folks say "front-line communities," of course, there are a lot of people who live near different toxic sites, but a fenceline community is literally bordered by these facilities, like you see here. And it’s not just what you see above ground; it’s the many pipelines that are underneath the ground. And there have been studies done here to point out that the pipelines are also leaking benzene from the ground. So you’re getting rained on from above, and you’re also getting gassed from below. There’s no escape.
We’re riding over the Hartman Bridge, and below us is the Houston Ship Channel, and it empties out into Galveston Bay to our right. And to our left is ExxonMobil, the second-largest refinery in the country. And this is a plant that was inundated with water. And we’re coming to check it out, because we just heard that it’s coming back online.
AMY GOODMAN: As we’re going around on this toxic tour to the ExxonMobil refinery here in Baytown, Bryan Parras and Crystal Ibarra stopped at the local church to deliver them some food and some clothes.
Can you tell us your name and the church?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: My name is Pastor Carlos Caban from Templo Emanuel here at 1328 Cherry Street, Baytown, Texas. We did get hit hard. I mean, we—instead of crying, we are helping. And as you guys bring help, that’s how—that’s how it goes, you know? And it’s not easy. You know, this is a real low-income community. This house is like—water was up to here, to the taillight of your vehicle. And they’re still living in there. And they’re afraid of coming and getting help. Like—
BRYAN PARRAS: I didn’t see a lot of furniture out in the streets.
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Not in this community, because they’re a low-income community. So—
BRYAN PARRAS: So, they’re—even though it got wet, they’re—
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: I had a lady that, this morning, on service, I had to tell her, beg her, "Please, I’ll get some rescue guys to go in there." She goes, "That’s all I have. If I throw it out, why am I living?" I said, "Well, I’d rather you not live in there. You’ve got to choose which one: live in there or, honestly, die from cancer." You know, the molds are turning black already.
BRYAN PARRAS: The mold? The mold’s already coming?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Why are they afraid to get help?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Well, we have different laws that are in place. Here, what we are doing is just taking names and the addresses. And some people think that, you know, immigration is going to take them. And as that happens—we tell them this is a place of refuge. This is a—this line right here divides us from the city and divides us from anything else. This is a safe haven here. You could come and be here.
AMY GOODMAN: So, a lot of people are afraid to seek help or shelter because they’re afraid they could be taken by—
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Immigration. We’ve got the SB 4 in place. That’s a big one here. I mean, I’ve gotten people who say, "I can’t give you my address or my phone number." But for me to continue getting help—you know, sometimes it’s guys like you guys that bring help. But then I’ve got cities that come back and ask for documentation and "How many people did you feed?" or "Is the truck getting to the people that need it?" And that’s one of the major things.
RENÉE FELTZ: What’s across the street?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: That’s the entrance of Exxon, Exxon refinery. So, we’re 20 feet from the refinery. And that’s what we’ve got in our backyard.
AMY GOODMAN: So, how does that affect people who live here?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Man, I don’t know how to answer that one.
AMY GOODMAN: Do many of the people who live here work there?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Yes and no. Yes and no. I got a lot of guys that work in there, in the refinery, as they’ve got to maintain the families, so... Right now, they’re not working, so we’re helping out. Some of them—I have a guy that is not going because the area has been flooded. And y’all know what goes with that, but at the end of the day, you know, he’s not actually working no more.
AMY GOODMAN: Do they get paid if they’re not working?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: No, no. There is guys that are contractors. As being a contractor, they don’t get paid.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s in the air and the water here?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Well, there’s chemicals. You know, there’s different chemicals that are around. I’ll give you an example. If you cross over 225, that water that looks blue is the water from the refinery, when it leaked out. So, it’s some of the stuff that is out here.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the refinery is not back on?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Not yet. They haven’t turned it on. I don’t know how long they will start it back up. But right now it’s actually off, so it’s not working.
RENÉE FELTZ: Can you tell us if they explained anything when they shut it down? What was that like when they shut it down? Did they—what did they tell you?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Oh, they didn’t call nobody. They didn’t say—they didn’t say no volunteer or anything else. They just shut it down. All you can see is—well, right here, if you look right here, right behind that tree is a flare. So, as we were out here, we were getting—as we’re giving relief, you’re still getting the impact of the flares.
AMY GOODMAN: Is the flare always raging? Or was it—
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: No, just last night, and, I want to say, when the hurricane was here, the whole week, day and night.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the flare burns not all the time, but when the plant closes down?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Yes. Well, no, I can’t say. When they got an upset, they do burn. So, for us, I mean, we’re in the community, you know? Where can I go?
AMY GOODMAN: How is the cancer rate here?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Oh, it’s big. It’s big. If you noticed, four years, I want to say, you take this street right up, right across the refinery, they had the—there was the city projects, were there. And they were affected by gases. And they eliminated them all completely. Exxon bought them all up.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about climate change?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Ah, yes and no. Yes and no, in the sense it’s—we are seeing the effect right now. When it comes about climate and anything else, we’re seeing it right now. I’ll give you an example. When in history have we seen a flood just like this? It has to do with climate change, and it has to do with what’s going around the world. You know, for me to live here so many years, and now, suddenly, a flood of this magnitude, I mean, even here, I mean, it’s unbearable. It’s unbearable.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of the fact that the president of the United States, President Trump, denies that climate change, that the fossil fuel industry or human beings have anything to do with climate?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: We just got to look at what—what our signs are, you know, our effects. I know we pulled out of an important treaty, which is the climate.
AMY GOODMAN: The Paris climate accord.
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Yeah. And I think that was—that was a big mistake for us, you know, as a country. And I think we have to have rules. I think we have to have regulations.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you heard from Exxon since the plant shutdown, since the hurricane?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: No, ma’am. No, ma’am.
AMY GOODMAN: How about FEMA?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: We don’t got FEMA here.
AMY GOODMAN: Federal Emergency Management Agency.
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: We don’t got them here. We, as churches, as part of the city, working with the city, we’re on our own.
AMY GOODMAN: What about Red Cross? Have they been here?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: No. We were a shelter for five days. And the city put a response together of pastors to help out. Nobody else.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump is deciding on DACA, whether to end it, the DREAMers, their ability to stay and work.
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: That affects me, affects me as a church, affects me—it affects us all. We’ve got people that don’t have papers, but we’ve got to protect them, too, you know? They’re human beings. Their kids grew up with us. I’m going to tell you, "Get out of here"? You know, so it’s hard. It’s hard. It hurts all of us. It hurts our economy. Sometimes we think that it’s not going to hurt our economy. And I’ve got people that are—that need our help. And they help. They work.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel forgotten here, in the shadow of the second-largest refinery in this country, in the shadow of the ExxonMobil refinery?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: I will say yeah. I will say yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: we’re here at Baytown Emanuel Temple Church. It looks out on the second-largest refinery in this country, ExxonMobil here in Baytown. People here, a number of them have lost everything, but they’re helping other people getting clothes, whatever deliveries come in. And now we’re going to just go inside, take a look. People took refuge here. And now, Pastor, you’re showing us video of ExxonMobil. Someone took drone footage. What are you looking at?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: You see the different colors of the—you see the chemicals there?
AMY GOODMAN: Mm-hmm.
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: That’s the chemicals.
AMY GOODMAN: This is ExxonMobil underwater.
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Yeah, yeah. So...
AMY GOODMAN: With the—and this is the kind of water that came to you—
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —and that inundated people’s homes.
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: That would be the same, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about the flares?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Oh, they were going. As you see, they’re still going on right there.
AMY GOODMAN: What’s your concern about the flares?
PASTOR CARLOS CABAN: Benzene, we know, is a carcinogen. And benzene is in your—is an additive for gasoline and for diesel. And it’s a byproduct of what the refinery does. So, I tell you, it’s one of the worst things that you can imagine.
RENÉE FELTZ: We’re leaving the church now, where we can see a flare in the distance, and we’re headed to the last stop on our toxic tour. It’s a Superfund site in the middle of the San Jacinto River.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Bryan, why don’t you tell us what this Superfund site is that we’re standing at, in the—on the edge of the Jacinto River, under an overpass? I don’t even even see any signs that say "danger."
BRYAN PARRAS: There’s one little sign over here.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what this is. Why should we be concerned?
BRYAN PARRAS: Yeah, well, this is one of the most dangerous Superfund sites here in the Houston area. It’s got dioxin, a very, very, very highly toxic substance. And it’s an underwater Superfund site, but you can kind of see the mound of rocks over in the middle of this river. And that’s where it’s nearby.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what exactly is in this Superfund site. Who built it? Why is it here? Who’s cleaning it up? And what happened during the storm to it?
BRYAN PARRAS: Well, a lot of those questions as to what’s happening, we don’t—we don’t know, because, you know, there have been articles about the EPA not being out here yet to do testing. But it’s an old paper mill waste site. They basically dumped a lot of their old waste product. And we know that paper mills, when they bleach their waters, that there’s a lot of dioxins that are the byproduct of that. And so, it’s some of the really nastiest chemical on Earth.
AMY GOODMAN: So, we see refineries in the background. Then we see the Superfund—well, we see top of it—site. And then we see these circular—what would you call these? Tanks?
BRYAN PARRAS: And, you know, something obviously hit one of them, because it’s—this one is tilted, right? And the other one looks like it’s been like ripped apart, like its outer layer has just been torn off.
AMY GOODMAN: So, has EPA been here?
BRYAN PARRAS: To my knowledge, they have not. You know, there was a report out that said they hadn’t been to any of the waste—to the Superfund sites. EPA had not been to any of the Superfund sites. EPA recently has issued some of their own press releases saying that they are monitoring all of the sites. But I don’t—I haven’t heard from anyone on the ground that has seen them. And these areas are areas where people would fish, ski, swim, you know, despite all of the industrialization of this area. It’s still a water body, and people are attracted to it, and they want to use it. You can’t swim. You can’t breathe. You can’t eat the seafood. It’s a wasteland.
AMY GOODMAN: And we just got word that the black smoke plume that we see in the background, just beyond the San Jacinto River, is the Arkema chemical plant. It makes organic peroxides. An area as wide as a mile and a half has been evacuated for days now. It looks like the plant and the local authorities have decided to do a controlled burn of the rest of the property. It’s not clear what chemicals are there, because the company has refused to release that information. That does it for our toxic tour of Houston. I’m Amy Goodman, for Democracy Now!
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Home at Last" by Steely Dan. Steely Dan’s Walter Becker died Sunday at the age of 67.
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