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NOTE: We sent members of the I'm From Rolling Stone cast into the field to document America's eco-disasters. The result is a series of four reports from around the country. See a full-index of their work and tell us what you think here.
B obi Miller needs only to open the door of her home in Corpus Christi, Texas, to see the effects of toxic waste from the Koch West oil refinery. Miller's back yard and car is covered in a thick black sludge, and across the street is the school where she used to teach before a lawsuit revealed that the Koch refinery had released ninety tons of benzene, a highly toxic chemical. Miller and other teachers were often forced to implement a safety procedure called "shelter in place," keeping students inside with the air conditioner off on days when Koch was pumping waste into the air. Today the school's playground is completely deserted: The company bought the property, and children no longer play in the yard.Before the school closed, Miller would often come home to find her husband, Jim, prone on the couch with a headache. In 2001, Jim was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had a tumor removed. Today, when he speaks, there is a distinct wheeze, and his breathing is labored. Bobi suffers from sarcoidosis, a disease that causes shortness of breath, persistent coughing and skin rashes. "We've always wondered whether that's from living close to the refineries," she says. "We very often hear the sirens from the refinery, and we don't know what they mean. It's very scary."
Short-term exposure to benzene, a natural part of crude oil and gasoline, can cause drowsiness, dizziness and unconsciousness; long-term effects include leukemia and a decrease in the size of women's ovaries. According to a recent study by the Texas Department of State Health Services, overall birth defects in Corpus Christi from 1996 to 2002 was eighty-four percent higher than the state average.
In 2000, a federal grand jury indicted Koch, now the largest privately run company in the world, on ninety-seven felony counts of violating air-pollution standards at its Koch West refinery in Corpus Christi. According to the Justice Department, the plant released about ninety-one tons of benzene in its liquid-waste streams -- some fifteen times greater than the regulatory limits to the refinery. Koch settled the case for $20 million, pled guilty to one count and maintains that the excessive benzene release was never proven. "All Koch companies strive to operate their facilities in a safe and environmentally responsible manner," says a company spokesman.
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Yet Corpus Christi is hardly the only place where Koch has been accused of violating environmental standards. In 2000, Koch was fined $35 million -- the largest civil penalty ever imposed on a company under federal environmental law -- for more than 300 oil spills into lakes, streams and waterways from its pipelines and oil facilities in six states. In one case, the Environmental Protection Agency reported, almost 100,000 gallons of oil was spilled in Texas and caused a twelve-mile oil slick on Nueces Bay and Corpus Christi Bay.
In Texas, many blame the state for failing to curb Koch's pollution. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which is responsible for monitoring pollution at Koch's refineries, lists pages of "Air Emission Event Reports" on its Web site that describe repeated violations by the company. Yet the commission has taken little or no action against Koch. Instead of being a watchdog, the TCEQ is "the lap dog of the industry," says Dr. Neil Carman, who served for twelve years as a regional investigator at the commission. "The failure of the TCEQ's investigators to take action on the refinery's serious benzene violations reflects how poorly the agency is doing its job at large industrial plants."
Since effective oversight by the state of Koch isn't forthcoming, citizens in Corpus Christi have taken it upon themselves to monitor the pollution. Suzie Canales, the director of Citizens for Environmental Justice, lost a sister to cancer and has two young grandchildren with birth defects. She has teamed up with Melissa Jarrell, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Texas A&M University who is working on a book about Koch called Environmental Crime and the Media. The two women are organizing local residents, maintaining a constant watch on the company's refineriesand checking the surrounding area for elevated levels of toxins. "An estimated tens of thousands of Americans die each year as a result of environmental pollution," Jarrell says. "These refineries are getting away with silent mass murder."
NOTE: We sent members of the I'm From Rolling Stone cast into the field to document America's eco-disasters. The result is a series of four reports from around the country. See a full-index of their work and tell us what you think here.