One minute, the 3-year-old was playing tag in the grass—her braided hair bouncing with each step—while the hulking remains of a 150-year-old oil refinery loomed nearby. Then, suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. Many residents here in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia live with asthma and other chronic health conditions that they, advocates and even some […]
Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:
One minute, the 3-year-old was playing tag in the grass—her braided hair bouncing with each step—while the hulking remains of a 150-year-old oil refinery loomed nearby. Then, suddenly, she couldn’t breathe.
Many residents here in the Grays Ferry section of Philadelphia live with asthma and other chronic health conditions that they, advocates and even some medical experts attribute to the close proximity of the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery, which was destroyed in an explosion in June 2019 and closed shortly afterward.
Now, at a recent gathering of her neighbors and environmentalists in a local park to celebrate the refinery’s closure, the toddler was experiencing an asthma attack. When an inhaler offered no relief, family members rushed her to a nearby hospital where she was treated, released and made a full recovery.
The closure of the 1,300-acre refinery here—once the largest on the East Coast—had been cheered as a major victory for those working at the intersection of equity, social justice and environmentalism. Yet in the three years since the refinery closed, the kind of sustained change sought by residents and environmental activists has proved elusive.
Despite the refinery’s closure and demolition, the site where it once stood is still emitting harmful chemicals. Last month, the results of an analysis near the former plant were published showing that legacy pollution in the form of benzene—a chemical linked to cancer and other illnesses—was twice the federal threshold and at the second-highest levels in the country.
A coalition of residents and activists and the developers who now own the refinery site have been involved in tense negotiations over a neighborhood investment and revitalization plan that helps accelerate the approval process so that development projects at the former plant can move forward. Despite assurances by the site’s new owners, Hilco Redevelopment Partners, some neighbors are concerned about the possibility of future industrial work there that could negatively impact the community.
And residents—who, for nearly eight generations, have dealt with adverse health conditions—are worried about the lingering effects of the cleanup operations at the former refinery, which first opened five years after the last enslaved people were liberated by the Emancipation Proclamation.