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LaNell Anderson Interview, Part 2 of 2
Metadata |
| Title: | LaNell Anderson Interview, Part 2 of 2 |
| Identifier: | anderson_lanell_2037 |
| Related: | anderson_lanell_2036 |
| Location: | 4Jc92 |
| Description: | Anderson shares the tactics she has used in her conservation activism, and discusses politics, environmental justice, grandfather
exemptions, and air pollution. |
| Country: | United States | | State: | Texas | | City: | Channelview | | Date: | 1999-10-05 |
| Creators: | Anderson, LaNell (interviewee) | | Todd, David (interviewer) |
| Source: | Conservation History Association of Texas, Texas Legacy Project Records |
| Language: | en |
| Publisher: | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History |
| Rights: | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History |
| Original Format: | Mini-DV |
The rich media version of this video was created by Kimberly Francisco, April 2007. Her work was made possible by the School of Information, University of Texas at Austin and the Institute for Museum & Library Services.
  Contents
 | Interview Start |
 | Activism
|
| Creating Bad Press for Industries |
| Public Meetings |
| Helping Others to Become Activists |
| Need for Activism |
| Burnout |
| Success |
| Confrontation |
| Polluted River |
| Crown Central |
| CAPs, Industry Manipulation |
| Industry Stealth Tactics |
| Tactics - Who to Talk to |
| Crown Central Interview, Intimidation |
| Success of Citizen Opposition |
| Challenges |
| Elected Officials |
| Need for Citizen Action |
| Politics
|
| Politicians |
| Campaign Reform |
| Environmental Justice
|
| Environmental Racism |
| Kill Zones |
| Moving From Polluted Area |
| Early Influence |
| Grandfathering
|
| Exemptions |
| George Bush |
| Air Pollution
|
| Old Units, Fugitive Emissions |
| Fugitive Emissions - TRI Reporting |
| Air Pollution vs. Water Pollution |
| Doctors |
Transcript
 | TRANSCRIPT INTERVIEWEE: LaNell Anderson (LA) INTERVIEWER: David Todd (DT) DATE: October 5, 1999 LOCATION: Channelview, Texas TRANSCRIBER: Robin
Johnson REEL: 2037 |
| Please note that videos include roughly 60 seconds of color bars and sound tone for technical settings at the outset of the recordings. You can select
Interview Start in the Table of Contents to skip this section. |
| DT: LaNell, you're an advocate with a lot of experience. Can you tell about some of your experiences in trying to get industry and government to be
more responsive? |
| LA: Well, of course, as you know, theres no school that we can go to, to train ourselves to be an effective advocate. |
| I have been advocating for Houston Ship Channel communities for some eight years now. I have aligned myself with people that I've met at public meetings, you
know, to gain information, effective information. |
| Ah, from, but, in looking at how to solve the problem, which you have to have a taste for solving problems to even get involved in this, I've decided that
what industry responds to, which Ive proven, is that if you can create bad press for them, theyre going to respond. |
| The example is, at public meetings, they send their representatives to see who to put their finger on, okay, where the greatest opposition is coming from, if
you will. |
| And at one of the most recent meetings, concerning our state implementation plan, I got up and spoke and among the things I said were, "I know a lot of you
from industry just hate it when I get up to speak because, and the allegations you make it that I'm uninformed, that I'm angry and that you never know what I'm going to say. |
| But you're wrong, I am informed, and you are right, I am angry, and you are dead right, you are never know what Im gonna say. I will always call a spade a
spade, until the truth is out, we will not solve the problem." |
| During that same meeting I turned and looked at the TNRCC, and I asked them all, counted them off and asked them, if I gave each one of them a hundred
dollars, which I could well afford to do, would they be willing to get up and go out into the audience and beat the hell out of the corporate executives that were there. |
| I never got a response and I waited a long time. And then I explained to them that thats exactly what theyre doing, industry is doing to us, and theyre using
the TNRCC as their weapon. |
| That's how fallible our system is in Texas. It is the - the state of "good ole boy politicians." When Bo Pilgrim can write a check on the Senate floor for
ten thousand dollars, you've got to know that our state legislature is in bad shape. |
| When Buster Brown can appear on the same television show that I'm on and I ask him a direct question of how the legislatures could have failed to put a time
certain date in the grand-fathered legislation, he completely diverts and goes to a different subject. |
| Then when you look at Buster Brown, whose now made an agreement with a young woman whom he sexually harassed in his office, not to file criminal charges
against him, you know he's guilty. So what do we have running our state legislature? We have hypocrites running our state legislature. |
| It all gets down to the one thing that I think will change this condition in our country more than anything, and that is campaign reform. We have to get
the money out of politics in order to regain our country from the corporations. |
| DT: And how do we do that? LA: Legislation. We have to find some lobbyist, that I guess can't get overpaid by industry, that will represent our
interests. |
| DT: Well how do you inspire other activists to join you, say if you wanted to argue for better pollution controls or campaign finance reform, how do you, in
a sense, clone yourself and get more LaNells out there? |
| LA: Thats the one thing I've failed at. I've not been able to do that. I get calls daily from Har all over Harris County and from Montgomery County,
surrounding counties where they need help. They need help fighting an issue right now over in the La Porte area, where Elf Atochem and American Acryl has made application for a permit for a
new, yet another incinerator, which is not necessary. |
| It's, we believe in conjunction with this port expansion. We also believe that, when the issue is no longer hot, that they'll take in waste from all over the
world and burn them right there. And once more, our air shed is deteriorated. |
| There just seems to be no way to stop it. How do you get people interested? Usually the people are interested and they find you when they have a problem. All
you can do is try to help them get focused on trying to solve their problem. |
| DT: What sort of other calls have you gotten over the years? |
| LA: Oh, I've gotten calls from African American communities, where they think that there is an issue of environmental justice about the Superfund sites being
located in their neighborhoods, and they're correct. Out of 29 Superfund sites in and around Harris County, they're all located in neighborhoods of color. |
| It is an environmental justice issue. Actually it's environmental racism. These corporations learned a long time ago that if they can go to the communities
with the least resources to fight them, that they increase their profits. |
| DT: You said earlier that a lot of the activists that you've known have dropped by the wayside, burned out over the years. Can you give us some
examples of how that happens and why? |
| LA: Well, we don't get paid. We don't get paid a penny. Most people have jobs. They cant take off from work. They'll participate when they can. But
basically, it's very negative, it's very, very negative to continue to lose. |
| We have had wins, from time to time, which encouraged some of us onward. But people don't seem to be, they seem to be so involved in both partners having to
work in a family now to keep up their standard of living. |
| You know, people continue to lose, while corporations continue to gain. And, and it's very difficult to overcome that in citizens. If it's an immediate
threat, yes they're going to get involved. But for the long term, they think, quote, the government is going to take care of it. |
| And, we are the government, we are the government. If we don't speak up, it's not going to get said. The reason I continue over the eight or nine years that
I've been doing this, I suppose to sum it up, I could say that in the middle of the night when I can't sleep sometimes I wonder what I could have done to protect my family more. |
| We've, we've, our family has suffered a lot. And, and mine's not the only family. There are many families out of the 55,000 people in just this community who
suffer, and other communities along the ship channel, who suffer, who suffer health problems. |
| DT: And these people that you've met who suffer health problems, do they want to get involved? Or, do they feel like this is more pain than they want to deal
with? |
| LA: They want to get involved initially, and when they begin to see what a huge battle it is, it's easier for them to move away. They just move away. That's
what creates the dead cities, they get sick and they move away. |
| DT: You had mentioned earlier this is a win the encourages people. Can you tell about some of the successes youve had and maybe some of the frustrations or
failures from the fights youve been in? |
| LA: Well, even though American Envirotech got their permit in what I think was an illegal move by John Hall, they still haven't built. I was successful in
going to the Senate Natural Resource Conservation Committee, Senate committee actually, and proving that the applicant and her forced merged partner, had filed law suits against each
other. |
| And that again brings into question the financial ability thats required by the permit. So, I also filed my own appeal, and I'm not an attorney. But I
fashioned an appeal to EPA about the issuance of this permit. And continuing to fight that permit, I believe, is the reason that that facility has never been built. |
| So, you know, we do have some wins occasionally, not enough, I'll say that. You know, but, as far, it has to be an individual desire and the example that I
gave you was about the Chemical Accident Safety Board that really was enough to spur me on for another seven or eight years. |
| DT: Do you have any particular heroes or mentors in the environmental world? Did you read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as a college girl, or? |
| LA: No I did not, but I have since, of course, gotten a copy of - of that book and read it. My greatest mentor is Doctor Neal Carmen. He's the chair of the
Clean Air Chair of the Sierra Club in Austin. He's a Ph.D., as, it's a, in the sciences. He also was a regulator. |
| He worked for 12 years for the Texas Air Control Board. And I'm no different than many citizens across Texas, when we call Dr. Carmen. He gets the
information and helps us, he helps focus us and cut through all of the time consuming red tape to learn how to fight effectively. And we've made some major strides in Texas. |
| Ah, the, I would bring up the grand-fathered issue. Ah, we, for many years, twenty-seven, twenty-eight years, we have had legislation in the state of Texas
that gave some of the old facilities a free ride, actually. And that, with the implementation of the Clean Air Act, it was stated and assumed, by the Texas legislature, that some of these
corporations were so old that they would be out of service soon. |
| And it would be ridiculous to force them to upgrade to the control technology that was being required through this legislation. And, lo and behold,
twenty-seven, twenty-eight years later, some of these old corporations are still pumping away. There's one cracking unit at Crown Central Petroleum that was built in 1920 and has been
grandfathered all these years. |
| The law states, the legislation states that if they make changes to that facility, that it cannot increase, decrease, or change speciation of wastes that
they produce. Well you know with the advancement of technology that theres no way they could have continued to repair this cracker without it changing emissions in some way. And yet the state
of Texas has given them a pass. |
| And, its not only them, the Exxon facility in Bay Town is 60% grandfathered, 60% of that huge facility is grandfathered. The 1-3-butadiene unit out here at,
Equistar, formerly known as Lyondell was grandfathered and I've kicked up a big storm about that. And I guess we could count that a a victory. |
| I kicked up a big storm about it. I asked Doctor Carmen to come with me to the, ah, meeting that the company offered to have. We discovered that Elf Atochem,
which was not on site, was shipping their product in using Equistars, then Lyondells grandfathered 1-3- Butadiene facility and to produce their product and then shipping that finished product
off site. |
| I've talked about that in Washington many times. And, the Justice Department even talked to me about that issue. They have since become permitted. That was a
victory. They permitted that 1-3-Butadiene unit. Can you imagine what we breathed prior to the permitting. So, we put enough heat, primarily Neal put enough heat on the Governor about the
grandfather issue. |
| And quite frankly, Governor George Bush, which many citizens, most citizens in Channelview refer to as Toxic George, wanted to jump out and get
ahead of that issue. So he, very carefully orchestrated a committee to address through the TNRCC to address the grandfather issue. I attended every one of the meetings. |
| They were not scheduled to have any public input, until I was the squeaky wheel needing the grease, and insisted on public input. So they dedicated one
entire meeting to public input, with three minutes each to speak on a week day during business hours when a normal person had to work. |
| At the end of this process over several months they created a program for the law breakers which were the grandfathered facilities, so that they could
volunteer to join in this grandfathered program, which is, requires less regulation than normally permitted facilities, okay, and gives them longer time. |
| So the problem they ended up with from the Governor was layered with incentives for industry, absolutely layered with more incentives for industry. So George
Bush has created and rewarded law breakers in this state. And, he, he has a horrible, horrible environmental record. And it's all for the pursuit of the greedy profits of the oil and
petrochemical industry. |
| DW: Theres often not much justice in this world. But you were saying, what if you had pursued some of these industry officials and lobbyists? How would they
feel, would they see it as something fair? And, you explained that your family has been attacked from these chemicals that have come out from these companies? |
| LA: Well, let me appeal to your sense of problem solving here. Let's say we could apply a root cause analysis to all the deaths that occur. Which is not
anecdotal, by the way, it's not anecdotal at all, it's provable. All the high rates of cancer, all the suffering from health problems and the deaths that have occurred in my family,
okay. |
| And you relate that to an equal action towards the chemical companies, the petrochemical companies that we know are causing this. If we were to kill members
of the petrochemical companies do you think that they would rest before they put us in jail? |
| If I spread poison on one of them, let's say I took a plant manager and I poured poison on him, how different is that from what they're doing to 55,000
people in this community by forcing us to breathe their carcinogens? There's no difference. So why is there no justice for what theyre doing to the citizens in our community? |
| DT: Were you born and raised in this area, or another part of Texas? |
| LA: I actually moved from Beaumont, Texas. DT: At a young age? LA: Thirteen years old. |
| DT: So, I don't think we've discussed yet how you've seen this, I mean cause you, because, was there a time when you can remember having gone swimming in
this kind of water? Maybe you could do a little historical review then versus now for us. |
| LA: When I was a teenager, we often water skied in this river. And it's it was just wonderful. I mean, there were fish. You know, people would come down here
and go fishing and it was it was fairly clean. And, it was a weekend recreational area, and this river's designated for recreation, by the way. |
| Over the years, not many people water ski on the river any more. Sometimes people will come into the area not being aware of the risks, and they'll water
ski. |
| And when they take those wh - if there's an accident, for example and they take those people to the local hospitals, the first thing they do when they
realize that they're not, you know, they're not going to die immediately, is they pump their lungs, they pump their lungs out, because of the poisons that are in the water. |
| It's a sad commentary on the condition of the river when I was a teenager and the condition now. The oxygen levels are really low, in the water, so it does
not sustain the normal botanical life that once existed there. |
| DT: When you try to respond to problems like that, do you find that there are any allies out there, that, for example do the unions help in any way? I mean,
they are sort of on the front lines, in many cases. |
| LA: Well the unions have been threatened by other corporations, just as their regular workers have in the non-union shops about jobs. About how incredibly
important it is that there are no new regulations so that they can keep up the profits, so that they can keep paying them their $15 to $18 dollars an hour. |
| Umm there's one example that I would give, which is Crown Central Petroleum. Their company gives, like most corporations, give good lip service to "we want
to do the right thing," that's part of their public relations. |
| And, at one point in time some of the union workers went to the corporate officials and said, look we're really concerned about some problems here and we
think we're being overly exposed and we think we're being affect. So, the company's response was to lock them out and hire new employees. |
| And they've been successful at doing it. They have absolutely been successful at doing it. So, that is a another example of how the laws in our country don't
matter when it comes to corporations. They're going to win because they can outgun us, financially, and they can outstay us, because of their employees. They pay their employees to work on
these problems. |
| DT: Can you give some other examples of where companies have tried to retaliate or silence their neighbors or their workers? |
| LA: Well, unfortunately, in in this environmental business, the corporations are very well trained in how to silence any opposition. The first thing they do
is jump into a community and form a citizens advisory panel, which is misleading in and of itself, because citizens never advise corporations. |
| But, they gather some community members, and they issue invitations, and especially to those that are opponents, and they bring you together and they get
everyones agreement to work through their process, which is based on dragging it out as long as possible and finding some way to control everybody involved. And one experience I've watched over
the years is, in one particular CAP, a citizen started out very strong, very, very strong. |
| DT: What is CAP? LA: The Citizens Advisory Panel. And, of course they learned everything they can about each and every member. And they learned that this
particular member had a business and they had some contracts with that business. |
| And so they immediately pulled their contracts. And, of course, that hurt their business and it was their only method of survival. So, the opposition became
less and less and less. And then the rewards on the part of the corporation started. The corporation would rewarding this person in little psychological ways, it's really a psychological
warfare. |
| They would offer speaking engagements, they would offer trips, you know, they would offer many things. So that the person became extremely pliable, and
became a weapon against the rest of the community. It was an attempt, a bald-faced attempt at splitting the opposition. And they they almost won. They almost won. |
| DT: Can you gives us some examples, maybe, of people who feel like they've been co-opted, are that you've perceived as being co-opted? |
| LA: I'm not sure anybody would admit that they've been co-opted. But it was very easy for me to see when this happened. That that's exactly what the
corporations were attempting to do and they did successfully co-opt this person. |
| DT: And, the things that they would say, or the people that they would spend time with would change after they? |
| LA: Well, the remarks made by citizens would become more friendly to industry. And, actually make an appeal to other citizens to understand industry's
position. And they started making a pitch about the jobs that were necessary for the community and the money that industry had spent on safety issue. And, you know, all of the the rhetoric that
we've all heard, for all these years, from industry. It was very obvious. |
| DT: Talking about rhetoric that you've heard over the years, can you sort of track how things have changed since you first became involved in this, the way
industry deals with the community surrounding? |
| LA: Well, in the very beginning, industry didn't care too much, because, you know, the the regulations were a little more lax ten years ago. And so they
didn't think they had to answer to anybody. |
| You know, when, when communities gained in number in their opposition to the things that the corporations were doing, that affected their health directly,
then they decided to pull back and approach this in a more, in a in a stealth-like fashion so that they, they could achieve the same result without being very public about it. |
| And thats when the CAPs or Citizen Advisory Panels were instituted and they have facilitators that are paid by industry. And so, it's an absolute directed,
waste of time on the part of citizens. They often times get people who are retired from industry to be a, quote, citizen member. You know, they are receiving a retirement check every month,
what are they going to say against an industry, I mean, they're not. |
| DT: How do you get the most effective response out of government or industry? How do you make the biggest impact, what is the best route to take? |
| LA: Two years ago I decided personally that I was not going to waste my time on government anymore, that the politicians were being used as nothing more than
an obstacle in my path. And that the shortest distance between the problem and the solution was going directly to the source. |
| And I have been involved in this source reduction project for many years now. When I bypass the time wasting interaction with politicians and I go directly
to the plant managers, and to the Vice Presidents and I say, "This is what weve discovered, now what are you willing to do about it?" The only thing I have in my favor is bad press. |
| DT: LaNell, can you talk more about the Crown Central issue youve been involved with? |
| LA: Well, Ive tracked the union members, of course, and helped them in some of their appearances before the legislators, etc. But recently I was asked to do
an interview for NBC and, I agreed. And we went over to Crown Central. And I think you'll find this very interesting in terms of the media and how much effect they have on this issue. There was
a film crew, and - |
| DT: Can you resume telling more about Crown Central? |
| LA: Well, I was asked to do an interview over there. Ah, I've attended many meetings to help legislative issues, alongside the, ah, union workers. And, I did
this interview a couple of weeks ago, with a White House Correspondent, NBC, and, ah, as we were setting to do the interview, I know you'll enjoy this, Crown Central sent three trucks out to
investigate what we were doing, and they didn't just drive up. |
| LA: Another example I would offer is the Crown Central Petroleum issue, which has been a big grandfathered issue. They've been cited for breaking many, many
environmental laws here in, ah, the state of Texas and Harris County. |
| And, ah, some of our local government officials, at the time they were breaking these laws and some of our, I guess, environmental groups, actually gave them
an environmental award, which was just egregious to most of us who seriously work on environmental issues most of the time. |
| They have a cracking unit that was built in the 1920s that has been grandfathered all these years. They've changed it. There's no doubt. And when their
employees came along and objected to, some of the processes that were being, forced upon them and the emissions endangering their lives, they just locked them out, simply locked them
out. |
| I've been to many hearings with these, ah, some of these men and woman. We've had them at a citizens hearing as well. And what, ah, this company did actually
was illegal, but there are no consequences for this company. |
| They seem to be able to get by with doing whatever they choose to do, with no fear of retribution. Well, a couple weeks ago, NBC White House correspondent
asked me to do an interview with them, and I did. |
| And, I know youll appreciate this, we went over and set up in front of Crown Central Petroleum. Well, while the corporations will try to convince the public
that they are so amenable to cooperation, I would just like to tell you that I personally experienced, and so did the NBC film crew and interviewer, that Crown Central sent three pick up trucks
out, not in an innocuous way, but in a very threatening manner to ask what we were doing there. |
| And when the NBC crew gave them their card, they went away, because, as I pointed out early on in the interview, we had to be on public property. They would
not allow us to do an interview on their property, of course. |
| And, not only did they send these three trucks to intimidate us, or let me say to attempt intimidation, they also had a worker pull up very close to us and
video tape everything we were doing the entire time we were there. |
| And, of course, that just caused us to stay a little longer. But that's the sort of cooperation that industry gives the citizens, is intimidation. |
| DT: You mentioned that Crown Central, and I guess other companies have very old units in their plants. Can you describe some of your visits that you've made
to these different facilities and what they look like, describe for the people that haven't had the chance to visit? |
| LA: Well, over the past three of four months I spent probably a total of 24 hours inside chemical plants. And, you can walk through a, one processing unit
that's very old, and then walk through an identical processing unit that's very new. And, and it, and the difference is just instantaneous. |
| You see leaks, you smell, ah, the chemicals, ah, very strongly in some of the older units, the ground is saturated. Of course, the corporations don't want
this information to get out, you know. You ask them and you start probing to understand their fugitive emissions program and you realize that with some corporations that's nothing more than a
sham. They don't, they don't monitor their fugitive emissions at all. |
| You know, they just go through the paperwork, so to speak. Ah, while other corporations are very good at it. I have to say that we visited one plant, and
stayed in their plant for several hours, where they did an excellent job of monitoring their fugitive emissions. And when that word, fugitive, is attached to emissions, it tends to make people
think it's insignificant. |
| But, you better believe it's not insignificant. With over 400,000 connections in a facility where there might be an emission, where there is emissions, from
leaks, and the leaks are considered so minor as to not to be something that has to be changed right away, you know, fugitive emissions are a huge issue. When you look at the TRI, Toxic Release
Inventory, reporting this, (misc.) |
| the Toxic Release Inventory reporting that's required by all corporations, you'll see a huge chunk of their reportable emissions are calculated as fugitive
emissions. There are two different methods of calculations, they can go by (misc.) |
| these corporations can go by a formula, which is considered worst case scenario. But, when you as a citizen get in there and start looking, it's not worst
case scenario at all. You know, it's a, it's just a standard that was set out there for a typical plant. They could have something leaking like a si- (misc.) |
| Any corporation could have something leaking like a sieve, and they could call it a fugitive emission. Ah, they have, the laws are very specific about first
attempts to repair, then they have 15 days for the second attempt, and then they have 30 days for the next attempt. So we've got 400,000 connections (misc.) |
| So we have 400,000 connections in a facility with the potential to leak. And, any number of those connections can leak on an ongoing basis. |
| DT: You told us a little bit about what it's like to visit some of these plants. Can you describe some of the the homes and small business that ring some of
these plants and maybe talk about this idea of buffer zones. |
| LA: Well, what citizens refer to as kill zones are (misc.) LA: What citizens refer to as kill zones are the zones that are closely, ah, located, you know,
very, very close proximity to the plants. |
| And that's at the highest risk, they're at the very highest risk from accidental explosions. Depending on the height of the stacks from the flares, etc., you
know, you may or may not be in the most exposed area. And depending on the wind directions. I don't know if I've explained, but here in Channelview, we're pretty unique in that we have the ship
channel coming from the Gulf of Mexico, up through Galveston, Texas City, all of those cities, where they have industry located all the way down to the gulf. |
| Their emissions, the winds, by the way, according to data, about 70% of the time each year, are south-southeast to north-northwest. So if you look at the
geographical position of Channelview in relation to the ship channel, you realize all of those emissions are floating out over the least resistant area, which is the ship channel. |
| And the wind is naturally blowing them up the ship channel, to the point right here, at Channelview, where the ship channel makes a hard 90 degree left turn.
The emissions dont make the 90 degree left turn, they come and get dumped completely on our community. |
| DT: Have you visited these people that have had to sell their homes or otherwise leave the community because of the pollutants? |
| LA: I have. I'm one of those people. I've been, ah, able to afford to move. The point I'd like to make is so many people are trapped here because they can't
move. They bought their homes and paid for them and are retired. They can no longer go out and get a job to support another mortgage payment at a higher price somewhere. |
| Their productive years are gone. And, that's the most insidious part of this. Ah, there are other people, naturally, who moved to the community when the
property values began to decline, because they're looking for affordable housing. There are no disclosures out there from industry about the carcinogens in the air, and the chances that you
likely are going to be made ill from breathing the air. |
| Ah, by the way, an interesting fact is, we breathe ten times more air than the water we drink. So many people are so focused on water, which is a very
important issue by the way. It is certainly a pathogen, ah, for the chemicals. But, the air is more important in my view. |
| Ah, but the communities get stagnant because the people who can afford to move away, do. Ah, people who get ill for the first time in their lives from
something caused by chemicals, are told by some responsible doctors that you're being made ill by the chemicals and you need to move. |
| So they get out of the neighborhood. The property values decline. People have to go out and wash the dust and soot off their houses every day, ah, sometimes
every day. |
| It gets into your carpeting, it gets into your air conditioning system of your car, so that every time you crank up your car you smell the odor of chemicals.
You know, and the corporate executives make light of this, they say it's the smell of money. But it's not, it's the smell of deadly chemicals. |
| DT: You mentioned that some of these residents get advice from doctors. Can you tell about the medical community and their reaction to people's symptoms and
their worries? |
| LA: For the most part the medical community in Houston is silent, much to citizens who are actives dismay. We have the greatest medical center in the whole
United States, in a lot of people's view, right here in Houston. These doctors come here, they think its the Mecca, you know, to serve their time and their residencies right here in Houston.
And I cannot tell you how much money has been spent on that medical center. |
| Yet, those doctors oftentimes sit silent. They won't come out and make a public statement about the health, and the - the health of the citizens of Houston.
They have, however, just in the past couple of years, stated that childhood cancer is number one, we're number one the nation for childhood cancer, number one in the nation childhood asthma,
and number one for adult asthma. |
| And there's a reason for that, but that's as far as they go. There are neighborhood doctors, however, who will go a little further. But upon questioning a
physician recently about why doctors would not take a more positive stand, since their Hippocratic Oath is based on protecting the health of human beings, they simply say we have less than
eight hours of training, in medical school, about environmental causes of illness. |
| So how do we know? We have nothing to back us up. So there needs to be a revolutionary change in our medical establishment, our medical community. They need
to get responsible. There is an organization called Physicians for Social Responsibility, and they're making quite an impact. And all I would say that all physicians in our country need to
follow the path of Physicians for Social Responsibility. |
| DT: Speaking of impact, can you tell us what you think your biggest effect has been on Channelview and environmental protection concerns? |
| LA: Well, because of citizen opposition, the two major chemical companies in this area have cleaned up. They have permitted units because our eyes have been
on them. And they can no longer get by with just counting on the TNRCC not to regulate them. Ah, we're looking. We recently discovered there was an MTBE unit that was not permitted. |
| And they have all sorts of excuses. They produced a huge thick book about the reasons for all of the failures during a recent inspection. But, you know,
history repeats itself and history cannot be denied. You look at the history of these corporations and no matter how much they say they're doing the right thing the inspection reports say that
theyre not. |
| DT: From what inspection reports are telling you, for an individual plant or an individual company, what do you think are the big challenges for the
environment in general, in this area or in Texas? |
| LA: Well I think in the whole U.S., you know, look at the rivers and streams in our country, they're all polluted. Look at the lack of control over the
chemical industry. There's no testing and screening program for chemicals, why? |
| You must say why? And when, when people come to me and say, "What can we do?" I say, "Start asking why, when you talk to someone ask why, and continue to say
why." And eventually we'll get to the answer. |
| DT: If there was a message that you could pass on to other people, is it that, that people continue to ask the question, "Why?" |
| LA: Well, I think the primary message would be that we are all responsible to take care of ourselves. We cannot depend on the government to do it, we are the
government. We're responsible to manage and maintain our communities as well as our homes, our schools. |
| The industry that's located in your community, understand what your rights are. Don't become intimidated. Don't say, "Well, somebody else will do it," they
don't, they don't. It starts with you. It starts with you. |
| DT: If somebody said that they would feel intimidated, what would you say to do about the fear? |
| LA: Well, I would ask them to remind themselves that we live supposedly live in a democracy, not a "wealth-ocracy." That as long as we subscribe to the
values of a democracy that means that we citizens do have rights, but if we dont stand up and assert those rights they're going to be taken away from us more and more and more every
year. |
| Rather than to feel intimidated, what are they going to do, kill you and eat you, no they can't do that. You have an opinion which is equally as
important as a corporate executives opinion, especially when he's violating your air space, your water that youre drinking, when he is using your portion of our natural resources. |
| No one ever said that corporations had the right to 90% of our natural resources. They have acted irresponsibly in managing what they've done to our natural
resources. They need to stop doing what they're doing. If they if the corporations cannot operate, making a profit, doing things the correct way, then I suggest they shut their doors. |
| DT: Is there anything else that we ought to discuss? LA: Thats it. Im just drained. |
| DT: Well, thank you very much, LaNell. You did a wonderful job and it was a pleasure to visit with you. LA: You're welcome. You are very welcome. DT: Thank
you for your time. |
| LA: Hmm. I guess that was a good note on which to end, wasn't it. DT: Drama. End of reel 2037. End of interview of Lanell Anderson. |
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