Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor

Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor

Lerner, Steve
Bullard, Robert D.

Paperback

Series: Urban and Industrial Environments

19th Century United States HistoryEnvironmental StudiesRegional: South

ISBN10: 0262622041
ISBN13: 9780262622042
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: Feb 17 2006
Pages: 328
Weight: 0.88
Height: 0.73 Width: 8.40 Depth: 8.66
Language: English
The story of how a mixed-income minority community in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor fought Shell Oil and won.

For years, the residents of Diamond, Louisiana, lived with an inescapable acrid, metallic smell--the toxic bouquet of pollution--and a mysterious chemical fog that seeped into their houses. They looked out on the massive Norco Industrial Complex: a maze of pipelines, stacks topped by flares burning off excess gas, and huge oil tankers moving up the Mississippi. They experienced headaches, stinging eyes, allergies, asthma, and other respiratory problems, skin disorders, and cancers that they were convinced were caused by their proximity to heavy industry. Periodic industrial explosions damaged their houses and killed some of their neighbors. Their small, African-American, mixed-income neighborhood was sandwiched between two giant Shell Oil plants in Louisiana's notorious Chemical Corridor. When the residents of Diamond demanded that Shell relocate them, their chances of success seemed slim: a community with little political clout was taking on the second-largest oil company in the world. And yet, after effective grassroots organizing, unremitting fenceline protests, seemingly endless negotiations with Shell officials, and intense media coverage, the people of Diamond finally got what they wanted: money from Shell to help them relocate out of harm's way. In this book, Steve Lerner tells their story.

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