RESIDENTS & SUPPORTERS RALLY FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE; DECRY VX WASTE
BEING SHIPPED TO PORT ARTHUR, TX AND BURNED
Army Helping to Ensure Low-Income, Minority Neighborhood Becomes a Toxic Dump

PORT ARTHUR, TEXAS- Today local residents and supporters continued their protest of the Army's ongoing shipment of VX nerve agent waste from an Indiana chemical weapons depot to a hazardous waste incinerator in Port Arthur. In mid-April, the Army secretly signed a $49+ million contract with Veolia Environmental Services to burn the VX by-product. Since then, trucks have been traversing over 900 miles through eight states to deliver the toxic mix to a community suffering from the pollution of a slew of refineries and chemical plants.

Speakers at the rally stressed that shipping VX waste to the predominantly low-income, African-American neighborhood in Port Arthur, already recognized as a national dumping ground, is a flagrant violation of the principles of Environmental Justice. They pointed out that Port Arthur was chosen as a target after the waste had first been refused by Ohio and then New Jersey and that the Army's contract with Veolia was signed without public input or even notice, despite a Congressional directive to do so. 

"Enough is enough," said Hilton Kelley, Director of Port Arthur's Community In-power Development Association. "People here are sick and tired of being left out of the decision-making process as to what comes into our community. At this point we have reached a toxic waste overflow in the Port Arthur/Southeast Texas area. It's time for state and local governments to put the health and welfare of people before profits."

Speaking about the tendency to locate toxic industries in and send toxic waste to minority communities, Geoffrey Castro, Executive Director of Citizens League for Environmental Action Now, said, "The Army's decision to send the VX waste to an incinerator in Port Arthur, a predominantly African-American community brings up questions of Environmental Racism and rightly so." He further commented, "The bottom line is that no community should have an open door for waste refused by other states."

According to Craig Williams, Director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, everything about the Army's decision was wrong. "The shipments are completely unnecessary and a public health and environmental outrage," he said. "Originally the Army agreed with Indiana residents and state regulators to treat the waste on-site using a safe, non-incineration technology but instead secretly opted to add toxic incinerator emissions to an already over-burdened community 900 miles away. It's unconscionable."

"The Army wants folks to think that because we were ruled against in an effort to have the federal court immediately stop the shipments via a Preliminary Injunction, that this fight is over," said Williams. "They are dead wrong. Based on information previously withheld from the citizens groups AND the Court, and other factors, we will be back in Court shortly seeking to obtain an order stopping the shipments of this material to Texas permanently." 

Rally participants called on local, state and federal officials to work with them and begin the long-overdue process of bringing environmental justice to Port Arthur.

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