The Manchester neighborhood in Houston is completely surrounded by Valero, Texas Recycling, a car crushing facility, the Port of Houston, Highway 610, a rail yard and a waste water treatment plant. These are two aerial photos of the Manchester community that my dad, Juan Parras, took a few years ago. The area in green is of course Manchester. The third image is a shot of the Houston Ship Channel.
Native son Hilton Kelley will get Green Nobel for grass-roots environmentalism. By Matthew Tresaugue, Houston Chronicle.
PORT ARTHUR, Texas — The public housing project where Hilton Kelley was born and raised sits in the shadows of two refineries that belch toxic chemicals into the air.
By Sue Sturgis, Facing South. The environmental destruction caused by Louisiana's oil industry did not begin with the BP disaster, and a visit to the town of Norco 25 miles west of New Orleans powerfully illustrates that reality.
Today in Mobile, Alabama, community leaders from across the Gulf Coast got together for day one of a two-day summit on fair housing and environmental justice. At the end of a day packed with panels, workshops, and speeches, I spoke with Teresa Bettis, who played a major role in organizing the summit.
More than a 100 residents from across the state filled the hearing room at the [Mississippi] State Capitol as the discussion devoted to airing longstanding grievances over deadly chemical wastes – particularly creosote – left for decades in unsuspecting residential neighborhoods by large manufacturers like Kerr-McGee that have either packed up and gone or changed their names and continue to do business as usua
Originally published as an email to the Gulf Coast Fund's network of grantees, December 15th 2010.
I am currently en route via Amtrak to today's White House Summit on Environmental Justice - an historic, all-day gathering of federal cabinet secretaries and environmental leaders from across the United States (see details in Press Release below).
After Hurricane Gustav in 2008, north Baton Rouge residents were left without electricity for nearly two weeks. Across the street at ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge refinery, the second largest refinery in the country, workers were dealing with their own mess.
For many here at ground zero of the BP oil disaster, news has fluctuated between the absurd and the insane. On the national front, testimony from the on-going presidential oil spill commission shows a seemingly never-ending cascade of mistakes and dismal safety measures, including a rig technician who missed key signals the well was going to blow up while he was on a smoking break.
The Manchester neighborhood in Houston is completely surrounded by Valero, Texas Recycling, a car crushing facility, the Port of Houston, Highway 610, a rail yard and a waste water treatment plant. These are two aerial photos of the Manchester community that my dad, Juan Parras, took a few years ago. The area in green is of course Manchester. The third image is a shot of the Houston Ship Channel.
Native son Hilton Kelley will get Green Nobel for grass-roots environmentalism. By Matthew Tresaugue, 
By Sue Sturgis, 
Today in Mobile, Alabama, community leaders from across the Gulf Coast got together for day one of a two-day summit on fair housing and environmental justice. At the end of a day packed with panels, workshops, and speeches, I spoke with Teresa Bettis, who played a major role in organizing the summit.
More than a 100 residents from across the state filled the hearing room at the [Mississippi] State Capitol as the discussion devoted to airing longstanding grievances over deadly chemical wastes – particularly creosote – left for decades in unsuspecting residential neighborhoods by large manufacturers like Kerr-McGee that have either packed up and gone or changed their names and continue to do business as usua 
After Hurricane Gustav in 2008, north Baton Rouge residents were left without electricity for nearly two weeks. Across the street at ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge refinery, the second largest refinery in the country, workers were dealing with their own mess. 
