Louisiana town fights for relief after a billion-dollar oil disaster

Four months have passed since a Louisiana oil facility erupted, spewing dense black sludge that drifted onto homes, farms and waterways up to 50 miles away.

Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana environmental regulators have filed a broad lawsuit against Smitty’s Supply, the company that operated the vehicle oil and lubricant storage facility. But residents of the majority-black city are skeptical that they will benefit from the billion-dollar federal lawsuit.

Much of this belief comes from the fact that despite repeated calls for help, black sludge still clings to the walls, roofs and floors of more than half of the city’s properties, according to Van Showers, mayor of Roseland, Louisiana.

“People want to know when they’re going to get help, and there’s nothing that makes them think this process would lead to that,” said Showers, who works at a local chicken processing plant and struggled financially during the cleanup process.

This skepticism is rooted in harsh experience — and in a broader history of environmental racism that has left black communities shouldering disproportionate burdens. This gap has left residents in a state of prolonged uncertainty about their water, their health and whether legal proceedings taking place in distant courtrooms will ever reach their homes. It’s a familiar pattern, particularly in Louisiana, where environmental disasters consistently hit black and low-income communities harder, while leaving them last in line for recovery.

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Initially, residents of the city, where the average person earns just $17,000 a year, were asked to clean up the mess themselves.

The explosion doused the community of 1,100 with dozens of chemicals, including carcinogens known as PFASor “forever chemicals.” One resident living on a fixed income told Capital B that in the weeks following the event, she racked up more than $1,000 in credit card debt to replace stained panels on her trailer.

However, in October, after sustained pressure from residents, the tide seemed to turn. Federal and state agencies increased their presence in the disaster area, surveyed the community, filed a lawsuit and began testing wildlife — including fish and deer — for contamination.

But even with the government’s increased response, advocates, residents and local officials warn it is far from enough. Compensation from the lawsuit, if ever paid, likely won’t benefit residents, Showers and local attorneys said. Civil penalties resulting from federal prosecutions are typically deposited into the U.S. Treasury’s general fund and are often used exclusively to fund environmental cleanup costs, not to support residents.

“As far as the lawsuit goes, I don’t think it’s going to benefit the community,” Showers said.

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They survived the hurricane. Their insurance company did not do this.

The government’s suit alleges that for years, Smitty knowingly violated safety rules and pollution permits. The company failed to maintain basic spill prevention and emergency response plans, regulators said.

The complaint says millions of gallons of contaminated water, oil and chemicals leaked off-site into ditches and seeks more than $1 billion in fines and penalties related to the explosion and spill.

In response to the lawsuit, a representative for Smitty’s wrote: “Smitty’s has been and remains committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations and operating as a responsible member of the Tangipahoa Parish community.” »

The disaster was the “result of an unplanned industrial fire,” the representative added, and the company is “implementing measures to help prevent future incidents and protect our waterways and neighbors.”

Yet even since the lawsuit was filed, according to state documents, Smitty’s has been caught pumping unauthorized “oily liquids” into local waterways.

Meanwhile, a recent report from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality shows that a state contractor recovered at least 74 live wildlife from the disaster area and that 59 of them had digested the oily substance or were covered in it. At least eight animals were found dead, including four turtles and an alligator.

Dozens of other pets and livestock, including cattle and horses, were covered in residue. Many residents, including Showers, saw their pets die. These findings, combined with reports of stillborn calves, highlight the extent to which contamination has seeped into daily life, residents said.

The explosion not only unleashed lasting environmental and health threats — the kind that, as Showers fears, “can lie dormant for years and then all of a sudden…you start getting a lot of people with cancer” — it also indefinitely shut down Roseland’s largest employer, Smitty’s Supply.

For weeks after the explosion, Millie Simmons, a 58-year-old educator, struggled to stay outside in Roseland for more than 10 minutes without respiratory irritation. Even inside her home, she felt “exhausted” and “lethargic” for weeks.

Showers said she’s not alone. The biggest complaints he still receives are that “people are always sick” and “want to know when they’re going to get help cleaning up their property.”

“Most definitely, we deserve something,” Simmons said.

The environmental divide of a nation

In October, the federal government delegated the cleanup process entirely to the state and Smitty’s. Some residents say they saw Smitty’s contractors cleaning up a few properties, but others, including the mayor, say their claims have gone unanswered. Showers said the company only reimbursed him for one night in a hotel when he was forced to leave town after the explosion and never responded to his request for compensation after a litter of his dogs fell ill and died in the weeks that followed.

Advocates with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, or LEAN, who informed Smitty’s and federal and state environmental regulators of their intention to sue, said residents continue to approach them about contaminated crops and water wells. They don’t know if their water is safe, even months later.

“There are so many unanswered questions that are causing so much anxiety in communities,” said Marylee Orr, executive director of LEAN. “People don’t feel safe in their homes. »​​

Orr said she was particularly concerned that the current legal process would repeat familiar patterns from other environmental disasters.

In places like Grand Bois in southern Louisiana and Flint, Michigan, she noted, residents waited years for historic settlements to turn into real checks they could cash — only to see much of the money swallowed up by legal fees. In Flint, residents have been waiting more than a decade for compensation for the nation’s most notorious water crisis, which has caused a series of neurological and developmental problems in children. Ultimately, only a portion of affected residents will receive checks of around $1,000.

In Roseland, Showers found himself in an information void. He relies more on external information than on official information points to know the full extent of the contamination in his own city. In fact, he was unaware of the state report showing harm to local animals until Capital B brought it to his attention.

“No one from the government ever said anything to me,” he said. “It’s aggravating.”

This lack of transparency makes it more difficult, he added, to answer the basic questions residents ask him at the grocery store, at church and in front of town hall: “Is my water safe? What’s happening to the animals? Am I going to be okay?”

It’s a dynamic that reflects both Louisiana’s long-standing political dynamics and the growing uncertainty under the Trump administration.

His position as a black Democrat leading a majority-black city in a state dominated by white, conservative leaders has only intensified that isolation, he told Capital B in September.

Historically, black communities have received less recovery assistance than white areas that suffered comparable damage in environmental disasters. Now, experts warn that federal support for environmental disasters in Black and Democratic areas is poised to weaken even further under the Trump administration, which has reduced EPA and DOJ enforcement to historic lows.

During the first 11 months of Trump’s second term, the EPA and DOJ took just 20 enforcement actions against polluters, imposing $15.1 million in penalties. In the final 19 days of the Biden administration last January, the EPA and DOJ imposed $590 million in sanctions.

The current administration has also asked EPA officials not to consider whether affected communities are “minority or low-income populations” when prioritizing enforcement actions.

Showers estimates that fewer than three-quarters of properties have been cleaned, and that many residents who dutifully called the complaints hotline are still living with stained roofs, sticky yards and lingering health problems.

“There’s just not enough information out there or work being done for people to feel comfortable with what’s going on.”