Texan takes on city, Army over waste

Environmental activists in Indiana and Kentucky opposed plans to transport the VX byproduct for disposal, saying the hydrolysate contains toxic compounds and more VX than the Army has acknowledged. Some have also suggested the waste water could erode the storage containers.

In Port Arthur, Army and city officials did not announce the project until the deal was done.

"We didn't even get a warning that it was coming," Kelley said. "We're being used as guinea pigs because we are the area of least resistance. How are you going to go out and protest for clean air when you are just trying to get food for your family to eat?"

Mayor Oscar Ortiz said he saw no reason to warn anyone.

"Why create a big scare thing if there's nothing there to be afraid of? Why do something about a project that's safe and creating a lot of work?" Ortiz said.

A 2003 survey by researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston found that residents of Beaumont-Port Arthur area had higher rates of a variety of symptoms, particularly respiratory, ear-nose-and-throat and skin conditions, than a group from Galveston.

Moya Green is convinced that her children's ailments, her own recently diagnosed asthma and the respiratory problems of two nieces, one a newborn, are connected to the emissions from the refineries and chemical plants.

"There is always a smell, always a spill. Pretty much every day, there is more smog, more fog than anything else," said Green, 35, who is in nursing school. "It has to be the refineries. This is not normal. This is crazy."

Green is circulating a petition to stop the incineration project. "I had to see what I could do for my own children because help is not there," she said.

While the mayor said the refineries and chemical plants are probably to blame for some health problems, he defended the companies as "good corporate partners" that contribute 64 percent of the city's tax base.

But Port Arthur residents say they get little of the benefits. Instead, the money is going to developments sprouting to the west of the city where the more affluent have fled and where golf courses, hotels and homes are under construction.

"For people to go around and blame the refineries and Veolia for this and that ... it's just something we have to live with," the mayor said. "I'm going to be 71 in May and I've been breathing this air for fifty-some years. I feel fine. Besides, we all have to die sometime."

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