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

Posted on: Tuesday, 21 March 2006, 06:00 CST

By Berry, E Helen

Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor, by Steve Lerner, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005. 344 pp. $27.95 (hardbound). ISBN: 0-262-12273-1.

Diamond is the story of how the residents of one small Louisiana town became slowly but inexorably surrounded by two massive Shell chemical and oil refineries, then trapped by the refineries into a situation in which the homes and neighborhood in which the community members lived were toxic. Yet the residents could not readily sell- out without losing their community, in addition to the idea that there was little economic equity to be had in these fence-line homes. Only a buy-out by the company would provide any economic benefit from the homes they had maintained for many years. Worse, after long years as an agrarian setting, the refineries had made the land, air and water, less and less habitable. Steve Lerner's interviews with residents, activists, and foundations provide a detailed portrait of the many forward and backward steps taken to arrive at a settlement between the large corporation and the small neighborhood, comprised of descendents of slaves.

The story Lerner tells begins with descriptions of the neighborhood, its relationship with Norco, the larger white community beside Diamond, and this Louisiana region's role as the center of the largest slave revolt in U.S. history. He describes the increasing corporate impacts on the environment of the Diamond/ Norco area, including the history of toxic releases, explosions, and the overwhelming catalogue of health disorders that members of the community experienced. Through interviews with both local and national activists, the intended and unintended insults to the community are described, including the racial overlay of the negotiations between the community, its neighbors, and the corporation. Lerner continues with the implications of both the insults and the negotiations, ending, finally, with the successful relocation of the town, but with the inevitable loss of the community that had been home to Diamond's residents.

The chronicle of Diamond is the tale often told of David challenging Goliath in the world of corporations and communities, though in these cases the underdog generally does not succeed. The difference for Diamond is that this small town won, and Lerner's book documents the process and the details of how and why Diamond succeeded in being relocated. Lerner tells this story through the voices of Diamond's residents, through interviews, reporting from newspapers and other written accounts of meetings, weaving these many sources together to develop a single coherent narrative. The tale has been told before in other settings, but Lerner's contribution is to show that the process of reaching an agreement between a small group of people and a large corporation does not involve a single storyline, but is often a tangled sequence of events. He shows clearly that Diamond succeeded largely because the residents were persistent, they knocked on every door, they accepted every offer of help, and, whenever possible, they took advantage of any serendipitous opportunities that came their way.

There are omissions that would make this text more useful as a teaching tool. For example, Lerner assumes that the reader already has an understanding of environmental justice issues that are not necessarily clear to the reader. Lerner seems to assume that the reader knows that minority communities are often sites for toxic or dangerous facilities or waste disposal places because those lands are often less expensive. Lerner alludes to this, but further explanation would make it clear why the refineries were located at Norco and Diamond.

Lerner does a very effective job of clarifying and personalizing the viewpoint of the residents of Diamond and of their neighbors in Norco. What is missing is the way that the individuals who worked for the Shell refineries actually felt or thought about the process of dealing with individuals in Diamond. In all fairness, Lerner admits that such access would have been quite difficult for him given his status as the brother of one of the activists assisting the Diamond residents. That factor, combined with the (real or imagined) difficulties likely to befall any Shell employee who might fail to agree with the corporate line, would make such a point of view difficult to document. Yet it would be helpful to have a better sense of how those individuals felt, as they represented yet another viewpoint on the situation.

On the whole, however, Diamondis an enlightening tale about how to mobilize enough resources to pursue justice when it seems beyond our grasp. The case shows that environmental justice is a process, one that takes time, and often a lot of it. The story of Diamond may seem to have become "old news" after Hurricane Katrina, perhaps a text suitable for graduate or undergraduate students, but not really interesting given our current state of affairs. However, Diamond is a success story, and the hurricane devastation wrought by Katrina highlights the need for such persistence as is documented by this case.

Issues of environmental justice now face all the citizens of the Gulf as the flood waters from Katrina are pumped back into Lake Pontchartrain, and the waters of the Mississippi scoop up the remains of the household, human, and industrial waste that came with the hurricane's storm surge and send it cascading into the bayous and the Gulf waters. Suddenly environmental justice begins to have meaning for more than just the poor and for the racial and ethnic groups who are trapped by social, economic, and political factors into living with the toxic wastes of large industrial plants. All residents in the path of Katrina now face the impact of living with a toxic environment. The citizens of the Gulf would do well to take note of the lessons from Diamond, that the way to get justice is persistence, and that the gaining of that justice may be a long, slow process.

Reviewed by E. Helen Berry

Utah State University

Copyright Rural Sociological Society Mar 2006

Source: Rural Sociology

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