Stop the Sasol Land Grab of Mossville!

East side of Mossville 2012 at
Industries Fenceline

In case you missed my e-newsletter, here is the email I wrote to Administrator Gina McCarthy:

Dear Administrator McCarthy:

Last week your Region 6 office participated in the ongoing injustice being suffered by the people of Mossville Louisiana, and thereby became complicit in the land grab being perpetrated by Sasol, the apartheid era

East side of Mossville 2016

South African oil company. When Region 6 endorsed the suspect industry Voluntary Property Purchase process they helped cover up Sasol's coercive, deceptive and financially inadequate program to take possession of this 225 year old community. I urge you to make Sasol return to negotiations with Mossville residents and Mossville Environmental Action Now. Impel Sasol to make Mossville residents whole, debt free, and fully housed.

Please write EPA Administrator McCarthy today!

McCarthy.Gina@epa.gov

Stop the Sasol Land Grab of Mossville: What's a Voluntary Property Purchase Program

Environmental Justice Elders Lead Off Demo at
Sasol Houston Headquarters

Many of you have asked what's up with my blog.  I'm hoping to make a transition to a website with the blog embedded but I don't seem to have the skill or talent to accomplish that.  I'm looking for help.  I'll let you know how it goes. On to the main event!
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Sasol, the apartheid era South African synthetic fuel company is perpetrating an coercive, deceptive and financially unjust grab for the land of people of Mossville Louisiana.  You all have read about Mossville over the years.  This post is about the collusion of the oil and chemical industries in creating something called the Voluntary Property Purchase Program to buyout communities and avoid liability for industrial toxic pollution that drives down property values, poisons the environment and destroys the livelihoods and health of the communities they are "benefitting."

I have found 4 other instances of oil refiners and chemical processing companies using Georgia-based Community Interaction Consultants (CIC) as their front organization in the negotiation of buyouts, all highly contested -- 2 in Michigan, 1 in Arkansas and 1 in 1999 in Baltimore.   The Port of Corpus Christi seems to be taking bids on one now.  John Mitchell, the president and founder of CIC, describes the company at his LinkedIn page as providing  

• "community relocation consulting, program development, and program administration services for heavy manufacturers facing diminution of value claims"... and, 
• "Beginning in 1989, consulting for the development and administration of property programs focused on green belt expansion for heavy manufacturing sites."

Green belts are supposed to be areas protected by zoning policy to maintain wild, agricultural and open space as a buffer between industry and settled areas.  International environmental justice activists have created a Green Belt Movement.  Of course international mega-corporations see these areas as expansion opportunities, greenwashing their buyouts as relocations, property value protection programs, and most egregiously, as voluntary.

Dislocation from ones home and land (especially in Louisiana where multiple generations live and build on the family property under the ownership of one family member) after your property has been polluted by dioxin, oil spills, benzine releases and other chemicals, your family's health destroyed and the concerted effort of community members and their allies to gain the attention of, and action from government, industry and the judiciary ignored -- in the case of Mossville for over two decades -- does not lead to a freely made decision to voluntarily sell one's property to the perpetrator (or the perpetrators' stalking horse) of the harm the community has experienced. 

There is probably need for a Department of Justice investigation into oil and chemical industry collusion in creating the VPPPs in order to avoid the true cost of their egregious disregard for the communities they have driven out and whose land they have come to own. 

The Exodus of the People of Mossville, Part 3: Who Is Sasol?

This is 3rd in a series of posts on the Exodus of the People of Mossville, Louisiana, an historically African-American community founded in the late 1800s by Jack Moss. Sasol, the South African synthetic oil company, is buying up property to build the first North American (fracked) gas to liquids plant.

The following facts are drawn from the Mossville Environmental Action Now website (see website for citations):

Who Is Sasol?

• Founded in 1950 in South Africa, in response to international communities' fuel embargo due to the practice of apartheid. 
• In 1954, Sasol created Sasolburg to supply housing and facilities for employees; it segregated the development into Sasolburg proper (exclusively for white employees) and Zamdela township (for non-whites).
• Zamdela remains marginalized.
•  Despite the presence of a major manufacturer in their backyard, unemployment in Zamdela remains high, 43% as of January 2013 (1). 
• Sasol has been accused of pollution in Zamdela that’s caused sickness and hospitalization, including a chlorine gas leak in 2000, which led to over 200 hospitalized (2).
• Over 42,000 tons of volatile organic compounds are reported to have been polluted into Zamdela (3). 
• Residents of Zamdela began monitoring their air in 2001- finding quickly that the level of benzene in the air was over 8 times the US legal limit (4). 
• Most of Zamdela’s residents earn less than R400 a month (about $40 USD a month); Sasol’s CEO David Constable received a 68% pay increase (5) this year, bringing his salary to R53.7 M for the year ended June 2013. 

What is Sasol North America? 

• Condea Vista (now Sasol North America) was found guilty of "wanton and reckless disregard of public safety” in 1997 for its responsibility for one of the largest chemical spills in the nation’s history, which contaminated the groundwater underneath the surrounding community. The company was charged with dumping an estimated 19-47 million pounds of ethylene dichloride, a suspected human carcinogen, into the local estuary (6).  This local estuary is Mossville, Louisiana. 
• Sasol North America has self-reported releasing dioxins, a cancer-causing highly-toxic group of chemicals in Mossville area (7).
• Greenpeace is suing Sasol North America for spying: "allegedly trespassing, conducting unlawful surveillance and stealing confidential information related to Greenpeace's work in the Lake Charles region of Louisiana," (8) which includes work with the Mossville.