Living on the Fenceline
Overview | Conversations with Advocates of Fair Growth | Living on the Fenceline
Sal Digirolamo
Sal Digirolamo, 72, lives on the other side of the Gaspard [Mule] property line from the Diamond subdivision in the predominantly white side of NORCO. He worked at Shell for 40 years, has two sons who work for Shell, and is currently president of the NORCO Civic Association. He is outspoken about the virtues of NORCO and is, in a sense, its unofficial mayor. He lives at 414 Oak Street in a comfortable house with wall-to-wall carpets, teal trim, a swing set, a pair of palm trees and a bird feeder.
Interview
If you work at Shell they have something called the Providence Fund. It doesn't matter if you are a manager or at the bottom of the line they put aside ten percent of your wage as savings for their employees. And in 40 years that accumulates to a right little piece of change. So, like I said, we can pick up and go . . . . In fact the wife and I came this close to starting construction of a house in Destrehan. But you know, everything we got is in NORCO . . . all our friends. Where else can you go in this whole world and find a community where you have been living by your neighbors for 50 years. We know everybody. All the kids we saw them grow up. We have seen them go out and get married . . . seen everyone become grandpas and grandmas. And you just can't find that no where else, you know?
One of the goals of the NORCO Civic Association was to bring that back together [the sense of community] through the Christmas parade, potluck suppers, our general membership meetings. Also we go out working and fixed a couple of houses up there in front of the track . . . we all got together working. Shell furnished the materials and we furnished the labor. That was one of the most rewarding things you could get: I never felts so good as that in my entire life. It is fun working together but when you sat back and looked at what you have done for somebody that didn't have the resources or the ability to do it . . . It was on First Street in the area just bordering the Diamond subdivision. You have Diamond, then you have the wooded area . . . it was on this side of the [Gaspard] Mule line. We took the whole house [apart] and put [in] a new roof and new floors, painted the whole thing, took out all the boards that were rotten, and masonry. We did all that. That was a fun, fun thing. They had a committee that formed . . .
NORCO is divided up into four or five different areas. One of the first things I did when I was made president was I said, you know, we need representation from all these areas because they have different ways of living, different standards, different qualities of life. What we did was we divided NORCO up into five districts: The Diamond area and 'Up Front' were one and two; back here was split into this area and one of the older neighborhoods were three and four; then we called the one on the other side of the track, which was not too big, as five. Now if we have an elected official or an appointed official from an area we consider that a representative. So we have a committee or a point person from that area to sit on our board so we can get input from that area about what their needs are. And that has been working pretty good, you know. From Diamond you have Lorita Jenkins and her husband and Al Holmes [sp?]. In fact we have three sitting on our board from Diamond. They are one of our best-represented areas as far as population. I just realized that when I was talking to you. They have three from that area.
[About the desire for Diamond residents to relocate] we have to make clear why we want to move: is it because of the air or because we want to make a few bucks. I built that chemical plant [on the fence-line with Diamond] and you might have had two or three houses there in that sector. I had a good friend he went to work at Shell and that is when he built his house. I might be wrong . . . there might have been four or five homes. But going back 57 years . . . I didn't see that [the people who took down their house in Belltown and re-erected them in Diamond] . . . let me put it that way. We built Shell Chemical I would say that was in 1954-1955. I can imagine some of them did [moved their house from Belltown to Diamond]. My memory . . . what I recall were four or five houses sitting there . . . I'm not saying I have a good memory . . . I am reasonably sure that if you would go over to the refinery and looked at aerial views we could see what they got. I have seen a number of pictures of NORCO when they fly over and take [aerial photos] . . . that would be the way to find out . . . . I remember four or five houses . . . there might have been ten of them.
But what I don't understand is that Diamond is a part of NORCO and they want to get rid of a part of our town. That is what they want to do -- the people who are advocating them moving. [Shell is buying out two streets] and I don't like that. What are they going to do: buy the whole damn town? That would ruin our way of life. Children won't be able to come and see the place they were born at and the room where they were sleeping at. They can't come tell their grandchildren this is where I slept. And every time you buy and take a piece of that away . . . a piece of our NORCO is leaving.
Now, a buffer zone is nice. You take the first house to the first unit over there [on Washington Street in Diamond] I would say that is 800 to 1,000 feet . . . from the fence to the first unit. And if you keep adding you get further away. I'm almost as close to the unit as they are. I have homes over here . . . I don't know if you saw those homes . . . they are closer to a unit than [the houses in] Diamond. Sure, they live closer to the fence-line [in Diamond] but not closer to the unit. The people on Good Hope Street here live closer. Certainly [the people in Diamond are] not closer than these people who live right across the tracks from the unit.
I have two sons working there [at Shell] and one working at a nuclear plant. I wouldn't consider myself much of a father if I thought they were working at an unsafe place. That is the norm, most probably, with a lot of us [that we have kin working at Shell]. And many of us worked there and we know what the company is like and we know what their attitude is towards safety, we know what their attitude is toward releases. We have been there. We saw it. We know that you [the worker] are not a number that you are someone they care about. If they lose you they have lost a hell of a lot of money because it cost, most probably, $200,000 to get a person trained. Not just training them, but the mistakes that Sal is going to make. [Laughs]. And you can make a mistake and cost them a million dollars. So they have an incentive to keep you healthy and the only way they can keep you healthy is to keep you safe. I must say in the morning it sometimes took an hour to go to work just to get [safety] clearance to do a job. I can most probably say that is the norm . . . . taking a good hour to go to work.
Yes, I have two sons who work at Shell and Shell/Motiva. I worked at Shell for 40 years and I am 72. That is not the norm around here. I said that was, I thought it was. My neighbor doesn't have nobody working there, my sister, my other neighbor, and they all have children now. One person down here has one [son at Shell].
I came here part of a family of seven: a brother and five sisters. We all live right here in NORCO. We all were raised right here in NORCO. I moved here when I was one. What I like about NORCO and I am saying this and I really believe it is the longevity we enjoy here in this community. I can give you one street 81, 81, 72, 86 (he's the young one) and then over here he is 60, across here he's the 70s and the 70s and 70s. If you come right down here on this street, she just died . . . she was 93 year old. My neighbor was 84. This neighbor was 87 and his wife was 92. I would agree: [there are a lot of people who live a long time in NORCO]. I really do.
I think it does [speak well for the quality of the air] not that some of these chemicals couldn't affect us. But it is most probably how much of that you get. And I worked on the plant right in it. You can't get no closer than that. I worked with VCM [vinyl chloride monomer]. That's another thing: as soon as they found out they had a VCM unit, as soon as they found out how bad that stuff was they got it out of there. And people were saying that was not being considerate . . . they lost jobs. They [Shell] were thinking a little further down the [line] . . . One must realize what it cost to tear that unit down and relocate it. We had it up running like a clock. I was all over that unit.
I think we have a relatively low crime rate. I think the happiness we enjoy adds to that. I know my neighbor, he knows his . . . the atmosphere adds to those things. I think it helps you to a little longer life. All those things together makes NORCO a good town.
We have people coming in . . . I remember Anne Rolfes [from the Louisiana Bucket Brigade] . . . You see Anne's job is a job as long as there is a problem. So you got to keep the problem there. She came to me with a bunch of figures . . . I'm not going to tell you I knew everything she was talking about. So after the meeting . . . that is one of the things we do we meet once a month with the citizens and industry . . . this is the NORCO/ New Sarpy Industrial Panel. That is a panel was assimilated later by DEQ [the Department of Environmental Quality]. It was to identify problems and move on. And environmental issues and Shell . . . and this is the truth . . . there are very few. People like Anne came up there and she got up there and she talked. And after the meeting I told her, Anne, you said a lot and I am very, very concerned about what you said. You said a lot of bad things were happening here in NORCO. I am not going to just take your word for that, to be honest with you. Just give me where you got this from so I can then make a better decision. You were saying: 'Man this place is terrible; this place is that.' Just tell me where you got this from and I will be with you 100 percent. Three or four months passed and Anne never did bring me any of this stuff.
Then a newspaper article came out that stated that white women, black men, and the black women in this so-called 'Cancer Corridor' had a half percent less chance of catching cancer than anywhere in the United States. That was the consensus in that paper that someone did up in Baton Rouge. I might even still have the article. But I don't know . . . And white men had a ten percent better chance of getting it [cancer]. But they attributed that to the life-style of the men we kind of smoke and drink and chewed [tobacco] and we did some things . . . our life-style was not the average. So I met her after one of the meetings and I said: 'Anne: I never did get that information. And you said a lot a lot of important things. I just want to know where you got it . . . . I don't want you putting it together . . . we can't do that.' So she walked away and I said: 'Anne, did you read that article in the paper?' And she said: 'Yeah, I'm thinking about moving to NORCO.' And I said: 'Well, we don't want you.' No . . . I didn't tell her that.
But we were talking about the fence-line for the people of New Sarpy and Anne was in there . . . she had been to a couple of our meetings. The first thing she did that teed me off . . . we decided we were going to do one thing . . . I can't tell you what it was. And she came back and said we didn't do none of that . . . we didn't decide that and we wanted this and this and this. And everybody said 'nope' and she said 'yeah'; she was very insistent. So the manager said: 'OK, we will let it be like that.' And one of the guys got up and said: 'Look, I don't want to leave. I have been living here all my damn life so get that out of your mind. This is where I was born and raised. There is nothing wrong with my house. And another thing,' he said, 'this problem is between us [residents and industry] . . . ' and, he said: 'I'll make that a motion: no outsiders [permitted in the meetings from now on].' And it passed. And then Anne couldn't come to no more meetings . . . no more.
One of those ladies was sitting there at an Orion [oil refinery] meetings and talking about what the plant was doing to her health. And one of them [residents] got up and said: 'Lady, do you love your family?' And she said; 'Yes.' 'Well get the hell out of there. Why are you waiting for money: get out of there.' You know? If you love them [your family] get out.
In other words what they are telling us now is if you start bitching the chemical plant will pay you big bucks to get out. You don't want to make a situation where I can make the problem . . . it has got to be a [real] problem. Not all of them . . . I know a couple of friends of mine, man, he loves his Diamond. He doesn't want to get out of there. But I could also come up and make you the same argument right here [outside Diamond]. But we would be lying. We would be doing it for personal gain. I don't see that problem they see. When we moved here there was all this noise and the train . . . and I said to the wife: 'We should have lived here a few nights before we built this house.' And it is all gone; you don't hear it no more. You just kind of adjust to those kind of things to where it doesn't bother you. We have this flare . . . one of these big units that shut down . . . I took my granddaughter out there and said: 'Look at it.' She was not even interested [because she is used to that]. It doesn't affect my quality of life. If it was bothering me then I would be upset.
Noises. Occasionally we get that. I can tolerate them noises when I see the beautiful schools we got and I see them paying the education my children and grandchildren are getting. I can tolerate those noises. I see those noises as a slight inconvenience from the good that we can get from these things [plants]. Noise ain't going to kill. It might occasionally wake you up at 2 o'clock in the morning. I don't know the last time that happened but it could happen. That is a very small sacrifice. The odor. You might smell it but I bet you a dollar . . . when a new person comes in they smell that. We don't unless it gets to be a different one. I can go in cities and smell odors that are out of this damn world . . . . that are downright disgusting. You know? These odors we get don't come close to that. I went to my niece's dairy farm . . . you want odors you go there. You milk them cows . . . . This is just an occasional deal when they shut down a unit. The safest thing you are going to do is to let that out. The safest thing to do is flare it. If you burn it, it goes away . . . not perfect but it is one of the best ways to get rid of that.
What is happening is that Shell made a mistake, I think, in buying the first house [for relocation to create a buffer]. Now it is never going to stop. It will never stop. When they buy Diamond [then] Mary Street will want it. Then they will go right down the line. And they really didn't get interested in buying the two streets until they bought the Mule [Gaspard] property. If Shell hadn't bought the Mule property that would have never entered the picture. Now there is Shell, Diamond and Shell [properties] and they [residents of Diamond] might feel like they were hemmed in. They [Shell] bought that [Gaspard/Mule] property because they wanted to get the batcher rights [the rights to the land between the levy and the Mississippi River].
I was up there with the company and I jumped all over their tail when we were talking about evacuation routes. I told them we need a way, not for Diamond only, but we need a way so that area up in here can get out in case we have a release at Shell Chemical and it comes across and you have one group of people that, as far as vehicles [are concerned], are trapped in. And the first people to be affected [are] the first people in Diamond and down here. We talked about it . . . we didn't use much common sense . . . but Shell Chemical said we could use the road on the edge of their property to go through there . . . one that runs parallel to the [railroad] track on their property. So we went on that assumption but then when they really analyzed it that wasn't the place you wanted to go in an emergency [closer to the plant]. We didn't think about that. So we are still going to do that not for a problem at Shell Chemical but if there is a problem down on the river [at Shell/Motiva refinery] that will give them [residents] an outlet. If there is a problem at Shell Chemical half of them can go towards Apple Street and out towards Destrehan; the other half we are looking at putting a street along the [railroad] track. We don't need a fancy street . . . just a little drive or something. That will be an outlet so both sides can head out. We talked about crossing the track. That would be one of the better ways but you go convince the railroad to do that and then with all those switches there you might be giving them a sense of false security if a train was blocking it. Because they switch right there and them cars can stay there. If we get this road along that track that will cover it and we are working real hard trying to get that.
I was here in 1988. I was here in the house. Really my wife heard that hissing sound and then it exploded. I kind of got up. I didn't get too concerned. But then when I saw the windows had came in I knew something serious had happened. I had a son working. That was biggest concern. We picked up and we left. There was a little damage in the sheetrock: the nails came through . . . and my back door and this door. It was good we had the windows open. We don't sleep with no lock in NORCO. And we sleep with the windows open . . . it was a good night to sleep . . . so the explosion went through. My wife loves fresh air and she will open this house as soon as the weather permits at night. You see there again we all know -- if you take the accidents from Shell in the last 80 to 90 years or however long -- you can't find a place that is safer even with this explosion.
My son-in-law is a sales person and he was a salesman on the road. I told her [my daughter]: 'Jenny, Larry [the salesman] is in more danger than my sons in that plant. Do you know how many people are killed every day driving on the highway. And over there [at Shell] we have had nine fatalities in 80 something years. We had a perfect track record before that explosion. What a lot of people don't realize and a company is only as good as its employees you get some bad apple in there and he can make you . . . They were penciling in some readings one time . . . the operator is supposed to take a reading a check it off. You are supposed to go look at every location. [The] only thing you can do is trust that guy that he does his job. You know? And when you have 400 to 600 people working you are always going to have one come in on a bad day or night or he had a fight at home and he does not do a good job. And they have discipline deals in place. I don't know the true story behind the explosion but I would have to say it was a mistake. It had to be somebody didn't do what they were supposed to do. I wouldn't want to pin nobody. If I had done that I don't know if I could handle myself. I do know that working there nobody ever pushes you to hurry up. They know the consequences if you don't do it right. I knew them [the men who were killed] at a distance. I know the daddy of two but I didn't know them that good.
You get a release [of toxic emissions and] regardless of what it did and you will get bunch of people lined up at Shell [looking to be compensated]. They had 19 people living in one of those houses [in Diamond] that couldn't fit more than two [that asked for compensation]. That was something out of this world.
It is tough to explain why we don't feel, hear, or think the same things. It is impossible for me to explain it. We are both [my wife and I] good Christians. We both believe that lying . . . you can't be saved. And to tell you anything else [other than what I have said] we would have to lie. And we are not going to lie [about the conditions here] not to protect Shell, not to protect nobody. I'm being selfish because I do believe that it is a sin and that you can be condemned for lying. And we don't do that.
People say they got hurt in their mind after the explosion and, boy, we had a son working out there. We were hysterical for a little while. The one thing you can put down in your book, we are both Christians, we go to church every Sunday . . . to sue unjustly is stealing. Now, in our religion if you steal you have to give it back to be forgiven. If I were to have told Shell that my back hurt and got $100,000 . . . I stole it. And I will not do that. I am not saying that they [residents of Diamond] are lying. I am just saying that we are telling the truth. We are telling you how we feel and it is not because of any loyalty or any other reason other than the fact that we don't lie.
I might have a tie [with Shell] that would tend to make me loyal. But most of the people around here don't have a tie [to Shell]. The biggest thing is, you have to realize, most of us we go to church every Sunday, we believe in it. And I am not going to lie because it is wrong.
You say it is the truth to them [residents of Diamond]. I'm not sure. I do know. They had one picture in the paper with this lady saying, the caption on the bottom, 'They're killing me.' She was 95 years old. She lived there all her life. That was on the front page of the paper. Ninety-five years old. Then they talk about asthma. We [the NORCO Civic Association] represent 400 people in our organization, I am not aware of one person [in our membership] who has asthma. I don't know a person who has asthma. That was one of the things we brought up at the meeting of the DEQ. They had one or two who had asthma and they polled us and none of us knew anybody.
I'm not saying that they [residents of Diamond] don't have it [asthma]. But I'm just as close to the plant as them . . . if it [the emissions] affects them it ought to affect me. Somebody over here ought to have asthma. Could it be that they smoke. I have a friend over there [in Diamond] who is 84 and his wife is in a wheelchair and she is 84. And she smokes like nobody's business. I go see him every now and then and he comes over here. Melvin and I, we never buy nothing without checking with each other first because one of us might have it and we get it free. He will come over here. He worked for Shell . . . .
A lot of them talk about segregation back in those days. I think it was wrong, terribly wrong. It was something I never did. It didn't take no laws to make me feel the way I feel. But Shell was segregated . . . everybody so to speak when they had their little community . . . and then they realized that wasn't the way the Shell image should be. So they disbanded that. Like when the blacks used to work up there and they had to do janitorial work that was the way the country was doing business. If you did business any other way you would probably have gone out of business. That is when the federal government came in and said this is wrong and that is just like wearing a seatbelt. We all know it is a safe thing to do but if everybody . . . now everybody had another reason . . . I don't have to be this big macho guy . . . and I put my belt on and go.
And it is the same thing with the blacks. Now that they got it and they made it fair . . . it wasn't the company, it wasn't me, it wasn't anybody . . . it was just a way of life that was not right.
[Shell's bowling alley, swimming pool, gym and movie theatre] that was for Shell employees only. That was definitely segregated. And it was segregated [also] in the local theatre and it was segregated on the school buses it was segregated everywhere. That wasn't Shell. If Shell had done something else the local people would have hung them at that time. You follow me. I don't call it segregated unless it is a public building. As a private citizen we ought to have the right to have private functions for our groups.
I don't remember that 'plant day' [Shell's annual picnic and entertainment for kids] was segregated but if it was back during segregation I could believe it. You have to understand what would have happened at that time. My wife's best friend son got shot by a black person. Shot him dead right in his yard. [Tim Weber, 14, a freshman, the smallest kid in the high school.] Shot him out of the school bus. That was in 1976 that was when they were kind of breaking segregation up . . . . There was hatred on both sides.
Right in this house when segregation was going on I had friends of mine who were black and came down and sat down in this chair. And if they didn't want to drink I made them drink. I told them that won't go: you're a friend of mine. And they were afraid to let anybody else know that that took place. You know? They were actually afraid. And they went through hell . . . I am not going to say that they didn't see their hard times. I am an Italian. I caught seven kinds of hell myself for just being Italian, you know? But we got to put that on the side and move forward. My life would be miserable if I'd kept that attitude. You do what you have to do to get people to think differently of you and go on. Mostly it was because you were doing things that they felt they should have been doing.
I don't think so [that the Gaspard/Mule line separates the black from the white side of town]. I refuse to let them separate Diamond. They have been doing that too damn much about Diamond and NORCO. We have black and white living on Apple Street, we have black and white living on Good Hope Street. We have black and white living over here. That is a choice situation. I have a friend, he retired from Shell, he could be here if he wanted. I know another who is a deputy with Shell he could leave if he wanted. He don't want to leave that community . . . . Just because you have a bunch of Italians living together in a community does that mean they are segregated? Some of them [African American residents of Diamond] have good jobs and they are still staying in there. That is where they were born and raised. They have a community. I go in there . . . they must feel like I feel here . . . that these are my neighbors and I know them. I know if I get sick I can dial that number and they will come running . . . . I go back to the fact that that is choice.
And not only choice . . . . You got some people there who moved into Diamond. And that is what they wanted: that is what they like. I like that. I like people to like where they are living. I think we are doing pretty good. I keep doing things to unite us so we get closer together. We have the Christmas parade. We had people from all over NORCO participating. I don't even think it is fair to say black and white. It is terrible for us to still be using the term black and white. They shouldn't be doing that no more . . . we should be past the stage. I think so.
I agree, it would be better if we mingled neighbors and so on. But here in the United States we are born free and we can go out and work. And the incentive is to get out and apply yourself, do what you got to do, and when you improve, I don't think I would want to improve and live in the shack I was born in. And we all have that . . . the opportunities are open for everybody. The sad part about some of our communities is that they don't get the education, they don't do the things they have to do to make themselves better. All of us, who did what we had to do to make ourselves better, most of us succeeded, but we had to put a lot of effort in to making that successful. I don't want to sit back here and say: 'Well, I didn't go to school, I didn't do this and that, I didn't get my education, now give me a big job so I can go out and make big bucks. That is not what America is about. If we get in that situation we will no longer be this great, great country. We still got to make it on what you know.
I admit that for a while we had to start moving them [African Americans] because of being segregated for so long and we had to start pushing them into the slots . . . I thought some of that was necessary to get them up in there. I don't believe in pushing a guy up just because of his race. That is not the way we should be doing business. As an Italian I went through it but I don't want nobody looking at me that way. And I would hope that they [minorities] would start thinking like that too. Don't say the world owes me something or the United States owes me something.
And living in that little community, some of them are moving in . . . like my friend he built a house for his son to live in . . . some of that is because they didn't do what they had to do to go get a job. And today they have a better chance of getting a good job if they have an education than the other guy next to them. In the plant I worked in you could be a little better but this guy was going to move up because he was a Mexican or an African American. So the opportunities are there but you have got to be in the game. You have to go to school . . . . You can't just go to fifth or eighth grade and want these big jobs. If Shell started hiring people who didn't know what they are doing . . . that operation is a little too complex for a guy who doesn't have some kind of education and brain up there. You can't put a fourth grader out there and have him run those units.
I would like more people [from Diamond] to be hired [at Shell]. But don't you dare hire them if they don't know what they are doing because I want that plant to run and be safe. And when we start dictating to companies . . . you don't think that Shell, Orion . . . you know how many people they would like to hire from NORCO . . . wouldn't it be the best situation all the way around. But you can't jeopardize the whole community and the plant to solve a problem that probably won't go away no matter what you do. Shell doesn't hire people to cut the grass. They got out of that business a long time ago because the salary they were paying to get that done was outrageous . . . they were getting first class mechanic pay.
I said they are destroying the peace of NORCO when they [Shell] started buying out streets and I did not like that at all. NORCO is our home and we are going to lose a little bit of our history and of our heritage. If you buy the two streets then Diamond is gone forever. We will never have another Diamond in NORCO. I don't want that. I'm not saying that Shell is wrong doing it. I'm being selfish because I hate to see my community tore apart like that. [The people who relocated from Diamond] left because they wanted to go. Nobody pushed them out of that spot.
But why would you want to stop right there [after buying four streets]? Why not buy ten? Why stop at the end of Diamond and not at Mary Street? Why? Give me one good reason why we are stopping? Go all the way. Buy the whole damn town. You've got to stop this process somewhere and it is a known fact that they didn't have to have a buffer zone. There is an ordinance of a 2,000 foot buffer zone . . . that new plants would have 2,000 feet. Shell has about 1,500 maybe 1,000 from that one unit. But they didn't have to do that. They are not required to do that because they were grand-fathered in. These people moved, about 95 percent of them, moved to Diamond after Shell Chemical was there. And when Shell bought them out [in Belltown] some of them moved there. What I am saying is that when I was there, there were maybe five or six or seven houses that they moved.
All my life I have lived here in NORCO with blacks living on Good Hope Street. That plant [Shell Chemical] was built in 1954-1955. We weren't that bad [back then]. Blacks and whites living together wasn't that big an issue with us. I see it here in NORCO. Mexicans came and lived right there and he couldn't understand . . . the way you are all treating us. He couldn't understand [how well he was being treated]. He had come from Houston. And over there man he said 'we were nothing.' When he came he went to the movies, went to the swimming pool, and did everything together. And it was the same with blacks, like I said, they ate right here, I had friends . . . the color didn't make no difference to us. They were our friends. Don't let anybody ever tell you that they couldn't move to NORCO because of their race. I don't ever know that to be the truth. We have all the same kind of houses over here. I go back to why would I want to move. I have the same atmosphere here. I have the money to move. Why would I want to move? I can make up a few stories. I can say, man, the odor is bad. I can make up a story that they have the noise. I can make up a story that it is damaging my health. But I would be lying to you. So, the only way I would want to move would be to get closer to the kids.
The NORCO Civic Association, with 400 members, I have never had one complaint to go to the company and complain about the environment. That has been six years and we have never had one complaint and we have blacks on our committee. Not one complaint against the environment. And we have told all the companies we represent everybody here. The day you do something wrong you can help us all you want . . . you are going to hear from us. In fact they [Shell] said that we believe the environment is so good we are going to put monitors all over NORCO. I don't think they would do that if they thought the air was the opposite [bad]. You can get a bucket and do what you want with it. This is going to be the real [thing]. And an outside concern is going to do the analyzing and the reading. I can't understand how I would want to incriminate myself.
The population of NORCO is about 4,000. I don't know what the population is of Diamond. I like to keep it as one town. We don't like to do that. Diamond is a subdivision that is located in NORCO. Now we have [new] houses back here [just built] that are $300,000 homes. We bought this [house where we live] for $1,500 [down] on $12,000.
Doesn't it make you wonder that people are moving in and putting their houses closer [to the fence-line than some of the houses in Diamond]? Doesn't that tell you something? And you are talking about your health? You are talking about it killing you? You are talking about getting asthma? And what I am saying is that they are paying a good price to go build there. They pay about $35,000 for that lot. OK. And then the company that sells the lot requires them to spend another $7,000 building it a certain way. So you are talking a bout almost $42,000 before you can start building your house. And they picked there. And they picked a place closer to the units than in Diamond. It is right across the track . . . is the unit. Now the only thing they get is some odor from the bio-treater, which is just an odor, it is not harmful . . . dead bugs. They [Shell] are working on that. But it is not harmful. Them bugs die, you know. And they have a project to fix that. But them people moved there with that odor right in their back yard. And I just can't figure out why that can be. It is hard for me to understand. It is hard to believe that there are two different groups sitting here saying two different stories about the same conditions . . . And the conditions might be worse [for the people in the new homes] because they are closer to what they [critics] are saying is bad. And it makes it extremely hard. And I don't know a one [buying into the new subdivision] that has a connection with Shell.
Yes, I think it is reasonable [for a residential community to be right next to a big industry]. If not I would have picked up and left. What would you think is wrong with that? What do you think is so bad about that? The accident [in 1988] never hurt me. If that plant had been in the desert those seven people [workers] would have got killed. So why should I move . . . why would that be a bad thing? And the pollution . . . the statistics say it would be bad for white men . . . everybody else would have less chance of catching cancer than everybody else in the United States . . .
If you do a health study and I say I have a headache you can't prove I don't have it. So you depend on me telling the truth. I have a shoulder that hurts or I have an ache, I can't breathe . . . a lot of that is hard to prove that it is not true. I don't know why someone would think that we would sit down and not tell the truth about our health. Why would I want to live in this community? Give me one good reason for staying here. If it is killing me why would I want to stick it out. I can't believe I'm wrong [about it being healthy here]. I can take you down these streets [and show you lots of elderly people] . . . the life expectancy [in the U.S.] is 72. I done beat that already: I'm 72 and a half. He beat it, [pointing to his neighbors' houses] he beat it, he beat it, he beat it, he beat it, he beat it, he beat it . . . A friend of hers [his wife] just died at 92 years old.
I think it is fair [that assessment on homes are lower because people are next to a big industrial plant]. I am not in the business of protecting people who made bad investments. We do enough of that with people who buy these houses and get flooded and they come in and say I got to pay for their drainage. They made a bad investment. They went there freely. Now I got to pay for their mistakes. And I don't go with that. If Shell Chemical or whatever, Exxon, came in and built when there were houses there and the property values went down . . . then they should pay for it. But if Exxon was there and I built the house and then ten years later I want to sell it . . . I made that booboo. Nobody else made the booboo. And everyone of those houses . . . the government does too damn much of that right now. And we got to pay because somebody else made a mistake. And that is not what the free world is about. We invest, we try to do better . . . .
I might have bought because I can walk to work and this is the ideal situation. I moved here because of that. That was my reason. I moved here because I wanted to be close to work . . . . And then if anyone dies because of the plant . . . Now they are saying: 'my body is dying.' Well, why didn't they build their house somewhere else? I don't know if you understand it.
(© Steve Lerner 2002.)