The Shell refinery in Norco, La. (pictured here) is one of the petrochemical plants that line the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that have caused many to call the stretch "Cancer Alley." AP

In a mostly black, heavily polluted Louisiana parish, folks are dying as fast as in NYC​

It was Easter Sunday when I got through on the phone to Robert Taylor, who’s 79 and lived all his life in a place called Reserve, Louisiana, that no less an authority than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has called one of the most polluted places in America. If this had been a normal Easter, Taylor might have still been in church when I called. But it wasn’t a normal Easter, and Taylor didn’t mince words when I asked him about his county, St. John the Baptist Parish.

“We’re dying down here,” he said bluntly, and it wasn’t hyperbole. Back when President Trump was insisting the coronavirus threat in the United States would soon disappear, folks like Taylor were warning the virus would bring death and despair to a town like his. It’s dead center in a stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and greater New Orleans lined with so many petrochemical plants that today everyone just calls it “Cancer Alley.”

The dire predictions have come true. Cancer Alley’s St. John the Baptist Parish is already one of the deadliest places for COVID-19 in America, with 40 confirmed fatalities (as of Monday) among a population of less than 46,000, and – despite the lack of testing – 558 confirmed cases. The death rate is almost on a par with New York City.

But to the folks who live here, coronavirus isn’t a numbers game. It’s personal. Taylor knows at least two elderly married couples – the Beldens and the Eddingses – where both husband and wife succumbed to the virus. And yet – in a time when people including journalists are told to stay put – the unfolding tragedy in St. John the Baptist Parish has barely dented the national consciousness. We should all be talking about it, though.

Communities like Reserve are mostly black, and economically disadvantaged. They’ve been targeted by environmental racism – politically powerless to stop the refineries and plastic plants that have enveloped them for decades, or to get action about the all-too-frequent leaks of toxic air pollution. That legacy has left a disproportionate number of folks with respiratory disease or cancer – and more likely to die from the coronavirus.

For nearly a half century, Taylor and his neighbors in Reserve have breathed poison air from a giant facility – long owned by Du Pont, bought by a Japanese firm, Denka – making a synthetic plastic called neoprene used in various consumer products. The plant has consistently blasted through recommended safety limits for air pollution from a highly toxic byproduct called chloroprene. In 2015, EPA scientists made an unsurprising finding – a census tract next to the plant has the highest cancer rate in the entire United States, some 50 times higher than the national average.

Folks in Reserve, Louisiana, with their poisoned lungs, are sitting ducks. 
— Will Bunch

In the last couple of years, people like Taylor – who’s lost close friends to cancer and whose adult daughter suffers from a rare intestinal disease called gastroparesis that he blames on the plant – have done something The Establishment didn’t count on. They’ve fought back. Taylor and the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist have marched to close the Denka plant and won over some local politicians. But not only is Denka still churning out plastics but the plant has continued to operate during the pandemic even as the churches and other pillars of daily life in the parish have been closed. Locals are incensed.

“To continue to combat the coronavirus while still breathing that chemical … it’s inhuman,” Taylor told me. On Saturday, he and as many as 70 other activists did the unthinkable in the time of coronavirus: They took it outside at the main parish offices in small, socially distanced groups to demand the Denka plant close for the duration of the crisis. Anything less, they’ve argued, is straight-up racism.

I agree. The coronavirus is anything but an equal opportunity killer. While the affluent flee to airy vacation homes, folks in Reserve, Louisiana, with their poisoned lungs, are sitting ducks. The virus isn’t just lethal but an exposer of painful truth: America was tainted by gross inequality, racism, and reckless disregard for our environment long before the pandemic. We can take one small step toward fixing this by closing the Denka plant, not temporarily but for good.

>> WATCH A VIDEO: Robert Taylor speaks about the coronavirus pandemic

Ask me anything

That’s the gimmick — ask me anything at wbunch@inquirer.com and next week I’ll decide the best question and answer it. This week, I asked Twitter to help get us started.

Question: What’s the best part about living in the Philly area? – via Mary Ann S. Clifford (@MaryAnnSCliffo2 on Twitter)

Answer: Probably the yearly victory parades down Broad Street … just kidding. Actually what I love most about Philadelphia and environs (having moved here from New York City exactly 30 years ago this month) is how you can do any super-cool big-city thing you can think of – great ethnic food, every pro sport, every national concert tour – with a fraction of either the traffic or the hassle of NYC or LA, where everything is 55 minutes away. Love you, Philly, don’t ever change.

My best friends, Bella (left) and Daisy.  WILL BUNCH / STAFF

The backstory: Life during quaran-time​

The loneliness and isolation. Long periods of intense writing, where I look forward to taking a long walk around the neighborhood or playing ball with my two best friends, Daisy (she’s the big one, the red golden retriever) and Bella (the tiny white maltipoo). The rare text from one of my two 20-something kids, then some more writing, usually with low-volume baseball or soccer on the TV.

Sigh, life during quarantine … but wait, wasn’t that pretty much my life before any of us even knew there was a thing called COVID-19? Other than missing my daily SEPTA ride into the office with Pandora’s 1969 Hits eroding what’s left of my eardrums, and now enjoying baseball games from 2008 instead of 2020, I’m somewhat appalled at how little life has changed for me during this earth-shattering event — not by how much. I wonder if the end of quarantine will make me appreciate the human connections I should have been trying harder to make before this all happened … and I wonder how many other humans feel the same way.

Inquirer reading list

• You know what I’ve been reading these days? The Philadelphia Inquirer, and not just because my newsroom just rampaged through the National Headliner Awards, taking home trophies for stories like the investigation that closed the Glen Mills Schools and coverage of the multiple cop shooting in North Philly.

• With the coronavirus crisis changing everything in Philly by the hour, the Inquirer’s coverage is essential, and with so many advertisers shut down or hurting, we need reader support more than ever.

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