Living Downstream

The peat swamp forests of Borneo are the site of a failed agricultural experiment. Planners believed that rice should grow in the swamps, but it couldn't. Even today, experiments with growing oil palms and other trees are changing the forests, with little positive to show for these efforts.

As indigenous people lost their livelihood, carbon poured into the atmosphere from uncontrolled fires. 

Daniel Grossman reports:

Learn more about peat fires in Indonesia. 

Read an article by The New York Times on the same region of Indonesia. 

(Image: Smog and smoke over Borneo and Indonesia, 1997. Credit: NASA)

Ruxandra Guidi reported and produced this episode of Living Downstream, The Trailer Park Activists of Eastern Coachella Valley

Thanks to Anthony Garcia for mastering the show.

The Living Downstream theme music was written by David Schulman.

Steve Mencher is the host and senior producer. Darren LaShelle in the executive producer, and the president and CEO of Northern California Public Media is Nancy Dobbs.

Subscribe to Living Downstream wherever you get your podcasts. If you see environmental injustice in your community, write to us at living@norcalpublicmedia dot org

LIVING DOWNSTREAM thanks our sponsors who make this podcast possible. A list is available at norcalpublicmedia.org

Activist Eduardo Guevara takes a picture inside Lawson Dump as smoke rises from a fire smoldering belowground. Although it was ordered closed in 2006, underground fires continued to burn for years afterward, and residents of nearby mobile home parks continued to complain about noxious odors and possible contamination. (Credit: Roberto (Bear) Guerra, 2010)

A hand-written sign warns Duroville mobile home park residents in Thermal, California, to stay away from a waste pond on the neighboring property. On the far side of the pond is Lawson Dump, now closed by the EPA because it contained dangerous amounts of arsenic, PCBs, asbestos, dioxin and other toxic materials. (Credit: Roberto (Bear) Guerra, 2010)

Learn more about the Navajo Nation and uranium contamination. 

"Smackdown" tells the story of Richmond California, a working class town that grew up in the shadow of a massive Chevron refinery. The refinery emits a toxic soup of chemicals and residents suffer an asthma rate that is double the national average.

Explosions and fires have periodically shaken the refinery since 1989. But Chevron is also the biggest employer in town and its taxes supply tens of millions of dollars for city services. Can Richmond maintain a healthy economy while transitioning away from fossil fuels and lessening its reliance on Chevron? And what role does electoral politics play in the mix?

In October, 2018, Chevron settled a suit brought by the U.S. EPA, requiring it to pay nearly $3 million in damages, and spend about $160 million dollars upgrading refineries around the United States, including the facility in Richmond, Calif.

(Pictured: Community demonstrates against Chevron, April 20, 2012. Credit: Daniel Arauz, Flickr)

Listen to Smackdown, produced and reported by Claire Schoen.

Learn more about refinery towns in the U.S.

 For a technical but very accessible animation describing the explosion and fire at Chevron's Richmond refinery in 2012, see below. The video was produced by the U.S. Safety and Chemical Hazard Investigation Board.

During the Vietnam War the U.S. military defoliated large swaths of Vietnam with Agent Orange to deprive enemy forces of jungle cover. In the process it exposed American soldiers to this toxic chemical as well.

Our own civilians back in the U.S. were also exposed to Agent Orange, along with other herbicides. They were involved in testing herbicides at an Air Force base in Florida throughout the 1960s. Dozens of civilians involved in the testing at the base say that more than 40 years after their exposure, they are ill and dying. (Billy McLean (L) and Von Jones pictured. Credit: Jon Kalish)

Jon Kalish reports from the Florida panhandle on Agent Orange and "The Forgotten Civilians of Eglin Air Force Base."

Learn more about Agent Orange. 

Terell Ratlin died soon after being interviewed by Jon Kalish for this story

In 2012, a fire at the Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif. caused 14,000 residents to flee. In October 2018 Chevron agreed to spend $160 million on improvements to its refineries. Smackdown tells the story of how one community fought Chevron and won.

Produced and Reported by Claire Schoen