Living with pollution
Families in the Manchester neighborhood worry about the cost of residing near the area’s refineries and petrochemical plants
DALILA Tovar moved to Houston’s Manchester neighborhood two years ago, when her parents, both Mexican immigrants, scratched together enough to buy a home valued at just over $50,000 — an American dream come true. The dream, however, ended quickly.
“The first few weeks we were nauseous and had headaches. It was really bad, because we would get dizzy and stuff,” said Tovar, 16. “I guess, after a while, we just started to get used to it.”
The Tovars, who live across the street from Valero Energy’s East Houston Refinery, are among the largely poor Hispanic families who live in this neighborhood near the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel, surrounded by refineries, petrochemical plants and tank farms. As the Houston area has grown to become the world’s premier energy cluster, showering the region with economic benefits, many poor minority communities — without influence or political clout — have borne the brunt of the health and environmental costs associated with oil, gas and their products.
Hurricane Harvey underscored this, as floodwaters triggered releases of thousands of pounds of toxic emissions and thousands of gallons of petroleum spills. In Manchester, where the collapse of a storage tank roof at Valero’s refinery spewed some 235,000
pounds of toxic vapors and other pollutants into the atmosphere, residents received little official notification of the incident — or the hazards.
Yeni Garzon, a Manchester resident and mother of three, said all she knew was the odors that linger in the air there became far more intense, as did the swelling and redness around the eyes of her 10-year-old son, who has developed allergies in recent years.
“After Harvey, there was a very, very strong smell,” Garzon said, speaking in Spanish. “We even had to turn off the air conditioning because it was coming in the house.”
Pollution problems
Manchester is one of Houston’s — and the nation’s — most notorious communities for air and water pollution, where years of research have found elevated levels of cancer-causing petrochemicals and heavy metals in the air, including benzene, chromium and 1,3-butadiene.
An ongoing Texas A&M University study recently found dangerous compounds like arsenic and barium in Manchester’s open drainage ditches. Exposures to these substances can lead to a variety of health problems, from asthma to infertility to cancer, said Jennifer Horney, the lead researcher and head of Texas A&M’s epidemiology and biostatistics department.
“Everyone knows Manchester has a lot of environmental justice problems, but what’s being done about it?” Horney said. “They’re socially vulnerable and physically vulnerable. They’re exposed to these petrochemicals, but they’re also majority poor and majority minority.”
A 2016 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists report found the cancer risk in Manchester is 22 percent higher than for all of Houston and about 30 percent higher than in the more affluent communities, such as Bellaire and the West Houston neighborhood of Eldridge/West Oaks. Many of Manchester’s more than 4,000 residents routinely complain of respiratory problems. It’s not hard for them to connect the dots.
Harvey’s exposure
The toxic emissions released by the Valero refinery during Hurricane Harvey included some 1,900 pounds of benzene, a volatile component of crude oil known to cause cancer. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said they are investigating the incident, including why Valero significantly underestimated the amount of pollutants escaping into the atmosphere.
Valero, for example, initially reported that the roof collapses released just 6.7 pounds of benzene. But several days after the roof collapse, air monitoring by the city and independent groups detected a plume of benzene with readings nearly double the state’s allowable level for shortterm exposure.
“If we hadn’t been out monitoring, no one would have even known those exposures happened,” said Elena Craft, a senior health scientist in Texas with the Environmental Defense Fund, which funded some of the monitoring. “How many other of these events occur with no one ever knowing?”
Valero declined to comment for this story, but in September, the San Antonio-based company said the benzene plume could have come from any number of refineries and petrochemical plants in Manchester’s vicinity.
Manchester has a long history of such problems. A 2004 Houston Chronicle investigation found evidence that concentrations of 1,3-butadience — a carcinogenic chemical used to make rubber and other petrochemicals — in the neighborhood were as much as 20 times higher than federal guidelines used for toxic waste dumps. One air quality engineer dubbed Manchester “ground zero for toxic air pollution in Harris County.”
Valero, which bought the 75-year-old refinery two decades ago, responded by taking steps to reduce emissions, installing an air monitor along the border of its property and buying some of the closest houses to create a buffer. In May, the company paid $1.4 million to buy Manchester-area streets and easements from the city as part of a plan to construct office, warehouse and security buildings and add parking.
Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas environmental law professor, has studied Manchester and similar neighborhoods for more than 15 years. Funded with an EPA grant, McGarity’s team concluded in a 2003 report that the state allowed dangerously high levels of pollution in poor communities with large minority populations and needed to revamp its air quality permitting process.
But few of the recommendations, such as requiring mobile monitoring to detect drifting chemical plumes, were adopted by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, McGarity said.
“They never even did anything with it,” he said. “They just sort of buried it.”
A spokeswoman for TCEQ denied that the agency has buried the report and found weaknesses in both the report’s methodology and conclusions. She said the air-monitoring efforts since the report have sharply reduced pollution, including lowering concentrations of benzene and 1,3-butadiene by more than half across the state.
Industry all around
Living on the west side of Manchester, Marisela Herrera has other concerns besides the Valero refinery. She lives close to Texas Port Recycling, where its scrap metal recycling can release the carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, or chrome VI, into the air, according to several past environmental studies, and its car-crushing operation can cause explosions when gasoline and engine oil are not completely drained.
“Sometimes it’s like the earth is shaking, the lights flicker and you can hear explosions out of nowhere,” Herrera said. “They close the streets and they don’t tell you anything. You just hear the explosions.”
Texas Port Recycling said it takes the concerns of neighbors seriously and works with community groups and residents to address those concerns.
“We work diligently to control every aspect of the recycling process and continually update and evolve our careful inspection and operational processes to ensure that we are a responsible member of the wider Houston community and the Manchester neighborhood more specifically,” said Kevin Haynes, the general manager.
Manchester also is surrounded by the Contanda petroleum storage tank yard, a Goodyear rubber plant, LyondellBasell’s oil refinery, and petrochemical plants owned by Flint Hills Resources and TPC Group, among others.
Texas A&M’s Institute for Sustainable Communities is working with Houston’s Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, or t.e.j.a.s., to get residents to wear wristbands that detect chemicals in the air and in their homes. The aim is to study cohorts of people over extended periods to better understand the connections between pollution and health in the neighborhood.
Horney, the Texas A&M researcher, said she hopes that studies underway will help trigger some changes for the neighborhood and its residents, including tougher environmental monitoring and buyout programs to allow families, who might not otherwise be unable to afford it, to move. The average home in Manchester sells for about $56,000, less than one-fifth of the average $300,000 sale price in the Houston area, according to the Houston Association of Realtors.
“It’s a poor neighborhood. Let’s put it that way,” said Richard Vigil, a retired chemical plant worker who has lived most of his life in Manchester. “But people are fixing up their houses and trying to make a living.”
Looking forward
Veronica Guzman of Manchester is raising six children, some of whom suffer from autism, epilepsy and dyslexia. She’s unsure if their conditions are connected to the pollution, but she’s had enough. She just can’t afford to move into a better neighborhood.
“I’m saving as much money as I can to relocate.” Guzman said in Spanish, complaining that the fumes constantly make her nose itch. “The environment is horrible, terrible. The odors are strong everyday.”
Dalila Tovar plans to go to college in two years. Still, she worries about her siblings and parents, who fret over whether to leave Manchester and whether they can afford to do so.
There aren’t easy answers, Tovar said. But, she added, “I’m ready to get out of here.”