Morrisonville, Louisiana

Morrisonville, Louisiana was a small, predominantly African American town on the banks of the Mississippi River that was poisoned by industrial pollution during the 1980s and 1990s and then deliberately depopulated by the Dow Chemical Company.

Origins

The community had been founded during the 1870s by former slaves freed from a plantation near Plaquemine.^[1]

A chemical factory producing vinyl chloride was set up on land adjoining the community by the Dow Chemical Company in 1958. Initially there was a green belt separating the factory from the town, but the plant bought land from the town in 1959 and then expanded to cover 1,400 acres (5.7 km²),^[2] filling all the intervening space, so much so that the plant's loudspeaker announcements could be heard inside people's houses.^[3]

Pollution and forced depopulation

In the 1980s and 1990s, chemical pollution was discovered in the town's wells.^[1] To avoid lawsuits, Dow decided to buy up the town and move its residents away to create a buffer zone around the factory.^[1][3] In 1989, just before the release of a federal report into toxic emissions from the factory, Dow announced that it was going to buy up all the homes and land in Morrisonville, and that if the residents refused their property would be worthless.^[3]

Although about twenty families refused to move at first, by 1993 the town was eventually abandoned.^[3] All that now remains is the graveyard of the former Nazarene Baptist Church and an open-sided prayer site, built of wood, provided by Dow for family members who return to visit the graves.^[4]

The residents were transferred to newly-built homes at Morrison Acres, but many died before they could settle in. The large number of petrochemical plants producing PVC in the surrounding area, an 80-mile (130 km) stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, first led to its being known as the Chemical Corridor but later Cancer Alley, and many other communities in the area have been similarly badly affected by groundwater pollution and other toxic emissions.^[2][5]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} Google Books: David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz,“Building a Toxic Environment: Historical Arguments about the Past and Future of Public Health,” in Stevens, V.R., Rosenberg, C.E. & Burns, L.R., History and Health Policy in the United States Stevens, V.R., Rosenberg, C.E. & Burns, L.R., History and health policy in the United States p144 accessed 11 Feb 2010
2. ^ ^{a b} [1] Google Books: Merchant, Carolyn, American environmental history: an introduction, pp203–204 accessed 11 Feb 2010
3. ^ ^{a b c d} Google Books: In David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz,“Building a Toxic Environment: Historical Arguments about the Past and Future of Public Health,” in Stevens, V.R., Rosenberg, C.E. & Burns, L.R., History and health policy in the United States in Stevens, V.R., Rosenberg, C.E. & Burns, L.R., History and health policy in the United States p145 accessed 11 Feb 2010
4. ^ Google Books: In David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz,“Building a Toxic Environment: Historical Arguments about the Past and Future of Public Health,” in Stevens, V.R., Rosenberg, C.E. & Burns, L.R., History and health policy in the United States p146 accessed 11 Feb 2010
5. ^ Hartford Web Publishing/Africana.com: Holland, J.M., Touring Cancer Alley (21 June 2001) accessed 11 Feb 2010

Coordinates: 30°19′20″N 91°13′29″W / 30.32222°N 91.22472°W / 30.32222; -91.22472