from the earth is carved our humanity

Yesterday we traveled to Mamallapuram, an ancient temple site, in Southern India. It was amazing to see such magnificent structures nestled beautifully on the coastline of the Indian Ocean. What a relief to see something so picturesque after seeing the devastation caused by industry in Cuddalore!

Unfortunately, the Bucket Brigade must bid farewell to India this afternoon. It has been a great experience. We have learned so much from Shweta and the rest of the folks at CEM, and hope to return (with the hound!) in the near future.

We will continue to fight for the villages in Cuddalore from New Orleans. We hope to hold a fundraiser in the next few months to raise money for CEM's campaign. Solidarity is the key to success!

Although we, in the United States, are often dissatisfied with our country's environmental rules and regulations let us be thankful that we have them, as they provide at least a small space for recourse. We will work with CEM Sipcot to acheive even higher standards, and hope that India will see justice in the near future.

If you would like to donate to the Cuddalore or Bhopal campaign please visit CEM's website www.sipcotcuddalore.com or www.bhopal.net.

Thank you for joining us on our Clean Air Adventures!


Holly Witherington & Melanie Lawrence

the earth will live on, but will we?

(Pics 1&2&3: Air monitors in a traditional village in Cuddalore, Pic 4: Holly looking on in a village government meeting at a fishing village where they would like to build a refinery)


it's funny how as soon as you start getting used to a place, it is time to go. Tomorrow we meet the Bhopal survivors (awesome!) and take a plane 18 hours across the atlantic (not so awesome). The madness of taking rickshaws and riding thru eternal traffic jams is just beginning to become somewhat normal, and we are wrapping up our trip. We've gotten some awesome press, online at http://www.hindu.com/2007/10/24/stories/2007102451640300.htm
so you can check out an article that doesn't begin to capture what we experienced in Cuddalore. Traditional villages, and I do mean traditional - places where hand looming and fishing were the heart of both culture and the economy have been take over by industries that are supposed to bring development. Some of these industries purport to heal, such as the factory that produces peninsulin g yet emits an odor that made us cough, hack and shake from the severity of the smell.
Even with tours of China and Colombia under my belt, I have never smelt something so vile and permeating.. hours later my throat was still swollen and sore, even with breathing through a thick cloth during most of it. And people live here, in the midst of these odors, suffering thru mysterious sicknesses, aches and pains. Children don't grow and develop as they should, their ability stunted by the constant barrage of chemicals wafting through the air. How can industry operate in this reckless manner? Only with a green light from the government (or a lack of laws and enforcement capacity). The poverty of these communities enables these industries - and is seen the world over, as though those whose pockets are thinner have been deigned to suffer to make fat pockets even fatter.
Disgusting? definitely. Absurd? Even more so. Common? Unfortunately. New Orleans suffers the same fate - poverty and ignorance wrap togather like a polluting chokehold, opening space for industry to operate without accountability, and when the community does raise its voice, as it has in Chalmette, local government hems and haws, debating whether benzene, a known carcinogen, really does cause cancer (this is a fact - they actually had this debate at a parish council meeting).
So, how do we move forward? Ally in the name of our children and our children's children - those to whom this earth truly belongs... How do we band together to avoid a fate of neurological diseases, cancers, respiratory illness and the eradication of the ecology that births and supports all life on this teeny planet?
Suggestions are welcome...




pic 5: dipping toes in the indian ocean...
pic 6: man in tree pic 7: melanie and a lovely village lady

जुस्त a quickie

Had our first ever press conference in India today to highlight the similarities between Chalmette, Katrina and the Murphy Oil Spill (Will they ever clean it up...? Will people ever get a fair price for their homes...?) and the attempts to place another refinery on the coast of the Indian Ocean, in a beautiful area that supports fishing villages and farmers, and is the site of tsunami survivors. Seems pretty simple math doesn't it - area afflicted by tsunami does NOT = good place for a refinery, but apparently the Indian government doesn't get it. Could it be because a certain minister is heavily invested in making the project happen? hmmmm...
Maybe its much like how industry in the US has been given a green light to do what they please thanks to the current administration.
Will follow up with pics and more details - we had a bit of a harrowing return (the monsoon season just decided to kick in and Cuddalore is a good 3 hours up the coast) so we are just thankful to be back in Chennai!

pollution makes me profoundly sad

depressed even. especially to realize that if you are poor in Chennai and you are breathing unsafe levels of benzene, xylene, toluene, styrene, 1,2 dichloroethane, methylene chloride, and the list goes on and on, there is no recourse. nowhere better for you to go, no process to assert your rights, scarcely any organizations that will lend themselves to your cause. Why? because we live in a world where money rules. and a lack of it means you may live next to a garbage dump, or over 250 polluting, non-regulated, oh-my-goodess you have no idea the stink that exists in Northern Chennai. a place called Manali, and breathe in such a long list of chemicals every day as you are working to survive, eat, feed your kids, send them to school, put clothes on your family's back that even beginning to protest, to even begin to think about what these smells, so varied and stinky and suffocating are doing to you and yours, regardless of respiratory disorders, menstrual problems, growth retardation in the babies, you are too scared to raise your voice.
too fearful because in this country, corporations are king and poor human beings are just in the way.





(pic 1&2:black smoke coming out of smoke stacks)






(pic3&4: 40,000 people live next to the 250 stinky industries, which include 2 refineries, fertilizer and polymer manufacturing)














After just a few hours of touring these sites, my throat is sore and my head is pounding. I can't begin to imagine what it is like to call these places home. But that doesn't sit well - many of these polluters are multi-national corporations that come out of, where else? the US. We are exporting waste and toxins and essentially sickness and despair to other parts of the world, simply because we can. no wonder i'm depressed.



garbage burning... little kids often die scavenging for recyclables




no wonder they like krumpin...!

another day another dosa..

hey y'all..
We're beginning day 3 of our journeys through India and our tummies are finally starting to acclimate.. It's been a wide array of feelings going on in there and none of them very nice, tho that hasn't stopped us from eating (girls do get hungry you know).
We are still waiting on the hound (a portable air monitor that will help us determine on-site the breadth of extent of toxins - tho not all the toxins - in the industrial sector of Cuddalore). DHL has been trying to run some kind of duty scam rather than pay the duties upon the air monitor's arrival in India. Shweta is supremely worried about there being problems returning it to the states, since just having it released to CEM here has been high drama, but like mama says, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. At the moment we are relieved and excited to hear that it is on its way through customs and will arrive today.
Here is a little background on the work CEM does here: They have trained five people in the Cuddalore area to take air samples and fill otu odor logs. These people have been tireless in gathering evidence, and while there are no official health studies linking the sickness in the community to levels of Benzene and other toxins that are found at 20-30,000 (yes, THOUSAND) times EPA approved levels, it has prompted the government to begin moving towards establshing pollution standards, albeit, currently without community voice.
The government presently wants to build a refinery on the coast (yes on the INDIAN ocean, same ocean that rocked the world with a TSUNAMI a few years ago). Coming from New Orleans, we already know that refineries and floodwaters don't bode well for the surrounding communities. Remember the hundred million gallon Murphy Oil spill in St. Bernard (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/15/eveningnews/main850800.shtml) - that spill was neverly properly cleaned, and people are still waiting to receive a fair price for their homes. Imagine what that would look like here...?
In other news, pipelines just across Louisiana's border are blowing up in Texas. Check that out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ce4i8s2XEY
And of course, hope you are enjoying the flics!

if only you could smell it...!

Rested and reinvigorated, we have entered our second day in India - tho it definitely feels like our first! Breakfast was delicious, a combination of dosas and puuris and all kinds of condiments, dal and chutneys. We are adjusting and the weather is helping - today is cool and rainy.

Almost everything is in English, from street signs to advertisements. Apparently, all government documents are sent out to the various states in english, and then translated to the myriad of languages found across the subcontinent. While that is strange, it had been extrordinarily helpful to us - bargaining for a taxi from our hotel to the office suddenly becomes quite doable. Riding in the taxi, however, puts every experience in transit I have ever had to shame. Colombia and Jamaica have nothing on this - it feels like a rollercoaster oh mi gosh but its not feeling. We have consistently driven down the wrong side of the street into oncoming traffic. Squeezed next to huge buses and trucks that don't see us or don't care and stopped split seconds short of being plastered to the back of a bus.

The colors and people here are shockingly beautiful - a blend of rich fabrics and sultry tones that highlights the superfly hues of brown skin all around us. What's not so fly is the smells of exhaust and garbadge that assault your nose when traveling across the city. From our hotel you can see piles of trash - next to empty dumpsters! There are no zoning regulations in Chennai - so the architecture is a hodge podge of buildings, occasional sidewalks and crumbling streets. Traffic is made up of oversized buses and trucks, three wheel motorcycle taxis, motos and pedi taxis, with everyone vying for supremacy. Apparently non-fatal accidents are common on regular streets, with worse ones occurring regularly on the highway. We have no plans of getting on the highway.

Our main prupose here is to help with a campaign against the expansion of an already highly toxic chemical plant in Cuddalore. We shipped an air monitor here through DSL on their promise that we would have no problem with customs because it would be going back to the States. I guess those DSL folks will say just about anything, because today is the third day of problems, and new ones pop up each day.

Remember that India has no regulations for pollution? There is nothing to limit the release of toxins into the air, water or land. The process, which has taken five years just to get started, is now one and a half years in the making, moves extremely slowly due to bureacracy, AND DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY COMMUNITY REPRESENTATIVES. So even though it is the community who has demanded this process and illustrated the need for such regulations through bucket samples and odor logs, their voice is ignored so that industry and government can continue to collude in the spread of contamination under the guise of development.

It is however, reminscent of how weak the EPA is in the US, and how in-the-pocket-of-industry the Dept of Environmental Quality in Louisiana is though...

Yes I Am Melting

You would think that a person that has lived in a hot humid climate for 22 years could easily adapt to hot weather in another country. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

We still have not slept, but have found an airconditioner which is almost more gratifying, at least to me! I definitely feel a lot more grounded than when we first arrived in Chennai. It is interesting to be the minority. Americans should experience that more often, and maybe we would be more compassionate people.

We have eaten so much good food the past few days! It makes you realize how disgusting most American food is, at least all of the processed stuff. Chocolate, Wine, bread, cheese, and curry, which just so happen to be all of my favorite things!

While indulging in food and wine, we have met so many wonderful people. I think language barriers add so much charm and life to conversations. Each person picking up differnt parts, and inevitably finding some common understanding.

The first day in India has been crazy...most things are following ten hour flights with multiple screaming babies. Melanie and I spent some time preparing for our journey reading books on the food, dress, character and etiquette of the people of India. We realized that there most have been some confusion for the authors from here to America when Shweta, our host, picked us up from the airport in jeans and a t-shirt not the sari we expected. So now we are here with long sleeve shirts and pants and we could be wearing our normal clothes!


We will hopefully be picking up the hound air monitor from customs tomorrow, and we will be traveling to Cuddalore and Metur to do some monitoring in some highly polluted areas. I am looking forward to traveling and working with the guys from CEM, and hopefully by tomorrow I will be able to tolerate the heat!

Holly

remember Bhopal?

Hello hello,

So we still have not slept and Holly is melting like an ice cube in heat - and it is hot, maybe New Orleans in August hot - so serious sweaty dehydration is almost inevitable.

But we've been learning lots, even in our half awake half jetlagged state, and experiencing delicious delicious dosas and sambars along the way.

India has no regulations for air pollution. None. Not even one. This means that when air samples, taken with the EPA air buckets I described in the first post, come back with 20-30,000 times the US EPA standards of carcinogens and toxins like Benzene and Toluene, there is little to no recourse for the afflicted communities. It also means that so much of this work (clean air campaigning) must be started from scratch in a place that is dealing with what appears to be a conflict between growing an economy and protecting the health of the people and the environment.

As the reality of global warming sets in, the parameters of the debate take on an even starker view. But to those whose livelihood depends on the outsourcing of toxic industries to less regulated areas, survival does not come with the question of a human right to clean air.

But shouldn't it?

oh India...!

At 4 am this morning, we arrived in Chennai... oh goodness. We haven't slept, but we have been very well apprised of all sorts of pollution just on the way to the office for Community Environmental Monitoring (CEM). We were super relieved to see Shweta amongst the throngs of people waiting to pick up family, friends and business associates. Only in developing countries are redlights voluntary (or NOLA at 4 in the morning) and on the trip from the airport in this adorable old school car, we wondered if street lanes existed and how a horn could stop a humongous truck from sideswiping us. We didn't sleep the last two hours on the train so we have now been up way too long.

Taking a walk to the beach, which is only about 100 meters away, your nose is assualted by all kinds of odors, none of which we could properly identify, but stinky seemed a good start. The people we encountered were very friendly. Children greeted us and tried to practice their english.. a group of boys playing cricket on the beach shouted at us until we finally deciphered, "Do you have the time?" But neither of us had on watches. They were amused...

The litter on the beach is probably similar to all kinds of developing countries and just as unfortunate.. Watching the sun raise its fiery rays over what should be pituresque loveliness, was instead a fearful reminder that flip-flops are not the best foot protectors. It is hot here though, and i'm not sure any other options make sense.

Once we get rested, we will post in detail. So far, we are very excited to be meeting some of the Bhopal survivors and learn more about the work of CEM.. but maybe a nap is in order...;)

from Paris to India!

So we are in the midst of transit to Chennai, India after two days in Paris, France. Paris was amazing... particularly how friendly everyone was – so much for the rumors! No one was snotty, or even snobbish. We saw some amazing architecture and really cool services, such as the huge recycling bins that one can find almost everywhere. It’s a struggle to recycle anywhere in New Orleans, and if Parisians can do it, so can we.

We met a captivating young man who does so many things they cannot all be listed, but of particular interest to us was his work developing sustainable eco-friendly housing in Paris. We’ve asked him to send us more information on his project and we promise to post it once received. Now off to India!

Here We Go...!

Hello! This is the Official Louisiana Bucket Brigade India blog! Who is the LA Bucket Brigade you ask? We are a environmental health justice non-profit based in New Orleans, home to some of the dirtiest industries in the country. We work with communities who are fighting for clean air throughout Louisiana. For more info on us, please check out LABucketBrigade.org

Why are we called the Bucket Brigade? Because we use nifty buckets, to take air samples. The buckets are easy to use, inexpensive to make and take EPA approved air samples.

On Saturday me and Holly begin our journey to India. Originally, we were going to attend an International Bucket Brigade Conference - solidarity facilitates our work and lets us share information and experiences, which are invaluable when you are working against huge refineries and chemical plants. The conference has been postponed because of an emergency campaign against the expansion of a chemical plant near Chennai (south India. We are now going to help out... Rockin!

So stay tuned. I will be putting plenty of travel pics and anecdotes here! India is going to be amazing!