November 1999
Environmental racism
Editor's note: A government survey of the Scarboro neighborhood of Oak
Ridge, Tenn. found high levels of banned pesticides, mercury, lead and
selenium, and radioactive substances strontium-90 and uranium, in some
cases higher than those found on the nuclear reservation itself. Here are
interviews with two Oak Ridge activists.
Scarboro is a neighborhood within Oak Ridge. We've been told it's the
closest residential neighborhood to any Department of Energy plant
anywhere. It was created by the army in 1948 as the Black part of town. Oak
Ridge was in existence from 1943 on. Prior to 1948 the Black people who
worked on the Manhattan Project were made to live in a place even closer to
the plant in huts without floors, screens or glass windows. Men lived in
separate "hutments" from women, separated by barbed wire. It was very
degrading even for that time in the South.
There was no environmental justice group formed until about two years ago,
when a series of articles was printed in the Nashville Tennessean
newspaper. One of the articles was about Scarboro. The reporter had knocked
on doors on one street closest to the Y-12 nuclear plant and found that
every child on the block had a serious breathing disorder-at least 16 kids.
It got a huge amount of attention from the senators and the governor, who
brought in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) .
The article connected the breathing problems with the possibility of the
cause being the Y-12 nuclear plant. Yet when the CDC came in, they created
a survey to ask questions about indoor air quality. The survey was designed
not to focus at all on Y-12 as the cause of the problem. One of the doctors
who helped design the study said that they had been told specifically not
to look at Y-12 as a potential cause. It was one of these
inconclusive-by-design studies. In the course of that year, the people of
Scarboro became aware that they needed an organization.
- Jacqueline Kittrell, American Environmental Health Studies Project
I live in Oak Ridge, on the Scarboro Reservation. It is mostly Black. This
was where the government built the homes for the Black people in the late
1940s, and this is where all Black people lived until probably the 1960s.
There is a feeling that there was a connection between who it was built for
and where it was built.
We would like to be empowered in Scarboro. We do not want anyone to take
care of us. We would like to be able to do things for ourselves. We would
like to get our community cleaned up if it is possible. We have asked and
we have been sampled and tested, but still we are not satisfied with the
results. We expect the Environmental Protection Agency to come back and
retest, hoping that we will get a better understanding of the progress and
the procedures.
Scarboro is behind in a lot of ways. We know that it was built on a
disposal dump. Either they can buy it out or clean it up. They can set up a
place for people to go and get medical attention. I would like them to
rectify their mistakes. All of the people in Scarboro feel this way. Some
are afraid to talk, and some have lived in it and now don't know what do
about it.
We've had so many cancer cases in Scarboro, whole streets of men dying out
with prostate cancer, skin cancer. Black people don't get suntans! I have
thyroid cancer myself. I also have mercury in my body. I worked at the K-25
and Y-12 plants [on Oak Ridge nuclear reservation], so I am well aware for
16 years that I have been exposed to every chemical that has been mentioned
on the list.
I would like to see something done in my lifetime for the people of
Scarboro. We're not getting cooperation from the city or anyone else. I
would like people to know that we in Scarboro are really trying to come out
from under the oppression that this has thrown on the people, the
uncertainty about their health, their homes and thinking that we have been
overlooked and forgotten.
-Fannie Ball
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