Barrett Station

Mothers Go to Washington

Three members of Mothers for Clean Air attended the Clean Air Network (CAN) Conference in Washington, D.C. February 6 - 8, 2000. With the help of travel money from CAN and assistance from the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP), Jane Laping, MfCA community organizer, and two officers of the Barrett Station chapter, Doris Gobert and Barbara Bluett, flew to Washington and stayed at the Wyndham City Center hotel for 3 days. The conference was attended by environ-mentalists focused on air pollution from all over the U.S., including 8 from Texas. Topics covered ranged from power plants to diesel fuel, but were mostly centered on public policy.

The highlight of the trip came on the last day, when the trio went to Capitol Hill and met with Congressional aides to Representatives Ken Bentsen, Gene Green, Nick Lampson, and Sheila Jackson Lee. The "Mothers" learned the importance of communicating with elected officials and will continue to keep these Representatives informed of MfCA's activities and progress.

Barrett Chapter Receives Computer

The Galveston-Houston Asso-ciation for Smog Prevention presented a new Hewlett Packard computer, 15" color monitor, and color printer to leaders of the newly formed Mothers for Clean Air Chapter in Barrett Station at the August meeting of the Barrett Station Civic League. As part of an Environmental Justice grant from the EPA, the leaders will be trained in using environmental databases through the Internet to learn more about their community. LeaAnna Williamson, community organizer for GHASP, has been working since May with the residents and their concerns about hazardous waste sites and air and water pollution in the community near Crosby, Texas. LeaAnna also conducted a photography workshop with Barrett Station fifth graders and compiled their photographs into a twelve-month calendar.

As the Pollution World Turns in Barrett Station

by Doris Gobert

My family and I decided to move to Barrett Station, Texas in October 1985 to be near family members who were aging. I was in good health, had no allergies, no nasal drip, no cough, no redness of the eyes, no skin rashes or respiratory problems. Neither did my husband or teenage daughter. We built a 2500 square foot home and thought we had found the perfect community for retirement. Soon, I began to smell odors so foul that they caused me to become nauseous. My husband, Willie, had to seek medical attention for watering, itching and red eyes. The doctor explained the cause was due to something in the environment. My teenage daughter began to have severe sneezing episodes lasting from 5 to 30 minutes. The doctor informed me it was some type of allergic reaction. I thought this was very unusual because she had never had any allergies before. When she left for college, her symptoms ceased. Each time she returned home the sneezing would re-occur.

Finally, as the pollution turns in Barrettt Station, I fell victim to the environment. I started coughing, having frequent sore throat episodes, burning eyes, and itching. I went to our family doctor who informed me of the diagnosis: allergic reactions due to some type of irritants in the environment. I was prescribed medication that only helped me temporarily.

I decided to do some investigating and found that we had moved into an area that had two Superfund sites (Sikes and French Ltd.) and a paper mill within two miles of our home. I also talked with community leaders who informed me that a lawsuit was in progress to close the toxic dumps.

Living in Barrett Station has been like living on a roller coaster, with days of feeling bad due to the pollution level and with days of minimal comfort. It is my hope that by being a member of Mothers for Clean Air, I will be able to play some part in helping to develop a clean air action program to make my community a safer place to live.

Doris Gobert is president of the Barrett Station Chapter of Mothers for Clean Air.

Environmental Justice in Barrett Station

Harrison Barrett, a freed slave from Louisiana, settled the property now known as Barrett Station in 1840. His great grandson, Fred Barrett, carries on the name in Barrett Station, a small city south of Crosby, Texas and close to the San Jacinto River. It is a good place to live and raise children because everyone looks out for each others' children, and is active in trying to make Barrett Station a better place to live.

Lurking in the shadows of this pleasant little community are two of the country's worst Superfund sites, Sikes and French Ltd - dumping grounds for cancer-causing industrial waste. The French, Ltd. site, located near U.S. Highway 90, was once a small lake where children swam and played unaware that it was filled with harmful toxic waste. From 1967 to 1973, thirty companies dumped 100,000 barrels of toxic chemicals each year causing ground water contamination. There are now 5-6 million gallons of organic sludges consisting primarily of oily wastes, acidic galvanizing wastes, pickling acids, some phenols, PCBs, and heavy metals. The Sikes Superfund site, located 1.7 miles from Crosby High School, closed in the 1960s and was used as a Baptism pool for the community.

Mr. Barrett thinks his community was chosen as a dump site because it is a minority community. "If you look at the top 50 Superfund sites in the country, the are located in minority areas," he states. The sites have been cleaned up, but much irreparable harm has been done to this community. Mr. Barrett believes that his community has been hurt economically, because no one will want to move to or work at Barrett Station. He talks about how many people are dying from cancer in his community. He lost both of his parents to cancer; his father to lung and his mother to pancreatic cancer. Another family lost a mother to lung cancer and two children to leukemia.

People in the community are concerned about the number of young people in Barrett Station getting cancer. Mr. Barrett believes that the high cancer rate is due to the toxic environmental wastes in his community. Despite all the environmental problems, Mr. Barrett continues to live in Barrett Station. He says, "This is my home. I am a Barrett. I grew up here and raised my children here."