Where Does BP Gulf Oil Waste Go One Year Later?
It has been one year since the massive BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster that killed eleven workers and created an environmental nightmare on the U.S. Gulf Coast. While the media devoted round the clock coverage of the well capping and cleanup efforts, not much attention was given to where the oil waste was being dumped. Environmental justice leaders were the first to raise concern about BP’s waste management plan that was approved on June 13, 2010. They questioned a plan that would turn their communities into the “dumping grounds” for BP oil waste—a dumping pattern they have been fighting for decades.
MLK Day 2012: 5 Reasons Dr. King Would Be Fighting Environmental Racism in Tennessee
January 16, 2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday. Dr. King was called to Memphis in April 1968 on an environmental and economic justice mission on behalf of 1,300 striking garbage workers from AFSCME Local 1733. The Memphis struggle was about much more than a garbage strike. It was also about human dignity and human rights. Memphis was Dr. King's last campaign. However, his legacy lives on in modern day garbage and environmental justice struggles. If Dr. King were alive today there is a good chance the 83-year-old civil rights icon would be standing side-by-side with the African American Harry Holt family in Dickson County, Tennessee, located just 160 miles east of Memphis, whose 150-acre farmland and well were poisoned with the deadly trichloroethylene (TCE) chemical from the leaky Dickson County Landfill, located just 54 feet from the family's property line.
