On Dec. 7, working-class residents of Curtis Bay and different South Baltimore neighborhoods marched by the streets of Annapolis and delivered an enormous stocking filled with coal to the Governor’s mansion. They’re demanding Gov. Wes Moore intervene in a generations-long battle to cease rail big CSX transportation from polluting their our bodies, houses, and communities with poisonous coal mud.
CSX isn’t the one polluter in South Baltimore: industrial areas close to Curtis Bay home oil tanks, a wastewater remedy plant, chemical vegetation, landfills, the nation’s largest medical waste incinerator, and extra. However a current air high quality examine confirmed what residents have been complaining about for generations: Coal mud from the CSX Transportation coal export terminal is current throughout Curtis Bay. CSX has denied culpability and referred to as the examine “materially flawed.” Residents say they’re fed up with the corporate refusing to take duty for the coal mud, and with town authorities for ignoring their cries for assist for years. So they’re demanding that Gov. Moore and the Maryland Division of the Atmosphere deny CSX’s operational allow for the coal terminal, a allow that the MDE has been reviewing for renewal.
Studio Manufacturing: Maximillian Alvarez, Norma Martinez
Put up-Manufacturing: Kate Lindsay, David Hebden
Transcript
Annapolis March: “What do we wish? Deny the allow! When do we wish it? Now! And if we don’t get it? Shut it down! If we don’t get it? Shut it down! If we don’t get it… Shut it down…”
Maximillian Alvarez: Working-class residents of Curtis Bay and different South Baltimore neighborhoods marched by the streets of Annapolis in early December, and delivered an enormous stocking filled with coal to the Governor’s mansion. They’re demanding Governor Wes Moore intervene in a generations-long battle to cease rail big CSX transportation from polluting their our bodies, houses, and communities with poisonous coal mud.
Nicole Fabricant: Governor Moore is not going to come to see the tragedy of Curtis Bay, so we have now introduced the group to Governor Moore.
David Jones: It’s a bit of completely different right here in Annapolis. I can truly take a deep breath and don’t really feel like I’m gonna throw up or choke. In order that’s factor. So should you may please make the air like it’s right here in Annapolis in my group, or perhaps a little bit higher, I believe myself and others would actually admire that.
Phil Ateto: Governor Moore is treating Curtis Bay like a sacrifice zone, which is the alternative of his marketing campaign slogan and pledge to ‘depart nobody behind.’ Governor Moore, you’re leaving Curtis Bay behind… Governor Moore, meet with the Curtis Bay group, reject the coal pier allow, and maintain your dedication to communities throughout Maryland.
Maximillian Alvarez: CSX isn’t the one polluter in South Baltimore, nevertheless it runs uncovered coal trains by the identical locations folks reside in, and it operates a large coal terminal of their yard. Between the Curtis Bay Coal Pier and the CONSOL Power Baltimore Marine terminal, served by each CSX and Norfolk Southern railroad, the Port of Baltimore is the second largest coal export port in the USA. Dozens of South Baltimore residents, group affiliation members, and allies from local weather justice actions throughout Maryland introduced a message to Governor Moore from their communities: deny CSX’s operational allow for the coal terminal, a allow that the Maryland Division of the Atmosphere has been reviewing for renewal.
Shashawnda Campbell: You wouldn’t dream that you simply’d have to come back someplace to say, ‘Please cease poisoning me,’ proper?… And it’s even worse that the group that’s been coping with this burden for many years, many years upon many years—spills, leaks, explosions—time after time after time should even be those to come back right here to say, ‘We’d like assist.’
Dave Jones: So this can by no means come out of my lungs, ever. That is in all probability what’s gonna trigger my dying. I’ve by no means been in a coal mine in my life, and I assure you once they reduce me open, I’ll appear like the coal miner that’s been there his complete life.
Shashawnda Campbell: After we take into consideration when any person [is] doing one thing violent—we see it and we’re like, ‘We gotta cease that!.’ This IS violence. That is violence in opposition to our group.
Dave Jones: That is homicide. That is homicide on a grand scale. The quantity of most cancers charges in my group are disgusting! And I, for one, am completed. So I’m pleading to our governor to please do one thing about this, sir. Please do your job!
Maximillian Alvarez: A current air high quality examine confirmed what residents have been complaining about for generations: coal mud from the CSX transportation coal export terminal is current throughout Curtis Bay. Coal mud accommodates heavy metals that may be deadly, together with selenium, chromium, arsenic, mercury, and lead.
Matthew Aubourg: We’re discovering science that’s supporting what group and what residents have been saying for many years… We shouldn’t should be bringing this proof to the desk within the first place. What residents are experiencing, what individuals are seeing day by day—that needs to be sufficient to make the change that’s wanted in the neighborhood.
Maximillian Alvarez: The year-long examine was launched by the Group of Curtis Bay Affiliation, South Baltimore Group Land Belief, Johns Hopkins College, the College of Maryland and the Maryland Division of the Atmosphere. But CSX nonetheless claims the examine was flawed and denies the outcomes, and CSX additionally says it’s abiding by current laws and assembly the Environmental Safety Company’s Nationwide Ambient Air High quality Requirements. Residents say CSX is stuffed with it, that the examine isn’t flawed, and that their our bodies bear the proof of the lethal air pollution the corporate denies.
Shashawnda Campbell: We’re right here preventing for the group, to say, ‘It’s not OK to have this coal terminal proper subsequent to communities and never doing something to cease it.’ And so we want Governor Moore to come back out and truly stand with the folks and maintain this facility accountable for the harms that it has brought on.
Maximillian Alvarez: CSX reported over $14 billion in whole income final 12 months, and a internet revenue of $3.72 billion.
Dave Jones: I don’t perceive how one can justify earnings over somebody dying 20 years sooner than they’re anticipated to be, or getting most cancers and having a horrible remainder of their existence for the time they’ve left…
The very first thing you are able to do is declare a state of emergency for environmental injustice, after which we will go from there. What that appears like down the street, I don’t know. However I do know the one approach that we’re actually gonna change that is if … we don’t do away with these industries, is to alter the established order of what they get fined for being unhealthy actors.
Shashawnda Campbell: So we’re calling for our governor—our governor [who] says a lot about lowering greenhouse gasses and this and that—to truly stand in your phrases and do it. And you are able to do it single handedly by holding this coal terminal accountable by denying their allow in order that coal terminal isn’t purposeful.
Maximillian Alvarez: At a group assembly in November, through which Maryland Division of the Atmosphere officers and a CSX consultant had been current, residents of Curtis Bay and different South Baltimore neighborhoods like Cherry Hill, Westport, Mt. Winans, Lakeland, and Brooklyn, shared fiery testimonies. They unanimously expressed anger and frustration in the direction of CSX, and plenty of urged the MDE to reject the working allow for the CSX Transportation Coal Export Terminal. The company says it’s amending the prevailing allow to impose stricter necessities on the railroad big’s operations, and that it may well implement these restrictions with fines and even litigation, however doesn’t have the authority to close down CSX’s operations.
Halyna Mudryj: I invite the individuals who work for CSX, these in cost: Please, come and reside in our group.
Jeffrey Barnes: MDE is ignoring us, and also you, for years. There’s no query that the coal mud is poisoning our communities, inflicting cancers. That’s not a query. And but we come right here yearly, and what do we are saying? ‘Please, you’ve acquired to cease this poisoning of our group.’ That is one thing that the state ought to do.
Melanie Thomas: This isn’t only a Curtis Bay problem. Each group the place that coal prepare passes by, you’re being impacted too. Do y’all hear me? Each group {that a} prepare passes by carrying coal, you’re being impacted too. As a result of it’s not simply an remoted incident or an remoted space that we’re speaking about. We’re speaking about lives, we’re speaking about communities, miles and miles of individuals—folks residing and respiration such as you and I—which are being affected each day by these tremendous particulate issues, these particles that we’re inhaling day after day.
Maximillian Alvarez: Standing right here in Curtis Bay, South Baltimore, the place a seemingly limitless CSX locomotive is slowly pulling automobile after automobile after automobile of uncovered coal containers.
Angie Shaneyfelt: In order that’s the coal pile that we’ve been preventing for years and years and years. And actually proper right here, this white siding, is my home—a couple of soccer discipline, soccer discipline and a half, away from my home.
Maximillian Alvarez: Angie Shaneyfelt lives simply up the road from the CSX coal terminal. She and her household have been coping with the realities of residing in a “sacrifice zone” for years, like not opening their home windows for the previous 16 years, nevertheless it was after an explosion on the coal pier in December of 2021 that she acquired actively concerned within the struggle to carry CSX accountable for its poisonous air pollution. Once more, CSX isn’t the one polluter in South Baltimore: Industrial areas close to Curtis Bay home oil tanks, a wastewater remedy plant, chemical vegetation, landfills, the nation’s largest medical waste incinerator, and extra. However Angie says that everybody is aware of what the fixed black mud in the neighborhood is, the harms it causes, and the place it’s coming from.
Angie Shaneyfelt: So that is my windowsill, lined porch, completely black fingers now. Undisturbed. And it’s even up, it’s all the best way up in right here.” [shows finger and looks at the camera] … And that is 16 years now, since 2009, that we have now not opened our home windows absolutely to breathe recent air, as a result of the recent air isn’t recent. It’s coal mud, soiled.
We’re right here in Curtis Bay group—a group of individuals, completely different sorts of individuals, all completely different walks of life. The general public round are renters. And we’re not that far-off from the coal pile proper there. I’ve lived right here 16 years. And we don’t… all people’s in, inside. Even on a pleasant day—inside. As a result of we don’t like this mud and respiration it in. No one needs to be respiration on this mud.
Proper right here, proper subsequent to the coal, like lower than 1,000 toes away is the place the group begins. After we had the explosion, folks’s home windows had been shattered out of their home, out of the frames. So loopy. And [we’ve] not gotten something, actually, since then. The one factor we get is doubt: ‘No, it’s not mud, it’s not coal mud, it’s one thing else.’ However we all know what it’s. Generations have fought this, and we’re gonna maintain preventing it.
Maximillian Alvarez: For The Actual Information Community, that is Maximillian Alvarez reporting from South Baltimore.