Living Downstream

For this final Living Downstream episode of the season, we're dropping in on three recent webinars: One gathering considered Social and Environmental Justice at Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico. Another knitted together poetry and a powerful environmental film. It was put on by the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program. And a third event was cheekily called Toxics are a Drag, and was billed as a panel discussion on toxic beauty products in the queer community. That was hosted by one of the most important grass roots environmental groups in the country: New York City's WEACT for Environmental Justice.  Find more information about all these events in the Resources section of our website at https://norcalpublicmedia.org/resources/living-downstream-resource-guide First, this show has an update on what's happening right now, the last week of October 2021. I called White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council member Dr. Robert Bullard, often called the father of environmental justice in this country. He spoke to me just days before leaving for COP26, the United Nations climate change conference set to start next week in Glasgow.

This season, we’re looking at environmental racism across the country, and today that takes us to the sugarcane covered, oil-rich region at the intersection of southern Louisiana and the Gulf of Mexico: Iberia Parish. In this episode of Living Downstream, we will hear from people who say they are fighting over something that their families have already fought for generations to maintain: wealth. In this case, we’re talking about land: what grows on it and what lies under it. We’ll hear from Black sugarcane farmers who say it’s become impossible to stay within the industry. These farmers describe the challenges of keeping their businesses afloat in an atmosphere of overwhelming racism, and they share with us how the stress is affecting their minds and bodies. And we'll hear the poignant story of a woman who documents how oil was taken from her family's land, while the only compensation was a $10 contract she says is a fraud. Gulf States Newsroom regional healthcare reporter Shalina Chatlani takes the story from here.

From Northern California Public Media and Mensch Media, this edition of Living Downstream is guest hosted by Molly Peterson. This time, from the Coachella Valley, east of Los Angeles, we’re talking about the biggest lake in California — now starved of water — and the people who live around The Sea Next Door.  The Salton Sea sits in a depression of land 30 miles from the Mexican border — and it poses a growing threat to public health. In this episode, two young women from the Eastern Coachella Valley introduce us to their neighbor.  We begin with Adriana Torres, who lives in a rural community there: an area called North Shore. We'll also hear from her classmate Rosa Gonzalez.

On this episode of Living Downstream, we take you to a little city with big plans for changing the world. While we’re there, we ask what role local governments can play in the movement for climate justice — that’s where climate activism and the fight for social justice meet.    Ithaca, New York sees itself as a living laboratory for climate justice. Climate justice is based on the recognition that the people whose lives are most disrupted by climate change — the people who tend to die in the storms and heat waves, or to lose their homes in the fires and floods — are generally the people with the least money, the most precarious jobs, the least access to health care, the shabbiest housing, and the least reliable transportation.  So if you want to do something about the climate emergency, the thinking goes, you can’t just focus on things like reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preparing for disasters. You need to address long-standing social and economic inequities at the same time. Climate justice is the big idea behind the Green New Deal — the resolution that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez first introduced with Senator Ed Markey in 2019 and re-introduced in April of 2021. Congress hasn’t formally adopted the Green New Deal, but many local governments around the country have gone ahead and passed their own versions. Ithaca is one of them. And it’s brought in a man with a global vision to lead the charge.  Veteran public radio reporter — and long-time Ithaca resident — Jonathan Miller takes us there.

On this episode of Living Downstream, Texas Public Radio’s Yvette Benavides takes us to Central and South Texas where summer days are frequently in the upper 90’s, but where in many low income neighborhoods the mercury climbs even higher. And with climate change, these areas will be experiencing more extreme temperatures, more frequently and for longer durations. New research shows how these hotter temperatures are taking a toll on the people who live in some city neighborhoods — typically in communities of color. The heat is affecting their bodies and minds — effectively shortening their lives. We'll be hearing from some Spanish-speaking residents as they explain how they coexist with the heat. Yvette will translate, but we’ll make room for  these Texans to have their voices heard in their own language.  What's the connection between longstanding racism in our cities and the built environment there? What can be done to reverse what the EPA and many researchers call “the Urban Heat Island Effect”? The answers will demand that we untangle a complex web of issues, reject some of our prejudices and think creatively. That’s essential if we want to save lives and come to grips with the changing planet and our place in the community of people inhabiting it. Yvette Benavides reports.

On this episode of Living Downstream: The Environmental Justice Podcast, Victoria Bouloubasis visits a rural county where the multicultural workforce kept America fed during the pandemic. We'll meet Esmeralda, who has become a community health worker, and her mother Marta, who works in a poultry plant. In the face of blatant mistreatment and inadequate protection, food factory workers in North Carolina became sick, and died, in unacceptably high numbers. This mother-daughter team stepped up to protect the health of their neighbors and coworkers, efforts they continue today.

For decades, community members and allies have complained about the diesel truck traffic around the Port of Oakland. People who live in this neighborhood, between several freeways and backing up to one of the busiest ports in the nation, have elevated instances of asthma, and shorter life spans, than others in the county. We meet the activists who are trying to change this reality, and we hear about the complex politics and alliances that have resulted in some hope that change is coming. The phrase "diesel death zone" is used more often with areas in Southern California, but we believe it applies here as well. Sarah Holtz reports.  

On this episode of Living Downstream, we visit Houston's Greater Fifth Ward, to learn how creosote contamination has degraded the health of people living near a rail yard. We talk with residents, who describe all the cancer cases in the neighborhood and with Dr. Robert Bullard, widely considered the father of environmental justice. Residents have organized to advocate for compensation from the railroad company that owns the yard. What will stay with you is the story of "Mister" — a young neighborhood resident who dreams of becoming a veterinarian. Laura Isensee reports.

The 40th anniversary of PCB protests in North Carolina is about to be commemorated. To mark the occasion, we revisit one of the most listened-to episodes from our first season. This story comes from Warren County. In the early 1980s, Warren County became a flash point in the fight for something that didn’t even have a commonly used name at the time: environmental justice.  These days, members of this community are not only marking that history, they are taking new approaches to raising environmental awareness. Their work begins with support for small farmers, particularly those of color. Jereann King Johnson and Joe O’Connell have teamed up to tell the story of local environmentalism in the present day.  As we continue this second season of Living Downstream, make sure to subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave comments and rate us on your favorite app - it helps others to find us.

On this episode of Living Downstream, we meet Catherine Coleman Flowers. In 2020, she released her first book, Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirtiest Secret. The book documents her two-decade crusade to expose the shameful conditions that many of her Alabama neighbors endure. Some Americans take for granted that when they flush the toilet their waste will travel to a place where it can be safely and effectively treated. But for others, the sewage may go only as far as their back yards, to become breeding grounds for insects and disease.     In 2020, Flowers became a MacArthur Foundation Fellow - an award colloquially known as the "genius" grant for her work in Alabama and around the world. She also is the founder of CREEJ, the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and a current vice chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.    Flowers talked in January, and again in April, with Living Downstream host Steve Mencher. In this episode we'll also hear selections from the documentary about Flowers, called The Accidental Environmentalist, and a story about a distant cousin and friend of Flowers, Pamela Rush, used by permission of NPR's All Things Considered.

More than a year into the pandemic, the Bronx is still the New York City borough with the highest death rate from COVID-19. That's where we begin the second season of our Living Downstream podcast. Last year, Ese Olumhense, former Bronx reporter at THE CITY, explored why residents there were dying from the virus at a rate double the city's average. Public health experts said Bronx residents, who are overwhelmingly Black and Latinx, were more likely to work outside of their homes, regularly exposing them to the virus. The borough also sees high rates of chronic illnesses like diabetes and asthma, which can make COVID-19 infection more dangerous.

Season 2 of Living Downstream: The Environmental Justice Podcast premieres Earth Day (4/22/21). Producers are checking in from around the country, from California to North Carolina. And we'll talk with EJ warrior Catherine Coleman Flowers. Here's a preview.  

Last year we brought you the story of civilian workers at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, who tested the defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. Today these workers are in their 70s and 80s and suffer from the same diseases that Vietnam veterans have shown were caused by their exposure to the herbicide.  While surviving veterans receive disability benefits as a result of their exposure, these civilian workers do not. Earlier this year NPR’s mid-day show, Here & Now, featured our story of the civilian workers at Eglin. That broadcast has prompted more individuals to come forward who say they too are suffering medical problems caused by exposure to Agent Orange at Eglin. The story also sparked interest by law firms in a potential class action on behalf of those affected.  Jon Kalish reports…   Read more about the class action lawsuit and Agent Orange. [Photo: Penny Davidson. At 82 she has fibromyalgia, peripheral neuropathy, rheumatoid arthritis and a host of other ills she traces back to her time in the lab at Eglin working with Agent Orange. Credit: Jon Kalish]

Non-Federally Recognized Tribes Struggle to Protect Environmental and Cultural Assets  By Debra Utacia Krol and Allison Herrera Read more about federally non-recognized tribes. Valentin Lopez was handed a dilemma: how to honor his elders’ admonition to fulfill an ancestral directive to guard and protect the ancestral lands of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, a small tribe along California’s Central Coast and parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.   “In 2006 the tribal elders came to a council meeting,” says Lopez, who’s served as chairman of the 600-member tribe since 2003. “They said our creation story tells us the Creator gave us the responsibility to take care of Mother Earth and all living things, and Creator has never taken away or rescinded that obligation. We have to find a way to do that.” Lopez left that meeting “just shaking my head saying, ‘How in the world could we ever do that?’”  One huge roadblock: Lopez’s tribe lacks federal recognition. Unlike recognized tribes, Amah Mutsun can’t use federal Indian laws such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, also known as NAGPRA or access federal funding to pursue environmental and cultural site protection. And, most of the tribal members have had to move east to the San Joaquin Valley, priced out of their stunningly beautiful—and expensive—homeland, because they don’t have a reservation or other trust lands to call home. So, how could Lopez honor his word to the elders? [Photo: Valentin Lopez. Credit: Debra Utacia Krol] Lopez isn’t alone: Some 55 Indigenous communities in California aren’t on the BIA’s List of Recognized Tribes, the document used by the feds to provide funding and technical assistance to tribal governments for education, health care, governance, environmental protection and many other programs. In fact, California has the dubious distinction of the state with the largest number of unrecognized tribes. Entire cultural groups such as the Ohlone, Esselen, Salinan and other cultures fell completely through the cracks, while others like the Chumash, Mono and Maidu peoples have both recognized and non-recognized communities. So, how can non-recognized tribes manage to protect their ancestral sites and exert environmental stewardship over their lands? In California, some state laws and policies offer at least some paths to protection. In September 2011, Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued an executive order that requires all state agencies to engage in meaningful consultation with Indigenous tribes in California, whether federally recognized or not. The California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, was amended in 2014 provisions for tribal cultural protections. And, these cultural provisions apply to non-recognized tribes. Under the terms of the amendment, known to tribes as Assembly Bill 52, California tribes have legal standing to issue a notice for consultation regarding any proposed project covered under CEQA in the tribe’s traditional and culturally-affiliated lands.  More state agencies, most notably the California Coastal Commission, have enacted tribal consultation policies. And, the state’s Native American Heritage Commission coordinates consultation as well as identifying and cataloging Native American cultural resources with state borders.  For small, resource-poor tribes such as the Amah Mutsun and the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe (also known at the ytt Northern Chumash), whose lands lie about a four-hour drive north of Los Angeles on the Central Coast, utilizing these state regulations can be a challenge. Mona Olivas Tucker, tribal chair of the ytt Northern Chumash Tribe, manages relationships with a variety of state and local agencies.  Tucker believes that the state’s efforts to support tribes has a mixed record. “I think the Native American Heritage Commission tries very hard to be helpful to tribes federally recognized and  non-federally recognized,” she says. “But I also think they have a giant amount of work and perhaps too small a staff to try to take care of it all; but, they do try pretty hard to help us when we reach out for help.” And, she says, the 30-day period to respond to requests for consultation is insufficient for the number of requests the tribe receives. “We work on a volunteer basis,” says Tucker. “Our tribal office is a spare bedroom here in my house and our tribal hall is my living room.” Each tribal member who helps with consultations handles a different area of San Luis Obispo County. But, even though the ytt Northern Chumash has a good relationship with the county, working with the feds is a different story. “When you're not federally recognized you have greater difficulty in getting to the conference table for discussions about your area,” says Tucker. “An example is the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management; they have been cordial. But, we're not a federally recognized tribe, so we have the status as a typical member of the public. We don't have a special status with them.”  Sometimes when the feds come calling, though, it can be a different story.  **** “Our tribe is very poor,” says Lopez. “We did not own any land. The vast majority of us cannot afford to live in our territory. And so, we live in the Central Valley versus along the coast or in the Gilroy, Hollister, Morgan Hill area.” In fact, we met in Winton, in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, a three-hour drive from the eastern edge of Amah Mutsun land. But the Amah Mutsun elders had issued their orders: resume land stewardship over their lands as they had for more than 10,000 years. Lopez had been praying for a solution when an unlikely would-be partner emerged—the National Park Service.   “We got a call from the superintendent of Pinnacles National Park,” says Lopez. “He invited us to come in and be part of the park; he had just transferred in from another park where he had a great relationship with the tribe.” The superintendent told Lopez, “I recognize this is your territory." He offered the tribe a voice at the park. “When he said those words, we were really happy, recognizing that perhaps this is the creator answering our prayers,” says Lopez. “At the same time, it scared us because we had lost so much knowledge that they expected us to have knowledge about to take care of the plants and animals, and to tell the interpretation story and talk about life as our ancestors had. “We had lost so much of that knowledge.” But, in addition to knowledge possessed by living elders, Amah Mutsun had a powerful tool at their disposal: Some 78,000 pages of notes compiled by anthropologist John P. Harrington, collected from the Amah Mutsun’s last traditional leader, Asencion Solorazno (1855-1930).  The initial call has evolved into a partnership, including conducting cultural burns and nurturing basketry and other culturally significant plants within Pinnacles’ land.  **** The situation is different for tribes that aren’t recognized but have allotments known as public domain trust lands, such as the North Fork Mono Tribe.  Mono families obtained Indian allotments after a promised reservation never materialized. Today, the North Fork Mono Tribe has 52 allotments covering well over 10,000 acres of land. The nearby federally recognized North Fork Rancheria, another Mono community, has an 80-acre reservation, or rancheria.  The Monos’ 1.2 million-acre ancestral land base encompasses portions of Fresno, Mariposa and Inyo counties, including parts of the Sierra Nevada. “We've been here in our area for thousands of years, down in the lower foothills for a good 500 years,” says Tribal Chairman Ron Goode. The Mono have maintained that land, including many  of the more than 8,000 meadows dotting the mountain region. “That’s where the water starts,” says Goode. In the early 1990s, the tribe began to work on restoration and enhancement of its cultural resources in partnership with three counties.  “We have over 10 different resource spots that we've been restoring since then and many other smaller acreages of land,” says Goode. “Around 2003 we started working with the Forest Service and restoring meadows, and we've been restoring meadows since then.” By 2014, the tribe has restored six meadows, bringing water and both endemic and useful exotic plants back.  Goode takes us on a tour of one of those meadows.  **** It’s a rare almost-clear day in Clovis, just east of Fresno, where Goode and his family have a small deer farm. We can spy the mighty expanse of the Sierras through a thin haze, unlike the grayish muck that passes for open air in the San Joaquin Valley these days. To see where California’s water starts, we make our way up narrow mountain roads. The grasslands and fields give way to groves of oak, manzanita, buckwheat and blackberry. Above our heads, pine and fir trees rise to brush against the blue sky. “Look at black oaks and pine trees,” says Goode. After about an hour on the road, we reach the small meadow in the Sierra National Forest. Goode reminds us to look up to ensure a dead tree isn’t about to crash on our heads. The deadfall is the result of California’s historic drought, when about 150 million trees perished. Although it proved to be good news for the meadows, the dead trees are a hazard.  “So why don’t people just cut them down?” we ask.  “I don't know,” says Goode. “I tried to get them to do that, but you know there was a policy problem. It was not declared a disaster federally, even though it's on federal lands. And Governor Brown declared a disaster, so we get state money. But we can’t get any FEMA funding. Nobody else comes in to help.” We meander around the landscape. Goode explains the process he and his crews followed to restore the meadow. “We cleared up maybe eight refrigerators and hauled truckloads of stuff, beds and all sorts of stuff, the first time we started working.” Now, Goode and his crew has restored the meadow. “We can see it's all green,” says Goode. “And how wet it is because the littl

  This is the story of a 15-year conflict over what would be the biggest dam removal ever, a modern cowboys and Indians tale that shows how victories for Native American rights still come with fits of racism and armed conflict, and how rural folks learned to make peace (and collaborate on an 1800-page Congressional bill).   It’s a complex story about a fight over shared (and limited) water, with both sides fearing the disappearance of traditional lifestyles.   Written and produced by Emrys Eller and his brother Greg Eller.   Language alert: some salty language courtesy of real folks who lived this story.     Read more about the Klamath River Dam removal.    (Image: John C. Boyle Dam on the Klamath River in southern Oregon. This is one of the dams scheduled for demolition within the next few years. Credit: Wikipedia/Bobjgalindo)   Editor's Note: This story was completed in 2018, before Gavin Newson took over as governor from Jerry Brown. The timeline for removal of the Klamath River dams is evolving. The most recent estimates are that the California dams may start being "deconstructed" in 2021.Comments are now open (until Feb. 26, 2019) on the California Environmental Impact Report.   From the Klamath Falls Oregon Herald and News:   The Notice of Availability and Draft EIR are available at: https://bit.ly/2TcxefF. Additional information related to the Lower Klamath Project water quality certification and California Environmental Quality Act process can be found at: https://bit.ly/2jwgIcL. Comments on the draft EIR are due by noon, Feb. 26, and can be sent to wr401program@waterboards.ca.gov, or Ms. Michelle Siebal, State Water Resources Control Board, Division of Water Rights — Water Quality Certification Program, P.O. Box 2000, Sacramento, CA 95812-2000 A mural in Happy Camp, a small indian town in the Klamath National Forest. The Iron Gate Dam is the biggest and only earthen dam on the Klamath River. Emrys Eller on Copco 1, one of four dams slated for removal along the California-Oregon border. Iron Gate Dam. Emrys Eller interviews Klamath Tribal leader Don Gentry near an elementary school in Chiloquin, Oregon. In 2003, two men shot up the signage of this native school amid tensions over whether to remove dams on the Klamath River.  Emrys Eller speaks with Karuk tribal leader Leaf Hillman on the banks of the Klamath River. Emrys Eller speaks with Karuk tribal leader Leaf Hillman on the banks of the Klamath River.

This story comes from Warren County, North Carolina.  In the early 1980s, Warren County became a flash point in the fight for something that didn’t have a commonly used name at the time: environmental justice.  These days, members of this small, “majority-minority” community are taking new approaches to raising environmental consciousness.  Jereann King Johnson and Joe O’Connell have teamed up to tell the story of local environmentalism in the present day.  Jereann has been involved in social justice work in the county since the 1970s.  She knows Warren County intimately. Joe, on the other hand, was drawn to this story through his work as a folklorist.  He lives in Durham, about an hours drive to the south of where our story takes place. Learn more about PCBs and global environmental justice conflicts.  (Image: Anti-PCB demonstration 1982. Credit: Mac Shaffer) Slideshow of protests against PCB site in Warren County, photographer Mac Shaffer: PCB March September 15, 1982, photos by Matt Cooper, Jr.

The peat swamp forests of Borneo are the site of a failed agricultural experiment. Planners believed that rice should grow in the swamps, but it couldn't. Even today, experiments with growing oil palms and other trees are changing the forests, with little positive to show for these efforts. As indigenous people lost their livelihood, carbon poured into the atmosphere from uncontrolled fires.  Daniel Grossman reports: Learn more about peat fires in Indonesia.  Read an article by The New York Times on the same region of Indonesia.  (Image: Smog and smoke over Borneo and Indonesia, 1997. Credit: NASA)  

You may be familiar with Coachella from hearing about the annual music festival there. But for 10 years, journalist Ruxandra Guidi has been visiting farmworkers in the area, learning about the deplorable conditions in which they live. There’s now some hope that community health workers are making a significant difference in the lives of workers. Here’s Ruxandra with the story – and stay tuned afterwards for a conversation with her detailing how she gains the trust of folks whose lives she’s documenting.     Learn more about Coachella Valley trailer park activists.    READ: Amid California's Toxic Dumps, Local Activists Go It Alone, by Ruxandra Guidi   (In this historic photo by Dorothea Lange, migrant farmworkers pull carrots in the Coachella Valley. Credit: Library of Congress) Ruxandra Guidi reported and produced this episode of Living Downstream, The Trailer Park Activists of Eastern Coachella Valley Thanks to Anthony Garcia for mastering the show. The Living Downstream theme music was written by David Schulman. Steve Mencher is the host and senior producer. Darren LaShelle in the executive producer, and the president and CEO of Northern California Public Media is Nancy Dobbs. Subscribe to Living Downstream wherever you get your podcasts. If you see environmental injustice in your community, write to us at living@norcalpublicmedia dot org LIVING DOWNSTREAM thanks our sponsors who make this podcast possible. A list is available at norcalpublicmedia.org Activist Eduardo Guevara takes a picture inside Lawson Dump as smoke rises from a fire smoldering belowground. Although it was ordered closed in 2006, underground fires continued to burn for years afterward, and residents of nearby mobile home parks continued to complain about noxious odors and possible contamination. (Credit: Roberto (Bear) Guerra, 2010) A hand-written sign warns Duroville mobile home park residents in Thermal, California, to stay away from a waste pond on the neighboring property. On the far side of the pond is Lawson Dump, now closed by the EPA because it contained dangerous amounts of arsenic, PCBs, asbestos, dioxin and other toxic materials. (Credit: Roberto (Bear) Guerra, 2010)

For the Navajo people Mother Earth is sacred. She places her mineral riches below ground. That’s where they’re meant to stay. If the Earth’s elements are hauled up to the surface, Navajos believe they can turn monstrous -- or they can unleash the monsters in humankind.   Uranium mining produces radionuclides and other toxic wastes full of heavy-metals. Transformed for weaponry and fuel, uranium can affect human genes, according to the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity.   To get at uranium deep underground requires scouring the earth with chemicals to extract the raw ore and its poisonous bedfellows. What’s left are soils that blow contaminants through the air as dust, and wastewater that seeps deep into underground aquifers and pollutes groundwater. The residents of the Red Water Pond Road community in New Mexico have lived with uranium mining contamination for 50 years.   (pictured: Jean Hood and Peterson Bell at Standing Black Tree Mesa. Credit: Hannah Colton)   They’re sick of the mess -- and tired of being in a state of toxic limbo that the uranium industry bequeathed when it packed up and left.   Producer Ellen Berkovitch made several trips to Red Water Pond Road to visit this community. She brings us the story.   Learn more about the Navajo Nation and uranium contamination.      Music from this episode includes:   Moonlight Sonata (Shifting Sun Mix) by Speck © 2018 The Code of My Heart by Gurdonark, © 2017 8-String Ballad (Instrumental) by Aussens@iter © 2017 Where the Wind Blows by Martijn de Boer (NiGiD) © 2016 Dark Clouds by onlymeith © 2013 The Raven by Analog By Nature © 2007 The Drilling Begins by Stefan Kartenberg © 2017 All of the music titles above licensed under Creative Commons licenses courtesy of CC Mixter dot org. Geiger counter, recorded by Scott Williams of Death Convention Singers. Courtesy Death Convention Singers.

"Smackdown" tells the story of Richmond California, a working class town that grew up in the shadow of a massive Chevron refinery. The refinery emits a toxic soup of chemicals and residents suffer an asthma rate that is double the national average. Explosions and fires have periodically shaken the refinery since 1989. But Chevron is also the biggest employer in town and its taxes supply tens of millions of dollars for city services. Can Richmond maintain a healthy economy while transitioning away from fossil fuels and lessening its reliance on Chevron? And what role does electoral politics play in the mix? In October, 2018, Chevron settled a suit brought by the U.S. EPA, requiring it to pay nearly $3 million in damages, and spend about $160 million dollars upgrading refineries around the United States, including the facility in Richmond, Calif. (Pictured: Community demonstrates against Chevron, April 20, 2012. Credit: Daniel Arauz, Flickr) Listen to Smackdown, produced and reported by Claire Schoen. Learn more about refinery towns in the U.S.  For a technical but very accessible animation describing the explosion and fire at Chevron's Richmond refinery in 2012, see below. The video was produced by the U.S. Safety and Chemical Hazard Investigation Board.