Two environmental crises hit Georgia

Atlanta

Oct. 6, 2024 – Hurricane Helene’s ferocious wind and torrential rain crossed from Florida and wreaked death and destruction in some 90 counties in Georgia from the south to Atlanta’s environs and beyond.

Neighboring states — South and North Carolina and Tennessee — and nearby Virginia suffered massive devastation from deadly floods and destroyed homes caused by the overwhelming rainfall and wind. As of this writing some 230 people are confirmed to have died from this weather event, most in North Carolina.

A week after the storm hit, thousands in the Peach State still have no electricity, cell service, running water or passable roads despite heroic efforts by power, sanitation and road workers. Hundreds of volunteers are distributing food and water, removing trees and clearing debris.

Another hurricane, Milton, threatens now to make landfall in western Florida and move north in the coming days.

Although increasing numbers of federal and state workers as well as volunteers from non-governmental groups are providing assistance, many of the flooded region’s small rural towns have no available or undamaged housing, medical facilities, grocery stores or community centers to meet the need.

The official death toll from the storm in Georgia is 33, including a mother and her one month-old twin boys, killed when a tree fell on their house.

The warming ocean waters, a key component of climate change, is fueling the increased number and strength of hurricanes that can have such devastating impact on working-class and poor families. Most have no insurance or insufficient insurance to rebuild their homes. Often their places of work are also destroyed or damaged. The current government programs are either inadequate, too bureaucratic to operate efficiently or inaccessible.

The right-wing leadership of the House of Representatives won’t even return to Washington until after the election to take up funding more relief efforts.

One can just look at how Cuba handles the same threat of damaging hurricanes to see that with socialist planning and organizations that include everyone, people, their pets and livestock can be safely evacuated in advance of predicted danger. (workers.org/2017/09/33123/)

Profit motive endangers communities

In still another example of the capitalist profit motive endangering communities, a fire broke out at a BioLab plant Sept. 30 in Conyers, a majority Black city in Rockdale County, east of Atlanta. The plant produces the chemicals used to treat water in pools and spas. 

Bags of these chemicals stored in huge quantities in the plant ruptured when water from the firefighters’ hoses soaked them. This caused huge clouds of chlorine, along with smoke from the fire, to form a hazardous plume. For days the plume billowed as the wind pushed it first east and then west toward Atlanta. 

The 17,000 residents of Conyers who live close to the plant were told to evacuate the area but with no support for doing so. Rockdale County’s remaining 90,000 people were told to “shelter-in-place,” close their windows and turn off their air conditioners.

The strong smell of chlorine remained for days, producing hundreds of calls to Georgia Poison Control by people worried about coughing, shortness of breath, chest tightness and headaches among other ailments. Many others sought help at local emergency rooms.

Multiple people are concerned about blackened pieces of a mysterious material that have fallen in their yards and the possibility of soil contamination.

As worrisome as this current incident at BioLab is, it is not the first environmental crisis at this facility since it opened in 1973. According to reporting in the Oct. 2 Atlanta Constitution, there have been similar “incidents in 2020, 2016 and 2004 when roads were closed, businesses were evacuated and residents were ordered to shelter in place.”

Metro Atlanta is not the only location plagued by toxic plumes from a BioLab facility. In August 2020 a fire at a Westlake, Louisiana, facility was examined by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which found BioLab to be at fault. That report also called on the Environmental Protection Agency to more strictly regulate those types of chemical products, which the EPA has not done.

 

On Oct. 3, state representatives for Rockdale County and local community leaders demanded the closure of the facility, as well as financial compensation for damages suffered by residents and communities impacted by the fire.