Morrisonville, Louisiana
Encyclopedia
Morrisonville, Louisiana was a small, predominantly African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
town on the banks of the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
that was poisoned by industrial pollution
Pollution
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into a natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or living organisms. Pollution can take the form of chemical substances or energy, such as noise, heat or light...
during the 1980s and 1990s and then deliberately depopulated
Forced migration
Forced migration refers to the coerced movement of a person or persons away from their home or home region...
by the Dow Chemical Company
Dow Chemical Company
The Dow Chemical Company is a multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. As of 2007, it is the second largest chemical manufacturer in the world by revenue and as of February 2009, the third-largest chemical company in the world by market capitalization .Dow...
.
Origins
The community had been founded during the 1870s by former slavesSlavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
freed from a plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
near Plaquemine.
A chemical factory producing vinyl chloride
Vinyl chloride
Vinyl chloride is the organochloride with the formula H2C:CHCl. It is also called vinyl chloride monomer, VCM or chloroethene. This colorless compound is an important industrial chemical chiefly used to produce the polymer polyvinyl chloride . At ambient pressure and temperature, vinyl chloride...
was set up on land adjoining the community by the Dow Chemical Company in 1958. Initially there was a green belt
Green belt
A green belt or greenbelt is a policy and land use designation used in land use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighbouring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges which have a linear character and may run through an...
separating the factory from the town, but the plant bought land from the town in 1959 and then expanded to cover 1400 acres (5.7 km²), filling all the intervening space, so much so that the plant's loudspeaker announcements could be heard inside people's houses.
Pollution and forced depopulation
In the 1980s and 1990s, chemical pollution was discovered in the town's wells. To avoid lawsuits, Dow decided to buy up the town and move its residents away to create a buffer zone around the factory. In 1989, just before the release of a federal report into toxic emissions from the factory, Dow announced that it was going to buy up all the homes and land in Morrisonville, and that if the residents refused their property would be worthless.Although about twenty families refused to move at first, by 1993 the town was eventually abandoned. All that now remains is the graveyard
Graveyard
A graveyard is any place set aside for long-term burial of the dead, with or without monuments such as headstones...
of the former Nazarene Baptist Church and an open-sided prayer site, built of wood, provided by Dow for family members who return to visit the graves.
The residents were transferred to newly-built homes at Morrison Acres, but many died before they could settle in. The large number of petrochemical
Petrochemical
Petrochemicals are chemical products derived from petroleum. Some chemical compounds made from petroleum are also obtained from other fossil fuels, such as coal or natural gas, or renewable sources such as corn or sugar cane....
plants producing PVC
PVC
Polyvinyl chloride is a plastic.PVC may also refer to:*Param Vir Chakra, India's highest military honor*Peripheral venous catheter, a small, flexible tube placed into a peripheral vein in order to administer medication or fluids...
in the surrounding area, an 80 miles (128.7 km) stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, first led to its being known as the Chemical Corridor but later Cancer Alley
Cancer Alley
Cancer Alley is an area along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, in the River Parishes of Louisiana, which contains numerous industrial plants....
, and many other communities in the area have been similarly badly affected by groundwater
Groundwater
Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock...
pollution and other toxic emissions.