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On Saturday, March 27th, the DelCo Alliance for Environmental Justice brought Chester and Eddystone residents and Bryn Mawr students on a “Toxic Tour” of the Chester and Eddystone waterfronts. The group of approximately 20 people drove and walked the industrial corridor along the waterfront, educating themselves on the many polluting facilities in Delaware County.

The tour began in Eddystone, passing the massive Boeing operation, the Liberty Gas plant, and the Exelon Coal Plant.  Each pollution source has a different story of destruction behind it.  Boeing, a US defense contractor, manufactures aircrafts in Eddystone. Tour leaders noted that, though exempt from international climate treaties, the US military is one of the world’s leading producers of greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, Boeing has a history of improperly storing hazardous waste and dumping toxic material in dump sites, including the “Wade Dump” in Chester, PA.

Natural gas and coal fuel the Liberty Gas and Exelon plants respectively. While natural gas burns cleaner than coal, it is not pollution free. Like every fossil fuel, when burned it emits greenhouse gases, and most Pennsylvanians have heard about the damage natural gas drilling is causing in the northern and western parts of the state. Across the street (Industrial Highway/291) from the Liberty Gas plant, sits the Eddystone Coal Plant, one of the biggest polluters in the county. Lucky for anyone breathing air in Delaware County, the coal units are slated to shut down in the coming years. In December 2009, Exelon Corp. announced that it would shut down the Cromby Generating Station (Phoenixville) and the Eddystone coal burners to prepare for increased environmental standards, including paying a price for carbon emissions.

After stopping at the Eddystone plant, the tour stopped by Foamex Inc. Eddystone residents informed the group of the a proposal to consolidate crushing operations in Camden and Philadelphia into a large crushing station for cars and other appliances near the waterfront in Eddystone. Residents are concerned about the proposal because when they reviewed the air permit, they noticed listed emissions of cadmium and other metals. The group also noticed that Foamex Inc. would increase heavy truck traffic dramatically, with hundreds of trucks entering and exiting Foamex and the nearby residential neighborhood in Eddystone. Speaking with others confirmed their suspicions that they can expect that many of the appliances with freon and other dangerous chemicals won’t be carefully drained before arriving in Eddystone.

Winding past Harrah’s casino and the adjacent state prison, the next stop was Kimberly Clark’s Paper Mill. Powered by coal, this huge paper mill sits adjacent to William Penn’s true landing spot. The small park holds a cultural icon (Penn’s Landing rock) next to an industrial eyesore and coal pile. This property, more than any other on the tour, appears a convergence space where the past and present collide to remind us how much has come before these industries ever “settled” here. 

After pausing at the Kimberly Clark paper mill, the tour drove south, passing by the under-construction “Philadelphia” soccer stadium (located in Chester). The stadium project has swallowed millions of dollars from the city, county, and state to build on top of a known toxic site, just beside the infamous “Wade Dump”.  Local groups are concerned that the stadium will contract mostly with vendors based outside Chester. This and an under-construction highway ramp (off 95) may not bring Chester the cash flow that was emphasized so much when the project was proposed.

Tour participants next walked beside the Covanta trash incinerator, the DELCORA sewage sludge incinerator, and the Marcus Hooks oil refinery. These facilities are each within sight of one another, and their residential neighbors. The Covanta trash incinerator benignly terms itself an “energy from waste” plant, though it burns 2,688 tons of trash per day. Burning so much waste each day produces 39 grams/yr of dioxin (the most potent pollutant known to science) and 144 pounds/yr of mercury. Hundreds, if not thousands, of trucks enter and exit the Covanta facility each week, many of them bearing the name “Philadelphia Streets Department”. 

Like the Covanta incinerator, the DELCORA sewage treatment and incinerator facilities, process waste from beyond Chester.  In fact, DELCORA recently made the news for its interest in accepting natural gas “frack” wastewater from northeast Pennsylvania. After it came to the attention of several local opponents, the PA DEP rescinded DELCORA’s wastewater treatment permit. For now, the threat of processing frack waste water in Chester and discharging it into the Delaware River is gone.

The DelCo Alliance for Environmental Justice and other environmental groups are keeping an eye on these, and other plans. The group seeks to resist environmental racism in Chester and support Delaware County communities threatened by harmful energy and waste technologies. The DelCo Alliance for Environmental Justice meets every other Monday at 7pm. The next meeting is on April 12th at 7pm at Chester Eastside Ministries. It is open to all interested in environmental justice organizing.