In the week after a chemical explosion at an oil plant in her central Louisiana town, Candy Cardwell, who lives about a mile away from the plant, found her outdoor patio furniture and mailbox covered with black residue. Her home’s pool pump spewed out black water; when cleaning up the soot that covered her yard, she collected metallic flakes similar to those found nearby, which were tested and shown to contain potentially dangerous chemicals like arsenic, barium, lead, and chromium.
“It has affected my life and my animals’ lives in everything that we do because it’s affected the environment, our soil, our air, our water,” Cardwell says. “[We’re] having to buy water at this point, having to be careful what we do outside and [be worried about] not only what is going to happen short term with our air, but what [the effects will be in] the long term. You can tell me that you’re monitoring it but I still have really deep concerns about how this is going to impact us.”
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Jason Kerzinski
Candy Cardwell sits in front of her home in Roseland, Louisiana, one mile away from Smitty’s Supply plant, on October 10.
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Candy Cardwell
Black oil residue on Candy Cardwell’s mailbox, pictured on August 29, one week after the explosion.
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Candy Cardwell
Candy Cardwell holds the gloves she used to clean up soot on her property in Roseland, Louisiana, on October 10.
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Candy Cardwell
Oil residue pumping out of Candy Cardwell’s pool pump, pictured on August 29, one week after the explosion.
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Candy Cardwell
Candy Cardwell holds a bag filled with metallic-looking soil from her backyard that she collected on August 29, one week after the explosion.
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Candy Cardwell
Black oil residue on Candy Cardwell’s patio furniture, pictured on August 29, one week after the explosion.
On the afternoon of August 22, the blast at Smitty’s Supply plant, a facility in the town of Roseland that manufactured automotive lubricants, motor oil, brake fluid, and antifreeze, sent a plume of thick black smoke into the air. The explosion prompted mandatory evacuations within a one-mile radius of the facility, as emergency crews from across Tangipahoa Parish descended on to the scene.
While no fatalities were reported, the incident released an oily residue and chemical odor that spread for around forty miles across nearby homes, farm land, and business establishments along the Tangipahoa River. Petroleum pollution from the explosion has seeped into the Tangipahoa River, adjacent ponds, and other waterways, reportedly traveling forty miles downstream. Two weeks after the blast, some children twenty miles away in the town of Loranger were not allowed to play outside due to concerns over the air quality.
Small acreage farmer Samantha Starkey, who lives eleven miles south of the plant, in Greensburg, says she is concerned about the explosion contaminating the nearby Tangipahoa River and key water sources for the community.
“The biggest concern long term for what happened with the explosion at Smitty’s will be the aquifer that provides water for not just irrigation of farms but to people’s homes,” Starkey says.
Jason Kerzinski
Steven and Samantha Starkey, small acreage farmers who live roughly eleven miles north of Roseland, Louisiana in Greensburg, on October 10.
Two months after the explosion, the cleanup effort in Roseland and the neighboring communities continues at a modest pace. Water tests conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) along the Tangipahoa show traces of petrochemicals miles down river from the Smitty’s Supply plant. Soot samples reveal traces of heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, and chromium, although officials say levels remain within acceptable limits. In October, the EPA handed the reins of cleanup efforts to Smitty’s Supply and the state. But the EPA’s response in the two months after the explosion has left the Roseland community in the dark as to how it would protect residents and the affected towns’ water supplies, leading some of its residents, about 54 percent of whom are Black, to feel that the town’s racial makeup has contributed to EPA’s slow and inadequate response.
“In the long run, this is gonna mess up for a long time, and they don’t care because of who lives here,” Roseland resident and former Smitty’s Supply employee Tyreik Taylor told the nonprofit news organization Capital B shortly after the explosion. “We don’t know what’s in this air right now or what might be in our water and bodies.”
Jason Kerzinski
A sign advertising commercial services to clean smoke and soot in Roseland, Louisiana, on October 10.
When I met with Candy on October 10, she told me that EPA officials had come to her house shortly before our meeting, but only to drop off an informational packet at her back door, without engaging with her.
Jason Kerzinski
A stretch of the Tangipahoa River in Amite City, Louisiana, showed no visible signs of contamination on October 10.
Independent environmental tester Scott Smith, who has tested soil samples from rivers, riverbanks, soil, and wells, throughout Tangipahoa Parish, presented his most recent findings on October 11 at a town hall meeting for residents throughout the parish. Smith’s testing, he explained at the meeting, says he has measured twenty-nine different metals—a more extensive probe than the EPA’s eight-metal screening. While the EPA and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) continue to claim that the soil and water samples indicate no imminent threat to the health of the Tangipahoa Parish communities, Smith believes based on his findings that more comprehensive testing is needed.
“I don’t think there’s any disagreement between me and the EPA. If they tested for the same chemicals I tested for, there would be agreement on what we’re finding,” Smith told WAFB, a local CBS affiliate, earlier this month. “If they went in and met with the same residents in their homes, the residents that are reaching out to me begging for help, the EPA needs to be in the field going to the residents like I have gone to.”
Smitty’s Supply has long been both an economic engine in the community, employing nearly 500 people, and an environmental hazard. The company has a long history of environmental violations preceding the explosion: In the five years leading up to the August explosion, the EPA has levied over $160,000 in fines against Smitty’s Supply for repeatedly releasing pollutants such as lubricating oil, grease, and organic carbon into the river.
The environmental damage unfolding in Roseland is more than an isolated incident—the explosion and its aftermath belong to the larger story of environmental pollution in Louisiana. The state houses 25 percent of the country’s petrochemical production; its many plants produce chemical byproducts and emissions such as benzene, a known carcinogen, that inevitably wind up in the air, water, and soil of nearby communities.
Jason Kerzinski
A Smitty’s Supply tanker parked near the entrance to Smitty’s Supply on October 10.
But the Roseland incident also demonstrates what appears to some community members as disinvestment on the part of the state and federal governments, which have offered generous tax breaks to companies seeking to build more chemical plants, but failed to enforce regulations or provide satisfactory emergency response and cleanup efforts.
In July, President Donald Trump granted twenty-five chemical manufacturers, including twelve based in Louisiana, a two-year exemption from new federal air pollution rules. Environmental experts argue this exemption will leave communities vulnerable to incidents like the Roseland explosion, and threaten communities along Louisiana’s infamous Cancer Alley, where a synthetic rubber plant has released carcinogens into the air of surrounding communities for decades. The stories of the impacted Roseland residents reveal a powerful truth: Recovery is about cleaning soil or testing water, but it’s also about rebuilding trust. Many residents have been left to navigate uncertainty and unease in the aftermath of the explosion, and have felt disregarded by local and state governments.