Thread by @BillWeirCNN

This is a story about neighbors.

See that house?

Years ago, a family bought it for $60,000.

See the oil refinery next door?

It is owned by a Saudi Arabian company that made $111 billion profit last year, almost twice as much as Apple.

It is called Motiva, it is the largest refinery on the continent and it is just one piece of the Escher-meets-Aliens landscape of Port Arthur, TX.

This town has been turning petrochemicals into American wealth and power for generations...but all that burning comes with a cost.

This is a Chevron emissions event in 2018, one of tens of thousands that happen in Port Arthur over the course of a lifetime.

Valero is facing lawsuits for allegedly spewing 1.8M lbs of illegal pollution and locals tell me the air takes the paint off their cars...

So imagine what it does to the lungs, brains and cells of the kids next door.

Those images were captured by @HiltonKelley, a guy who was born in Port Arthur, left to join the military, did a little acting out west and came home to discover that his hometown was a hotbed for everything from asthma to cancer.

So he became the kind of concerned citizen who complains to power even though his neighbors beg him to stop. “Don’t drive these industries away, Hilton” they tell him. “Because starvation will kill us before pollution does.”

But while @realDonaldTrump’s @epa rolls back hard-fought regulations, blessing these refineries to smudge more air in the short term they are also turning up the global thermostat in the long term.

They are supercharging bizzaro storms like Hurricane Harvey.

And they are not immune from the damage.

After Harvey flooded Motiva, the US fast-tracked $4 billion specifically to protect Gulf Coast oil and gas...

...but in flood-prone communities of color like Houston’s Pleasantville neighborhood, Bridgette Murray tells me they can’t even get funding to upgrade their storm drains. “We are invisible” to state and local disaster planners, she says.

And the owners of that house have been displaced for almost 2 years because they can’t afford to fix the toxic mold.

They tell me their greatest hope is that Motiva buys them out in a plan to expand.

More profit for the Saudis next door.

More pain for those with the least.

So...if you don’t live in Port Arthur, why should you care?

Because on a planet with a fever, we are ALL Motiva/Chevron/Valero’s neighbors.

And our neighborhood watch known as @EPA is being gutted in the dark.

(They refused CNN’s interview requests)
cnn.com/videos/world/2…