Analyze

In 2019, the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea passed a law identifying particle pollution (also called particulate matter, PM) as a “social disaster” (Framework Act on the Management of Disasters and Safety 2019). It was a response to nationwide attention to particle pollution from 2017, when apocalypse-like particle pollution occurred. It is not uncommon to characterize pollution as a disaster. Pollution is often described in damage-based narratives like disasters because environmental pollution becomes visible when a certain kind of damage occurs (Nixon 2011). PM is a mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets (EPA 2023). An established method for assessing the health risks associated with PM is the utilization of government or World Health Organization (WHO) air quality indices. These indices reflect the potential harm to human health based on PM concentrations. However, due to the limitations of the available monitoring data and the assumption of a certain normality according to the air quality index, its utility is diminished for bodies that fall outside this assumed range of normality. The existing practices and knowledge in pollution control had individualized pollution by presuming certain states of normalcy and excluding others. To challenge this, the anti-PM advocates in South Korea have defined, datafied, perceived, and adjusted the toxicity of particulate matter in various ways. They refer to the air quality index given by the WHO or the government, but they also set their own standards to match their needs and ways of life. They actively measure the air quality of their nearest environment and share, compare, and archive their own data online. The fact that the severity of air pollution is differently tolerated by individuals challenges the concept of the toxicity index that presupposes a certain normalcy. Describing pollution as a disaster contributes to environmental injustice by obscuring the underlying context and complexities of pollution. With the values of care, solidarity, and connectivity, capturing different perspectives of living with pollution and listening to stories from different bodies can generate alternative knowledge challenging environmental injustice. Drawing upon the stories of different bodies and lives with pollution, we can imagine other ways of thinking about the environment and pollution that do not externalize risks nor individualize responsibility. 

Kim, Seohyung. 2023. "Beyond the Index: Stories of Otherized Bodies Crafting Resistant Narratives against Environmental Injustice in South Korea." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Looking at a map of the New Orleans area I am struck by how many Wildlife Management Areas there are. I wonder if some of these areas are a result of dealing with spaces that cannot be readily developed due to their geo/eco features rather than explicit pushes for wildlife conservation/creation of green space. In some places it seems that green spaces can be created through spaces being unfit for building (e.g. in Orange County, CA).

Although I'm unable to dig into these spaces at this moment, many questions arise:

How accessible are these spaces to visitors? Are they designed for visitors/for environmental education or are they primarily spaces left alone for wildlife habitat? If they are visited, who uses them and how? (e.g. subsistence fishing and hunting? birding?) When were they officially created/designated? What differences in management exist between the national wildlife areas and state-managed areas? What perceptions exist among New Orleaneans about how these spaces are managed and about state vs. federal management? Has the management of federally-managed spaces changed since the beginning of the Trump administration/with the tumultuous activity within the Department of Interior? What challenges do these spaces face (e.g. ecosystem health/wildlife well-being, human use, land management) with changing eco/atmo conditions?

I found an article announcing the release of an environmental mapping tool meant to improve the process of planning "green infrastructure projects." The tool was developed by the Trust for Public Land (which has also played a role in the rebuilding/repairing of parks/other public green spaces in New Orleans following Katrina) as part of its Climate Smart Cities Initative. The mapping tool draws from numerous sources to put multiple kinds of information in one place (e.g. flood prone areas, head islands).

In April 2016 (the date of this article) the mapping tool was only available to city officials and organizers from the Trust for Public Land. I looked on the Trust for Public Land website to see if it was now accessible to anyone but was unable to find it (the description on the website still says the tool is being developed, though that may be a feature of the webpage not being recently updated). What would it take for such a tool to become something anyone could look at and use?

In 2016 with the debut of this tool, the Gentilly area of New Orleans was stated to be the model space for starting to use this tool, which according to Wikipedia is a predominantly middle-class and racially-diverse neighborhood. The area is right on Lake Pontchartrain. I wonder what the decision-making process was for deciding where to test/develop this tool was and what factors were considered went into making that decision (eco/geo features? socioeconomic conditions? etc.). Has the tool now been expanded to be used in other areas of New Orleans?

I found a document produced by FEMA that details the history of "building" elevation in New Orleans (can be found here). Raising structures above ground was a necessary response to the eco/atmo/geo conditions of the space--it has been a site of major flooding during the past coulpe centuries of European, then Euro-American, inhabitance. Through the 19th century, a lack of adequate drainage is reflected in descriptions of the city that include details of cesspools and trash-filled gutters, with residents collecting drinking water off their roofs. In the early 20th century, these conditions were responded to in the requirements that became part of building code, laying out specifications for how high above ground buildings needed to be built and so on. While elevating buildings was primarily the responsibility of the owner throughout the past 150 years, this document describes how in recent decades federal funding through FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program has been used to elevate homes beyond just the New Orleanean elite.

As I learn more about the history of this place, I imagine that I may gain a better sense of how this document's narrative is shaped by its source (FEMA), but I found this document interesting to think with regarding the impacts of the anthropocene. Flooding and its effects on structures and infrastructure is simultaneously an old/ongoing feature of this low-lying coastal space and a new feature as patterns of storms/flooding shift and sea level rises. With this long history of building in response to these conditions, what features of New Orleans structures/infrastructure are a model for adapting to the anthropocene? How will changing anthropocenics limit the effectiveness of or make vulnerable some of these systems?

This comment is about how NOLA’s disaster history shapes the risk sensibilities in NOLA anthropocene and the effect of it on discourse of Nuclear Energy in the region. What are the possibilities that Mississippi as an anthropocenic river pose for re-inventing radiation contamination as a risk sensibility of anthropocene and thereby to construct memory as nomadic spatialities in the epoch of anthropocene? 

As I have been working on social movements around nuclear energy and ways of knowing, sensing and representing radiation (contamination), I look for spaces of nuclear cultures. After doing a brief research on the anthropocenics of New Orleans, I pushed myself to know about the Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) in NOLA. There are three NPP that lines the Mississippi river as it flows through Louisiana: Waterford and Riverbend nuclear energy generating stations, Grand Gulf Plant (Port Gibson, Mississippi bordering Louisiana). Of these three NPPs, New Orleans falls within 50 miles of Emergency Planning Zone and on the Ingestion Exposure Pathway of the Waterford NPP[refer to image enclosed (or) shorturl.at/cwG05]. It is also important to note that New Orleans is the headquarters of Entergy Corporation, a fortune 500 company and the second largest generator of nuclear power in the US. Entergy's Indian Point Energy Centre, NY, which I am engaged with, is set for decommissioning in 2021 after polluting the Hudson River with multiple safety events that spanned across 4 decades.

The anthropocenics of New Orleans and environmental groups working against (environmental) degradation focuses mainly on the flooding, rising waters, storming, land use. Conversations about NPPs or safety events, based on what I could gather from secondary resources, seems almost absent. As an article written in the aftermath of Fukushima disaster points out (shorturl.at/bdlmn), "there is no independent watchdog group with expertise in nuclear plant safety keeping a close eye on River Bend, Waterford and Grand Gulf." In addition, the safety infrastructure of the Waterford NPP has largely to do with protection against rising water, flooding and hurricane thus making disaster imagination of Waterford NPP more exterior than interior (shifting focus from disasters arising from the functionality of the plant). How should we read the erasure of radiation contamination risk from the toxic history of New Orleans: as an absence, a construct or a lacunae considering its close proximity to Entergy headquarters?

This may open up spaces for future research in many directions. But what seems particularly interesting to me is how disaster memory fraught by water imageries in NOLA (rising water and hurricanes) shapes risk sensibilities of the New Orleans anthropocenics. If risk sensibilities are shaped largely by water imageries playing a key role in constructing what a disaster means in the region, for me the question remains: How Mississippi can be constructed as waters of anthropocene and as Ivan Illich's Waters of forgetfulness (Lethe), for it to embody the nuclear legacies of radiation contamination at St.Louis, Missouri as the river flows/cuts through the Eastern US? Meticulous archiving of toxic and anthropocenic histories and stories around river and water may bring to them the quality of Mnemosyne, river of remembrance in the epoch of anthropocene. It can be regarded as an effort to render the invisible more than visible and more so, a shift from the temporal significance of memory to a spatial significance of memory with water/river as nomadic spatialities.

The wiki page about the powerplants looks so sanitized for a nuclear energy skeptic like me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Bend_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Safety_record

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterford_Nuclear_Generating_Station

https://www.nola.com/news/business/article_1a47fade-0a81-5ad6-bc57-90ff3d4786b9.html

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/environment/article_33314570-bdc0-11e8-8cce-8398f362ffbb.html

https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=457013

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0525/ML052510099.pdf

An ethnographic moment that stands out to me is when a yearly visitor to the Grand Staircaise Escalante region emphasized the importance of preserving the area under monument status. In a rare moment of recognizing the energy use/demands of even those who are preservation/wilderness proponents, he said "look, I know we have to get our energy from somewhere and maybe for now it's going to be fossil fuels, but please, not here. This place is sacred." Although everyday energy use and the use of petroleum to make such outdoor recreation products as kayaks is occasionally brought into view instead of displaced, these comments are often divorsed from thinking about how people in this area get energy, where the materials extracted from this area go, and what other forms of energy production might replace this extraction. Rather than arguing for a transition of how energy is produced, there seems to be a sense of inevitabilty of extraction but a desire for such industrial processes to be carried out somewhere else.

Thus far I am not sure yet what kinds of organizing there is around energy transition in/for the area. However, there is organizing around trying to "keep fossil fuels in the ground," and organizations such as Grand Staircase Escalante Partners and the Southern Utah Wilderness Association further efforts to keep federally-owned land in southern Utah under protected "national monument" status. However, what appears to be the case is that such efforts are driven more by a desire to keep these landscapes unmarred by fossil fuel extraction processes--i.e. maintaining a "pristine" envrionment--and less focused on discourses about how people in southern Utah or further afield get their energy.

Energy production in southern Utah is varied, but tends to be grouped together. For instance there are many solar generating areas around Cedar City along with a couple geothermal plants, petroleum and natural gas based plants around St. George, coal plants in the middle of the state, and a smattering of hydroelectric plants throughout southern Utah. There is a wind park in Monticello in southeast Utah. Closer to Salt Lake is primarily natural gas and hydroelectric plants. The UNEV pipeline runs the length of the state, from Salt Lake City (where it connects to the Chevron pipeline that runs further north) to Las Vegas, NV.

The geology of southern Utah shapes how this area has been identified as a place of resource extraction, and the presence of coal and petroleum deposits shape political and economic interests in public lands debates. The geologic history of the area created prime conditions for petroleum deposits, particularly in southeastern Utah. These geologic conditions have created significant uranium deposits as well. Much of the coal, oil, and uranium extracted from Utah is sent for use elsewhere, although there are a number of petroleum power plants in the area. This geologic setting is part of what puts Utah, and specifically southern Utah, on the national map regarding how public lands should best be managed, and whether energy companies should receive leases for activity on public lands.


https://www.amazon.com/Half-Has-Never-Been-Told/dp/0465049664/ref=pd_ybh_a_27?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=8E280W16FW9R3YY1XM7A

https://www.law.upenn.edu/journals/jlasc/articles/volume12/issue1/Cahn12U.Pa.J.L.&Soc.Change37%282008%29.pdf


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https://www.philly.com/arts/brandywine-realtyschuylkill-yards-quaker-cemetery-philadelphia-20190521.html