Dow's River On the Brazos River in Texas, one chemical company reigns supreme.
BY DELGER ERDENESANAA JUNE 14, 2023
This story was cross-posted from the Texas Observer, an investigative news organization that covers Texas communities whose stories are often ignored.
One January day in 1971, Sharron Stewart stood with two friends on the banks of the Brazos River in Freeport, near where the 800-mile river empties into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the stretch of the Brazos where Dow, one of the worlds biggest chemical companies, releases wastewater from its massive local complex. Stewart and her friendsone a Dow electricianlooked down at the green water flowing by and threw in a log.
The group was conducting a citizen science experiment to see where Dows wastewater traveled after entering the Brazos. The ad hoc investigators followed their log to an inlet of Galveston Baya tremendously productive, biodiverse habitat of oyster reefs and marshes that provides a nursery for the Gulfs marine life.
Dow, one of the Texas Gulf Coasts biggest industrial water polluters according to wastewater permit data, was drawn to Freeport in 1940 by its deepwater port and abundant oyster reefs. The company used oyster shells to extract magnesium from seawater, sending the mineral to factories building airplanes for use in World War II. But by the early 1970s, the same reefs that attracted Dow were being threatened by pollution.
https://prospect.org/environment/06-14-2023-texas-brazos-river-dow-chemical-poison/
Faux pas
(15,156 posts)Is the deadliest sin
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)multigraincracker
(33,877 posts)I live near Midland Michigan, headquarters of Dow Chemical. The only Red city in the TriCity area.