“It’s on the banks, in the soil, in the vegetation. You would pull up vegetation and there were pellets embedded in the roots. It was unbelievable.” _e_delger sat down with longtime Gulf Coast activist who just won the Goldman Environmental Prize:
April 24, 2023, 3:47 PM, CDT, a fourth-generation shrimper from Seadrift, has been trying to hold Formosa Plastics accountable for its pollution in Texas. Polyvinyl chloride powder from the plant dusted everything in town when she was young, and by the 1980s, more and more sick and mutated fish were showing up in locals’ catches. In 1989, Wilson learned Calhoun County had the most toxic pollution of any county nationally, according to EPA rankings.
Post-prize, she isn’t resting on her laurels. Wilson also wants to hold Formosa accountable in Vietnam, the ancestral home of so many of her fellow Gulf Coast fishers. She has helped organize a fishermen’s cooperative, to try and save the ailing oyster fishery. And she is fighting to stop Houston-based oil company Max Midstream from dredging up oldspoke with Wilson about the Goldman Prize and about her work.
That’s when I first heard it. And it really blew me away, because I have always heard of the prize. I remember when the Bhopal people from India won it, and it’s very prestigious, very international, and I was very, very amazed that they found me all the way down in this little county. So I did something really out of character, because I’m an introvert and I don’t consider myself a big speaker. I don’t consider myself a big crowd gatherer. But I called a meeting about Calhoun County being number one in the nation on toxic disposal. And it just so happened at that very time Formosa Plastics was expanding, from like 100 workers to probably over 3,000 workers and 400 contractors. It was the biggest expansion Texas ever had.
I have probably over 8,000 photos and videos of all this plastic. It’s on the banks, it was in the soil, it was in the vegetation. You would pull up vegetation and there were pellets embedded all in the roots. It was unbelievable.Well, if Formosa doesn’t follow through, we can take them to court. Which is real important, because you can have a settlement and if you don’t have the ability to enforce that settlement, it can go right out the window.
That people can see across the United States and globally that you can make a plastic plant go zero discharge [into the environment]. All this extra plastic from manufacturing plants—that does not have to happen. I hope the story is elevated enough that it reaches the EPA and political leaders and that we get zero discharge of plastic. That’s where I’m going with it., which came out last year. You’re a big character in that book.
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