Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

Meanwhile, missing from the speeches at the groundbreaking ceremony and from the memories of nearly everyone I spoke to was an event that took place near these very grounds: one of the largest chemical leaks in American history. The leak was discovered in 1994 in a forty-year-old, mile-long underground pipeline connecting Condea Vista to the Conoco docks, which were a few miles from the Arenos’ home on Bayou d’Inde. The pipe carried ethylene dichloride (EDC) and was used to store it as well. EDC is known for its capacity to penetrate dense clay and much else. A slow leak had gone undetected for decades. By the time it was discovered, eighteen to forty-six million pounds of EDC had sunk through the southern Louisiana blackjack clay, and scientists feared it was heading for the Chicot Aquifer, the sole source of drinking water for the 700,000 people of southwest Louisiana.