But through a review of county property records and well-monitoring data provided by state regulators, Inside Climate News has found that the location of the houses closely tracks unsafe levels of benzene and other contaminants in groundwater, a fact that has not previously been reported. history, with the company buying and razing an entire neighborhood in the early 1990s.īut the contamination wasn’t entirely eliminated: Over the last 20 years, the refinery’s owners have bought out and leveled dozens of additional homes, for unstated reasons. Groundwater contamination from what is now the Phillips 66 refinery led to one of the largest environmental settlements in U.S. In one case, the fumes were so overpowering a family was forced to leave their home for several years. The resulting development has left homes enveloped in toxic fumes, black slime oozing from basements, emissions of fine particulate matter that can damage the heart and lungs and walls cracked from earthquakes induced by injecting wastewater from hydraulic fracking deep underground. Its schools, library, sports centers, parks and concert hall would be the envy of most small towns in America.īut interviews with local residents, historical records, legal depositions and internal government reports tell of a sacrifice zone, where oil rights were first taken from the Ponca Tribe and then exploited by the oil and gas industry with little thought given to environmental protection. In many ways, Ponca City and its 24,000, predominantly white inhabitants are well off. For more than a century, the region, in north central Oklahoma, has been ravaged by the environmental degradation associated with oil and gas development.įrom abandoned oil and gas wells to refineries, tank farms and hydraulic fracturing, the pollution and destruction-including damage from thousands of man-made earthquakes-have exacted a heavy toll on the region’s air, land, water and people. Ponca City takes its name from the Ponca Tribe, a Native American tribe that lives nearby. Ponca business committee member Earl “Trey” Howe III served as chairman of the Ponca tribe in 2018 when the Ponca Nation became the first tribe in the United States to sign a rights of nature resolution into law. It was “like I was sitting next to a bomb.” “You could feel it more than hear it,” Howe said of a recent flaring that shook the ground and left him wondering if he and his family should evacuate. Sometimes at night the flares, which burn off excess hydrocarbons that can not be easily recovered or recycled, are so bright and so loud-the whoosh of flames sounds like a jet engine-they can be seen and heard from miles away. “It’s overpowering sometimes.”Ī soft-spoken, 6’4” father of three, Howe lives just a few blocks from the refinery, in the house where his grandparents once lived. “Depending on which way the wind is blowing, I’ll get a stronger whiff on some days than others,” Howe, 51, the former chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, said. The smell from the plant-a sulfur-rich odor somewhere between rotten eggs and freshly paved asphalt-was so constant, he’d never even noticed it.īut now, it seemed to follow him everywhere. Howe grew up in and around Ponca City, the site of the Phillips 66 refinery, one of the oldest and largest crude oil refineries and tank farms in the country. PONCA CITY, Oklahoma-When Earl “Trey” Howe III returned home here after four years of military service, the first thing he noticed was the smell. This article is part of a series produced in partnership with NBC News and Undark Magazine, a non-profit, editorially independent digital magazine exploring the intersection of science and society.
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