Chester, Pennsylvania — At a recent Harris-Walz campaign rally in Chester, environmental advocate Zulene Mayfield called the crowd of a few hundred residents to action.
“We are masters of our destiny,” she said, urging them to “mobilize this community in a way that has never happened.”
Chester is what climate activists call an “environmental justice community,” a place where climate change and pollution disproportionately affect underserved populations. A 1995 EPA study found that blood lead levels and cancer risks in the city were “extremely high,” and that childhood asthma rates were 20 percent higher than the national average. Chester is also more than 75 percent black.
CBS News
For decades, most Chester residents have regularly protested in their hundreds in public forums against the expansion of heavy industries, particularly fracking and others involving fossil fuels, which they say have negatively affected their health without bringing much economic benefit.
Despite criticizing Pennsylvania Democrats for supporting the fossil fuel industry, many nonetheless support the party’s presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris. The question is whether this community, which feels its needs have been ignored in the past, will turn out to vote in a key state where the margins of victory in the last two elections have been less than 2 points.
Chester residents overwhelmingly supported Democrats, with 90% voting for President Biden in 2020. But turnout was low — just 11,000 votes, or 43% — far from the 66% who voted nationally in that election.
Mayor Stefan Roots, who grew up in Chester, remembers taking the ferry and being fascinated by the rainbows in the water. Years later, he realized the bright colors were caused by oil slicks.
At night, from his bedroom window, he said he would look west and see the flares of the oil refineries, a sight that frightened him.
“How come there’s so much industry, so much big business, and the city still doesn’t seem to be benefiting from it?” he told CBS News. “You can see all over the country that these polluting industries seem to be locating in or near Black and brown communities. That’s racism.”
CBS News
Chester, a city of 33,000 just outside Philadelphia, is the state’s oldest city, incorporated in 1682. Once a center of steel and textile manufacturing, it reached its peak as an industrial base in the mid-20th century but suffered from mill and business closures in the 1960s. Since then, Chester’s tax base has shrunk and its pensions face a $40 million deficit. In 2020, it went into receivership and, two years later, declared bankruptcy.
Chester relies primarily on a casino, a garbage incinerator, and a sewage incinerator for its revenue. Oil pipelines and rail lines crisscross the area, and just outside the city limits are several oil refineries and the Marcus Hook Industrial Complex, which houses a natural gas storage and export facility. Homes are being built adjacent to several of these facilities.
City voters want federal funding through the Biden administration’s climate grants to continue under Harris for job training in green industries, and they are pushing for improvements in public health and city services, including education and beautification. Many fear a Trump administration would roll back existing subsidies and allow more polluting companies to operate.
“I’m very concerned about the environment and I want to move this city forward to make it a quality place for everyone to live,” educator Thom Nixon told CBS News. “We should be able to have freedom, air and water to breathe, and not be victims of environmental justice just because of our zip code and just because some of our citizens are struggling economically.”
Roots believes younger and older voters may turn out, but not those in their 30s and 50s.
“They feel like ‘when I speak, nobody listens, nothing changes,’ so they just sit and watch,” he said.
Pennsylvania Democrats have disappointed many Chester residents with their comments about liquefied natural gas following a proposal to bring a liquefied natural gas terminal to the city in 2022, the latest development in the city’s battles with 11 industries, some emitting tens of thousands of pollutants.
In January, the Biden administration suspended new permits for liquefied natural gas terminals. Chester residents applauded the move, hoping it would prevent construction of the LNG terminal on the city’s waterfront. But Democratic commonwealth senators John Fetterman and Bob Casey and Gov. Josh Shapiro opposed the administration’s decision.
In a joint statement, the senators expressed concerns about the measure’s impact on natural gas jobs and energy independence. Shapiro told Bloomberg and the Financial Times that he hoped the pause would be brief, stressing that natural gas is “critically important” to the state.
“Fetterman won’t have my vote next time because of this,” Nixon, 57, told CBS News, adding that he felt the same way about Shapiro.
“This isn’t even for our community,” he said. “These two people didn’t even sit down with us and talk to us and ask us what we thought about it, as a small town that’s going to be shouldering all the burden.”
On July 1, the administration’s suspension of LNG production was overturned by a U.S. district judge in Louisiana. Harris and her campaign have not commented on whether new LNG facilities should be approved. As a 2020 presidential candidate, Harris pledged to end fracking, but since launching her campaign, she has said she would not ban fracking.
“As vice president, I did not ban fracking, and as president, I will not ban fracking,” she said. CNN.
Trump’s campaign has promised to approve new natural gas infrastructure, including LNG facilities. “Drill, baby, drill,” former President Donald Trump often repeats in his campaign speeches, echoing former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who made the phrase famous in 2008.
Residents like James Harper Jr., a business manager for Laborers Local 413 who grew up in Chester and whose son has asthma, see natural gas as a no-win situation. His top priority in this election is creating jobs for his members, but having grown up in Chester, he believes the safety of his members and the community must also be a priority.
“We definitely want to build, it’s our livelihood,” he said. “I wish it was something else.”
For Mayfield, LNG is just the latest in a series of environmental injustices, like the waste incinerator built in front of his house.
At first, Mayfield was excited to hear about the Biden administration’s LNG pause, but his enthusiasm quickly faded.
“I took a deep breath and realized it was an election year,” she said. “That’s politics.”
CBS News
She felt that Mr. Biden, who was then running for re-election, was simply trying to “consolidate his base in black communities.”
But despite the disappointment of Pennsylvania Democrats and the administration, Mayfield strongly supports Harris and discourages environmentalists from harming Harris’ campaign, saying frontline communities like hers cannot afford to lose or weaken sympathetic allies.
“Of course, no one gets everything they want,” she said. “Our position will be strengthened if we help them gain power.”
Her primary mission is to turn the hundreds of people at the rally into more than 7,000 votes, knowing that, in her opinion, the alternative is bleak.
“I don’t see any help from the Trump administration for my community,” she said. “I’m not going to prepare a list of demands for Kamala, I’m not doing any of that.”
Roland Taylor, 48, an entrepreneur and owner of a tax firm and restaurant in downtown Chester, grew up in the neighborhood and hopes to revitalize and bring more life to the downtown area. The economy and pollution are his two main issues, and Taylor says they are interconnected.
“My mother died of cancer, my father died, they all died prematurely,” Taylor told CBS News. “The fact that we’re developing our neighborhoods, that we’re fighting blight, shows that we’re more than just a dump.”
But as political change unfolded, Taylor came to feel that he and a dozen local community members had done more for Chester than any elected official.
“At some point, I also feel like an idiot for just being loyal to the Democrats,” he told CBS News. “I feel like I’ve done more than they have. Why am I so loyal to them?”
CBS News
But for many Chester residents, the connection between the environment and their future is clear. Millions of dollars in grants from the Justice40 initiative of the Inflation Reduction Act are also at stake for cities like Chester. Justice40 is a federal goal to ensure that 40 percent of the law’s benefits go to disadvantaged communities.
Roots fears that under a Trump administration, funding for communities like Chester would not exist.
The city has applied for a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency that it hopes to use to improve children’s health through lead testing, beautify the city and allow residents to improve their homes and get job training for sustainable jobs.
“It’s almost like the New Deal,” Roots told CBS News.
