Here's Dr. Beverly Wright from the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.

As hard as EPA worked to get the deal, you know, with the state, and our Democratic governor had agreed to all of it, EPA, they had to follow what came down from the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice wimped out and decided not to pursue it.

But others, like Beverly, disagree.

They were afraid that they might win and it would destroy their chances elsewhere.

Well, the, it was destroyed anyway.

Like many people who grew up in Southern Louisiana, she thought the sights and smells of industry were bad, but they were also just a part of life.

No one ever talked about the health effects and the exposure rates to extremely toxic chemicals, most of which were carcinogens, to the communities that were nearby.

And I can remember riding to Baton Rouge on some Sunday evenings with my father to visit his aunties that lived there.

With my sister and brother in the back of the car, we would be running into smelly and foul odors, and we would tease one another saying, "Oh, you passed gas," you know how children would do.

And Daddy would say, "Oh, it smells like money." [gentle music] So my concept of the Mississippi River chemical corridor was never that it was harmful in any way, but that it was something that brought progress to the state.

It seemed like a sign that Beverly, alongside organizers like Dolly and Pat, were finally getting somewhere.

I had been asked to testify at a civil rights hearing in Louisiana because the communities that live closest to these facilities were complaining that they had multiple people in their homes dying of cancer, that, you know, the screens were rusting, falling off their windows every three months, that all the small animals that they used to hunt had disappeared, that the moss was dying on the trees, that their cars had spots on them where the paint was being eaten off the car, but just on one side that was downwind from the facilities.

And they really felt that they were sick and dying, and all of this destruction was coming from the facilities, but they had no way to prove it.