For decades, Houston has been the energy capital of the world. Its interdependent relationship with the petrochemical and oil industries has created wealth and economic prosperity, while the city has remained relatively affordable despite being the fourth-largest urban area in the country. But this boom was not without consequence.
Contamination of Greater Fifth Ward started over a century ago. From 1899 to 1984, Southern Pacific Transportation Company had leached contaminants called creosote through the soil and into the groundwater under the community – leaving thousands of residents potentially exposed to cancerous and non-cancerous diseases for nearly a century.
In July 2023, the city announced a $5 million fund to help move families out of the designated cancer cluster. People living outside the city mapped area from four years ago are not eligible for the program, even though similarly high number of cancer cases had been found just blocks outside the zone.
“Growing up, I didn’t hear about cancer. People got sick, but you never heard the word cancer,” Joetta Stevenson, a lifelong Fifth Ward resident and two time cancer survivor said. “Today, it’s like every five words someone says something about cancer here. Back then, we didn’t connect the dots until the dots were connected for us.”
Other residents such as Sandra Auzenne were part of a large influx of climate evacuees from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. She lives directly across the railroad tracks in her home built by Habitat for Humanity.
“If I had known about all this before, if someone had told me, I would have never moved in here,” Auzenne said.