A Black community in Florida is under assault from business interests | Opinion

The impacts industrial pollution on the natural resources of Black and Brown communities have been well documented in scholarship and the media, but what is transpiring in the unincorporated, Gulf Coast community of Tallevast is particularly remarkable.

A historically Black community that sits just north of the Sarasota/Bradenton Airport, Tallevast is enduring a coordinated onslaught of environmental assaults. Manatee County government has rendered the community as an inevitable sacrifice for generating commercial revenue.

First, and most publicized, was the contamination of the community’s groundwater by the Loral Corporation’s American Beryllium Co. (ABC). For more than 50 years, ABC machined toxic beryllium at a facility in the center of Tallevast.

Although monitored by local and state agencies, ABC’s production process emitted toxic dust to the air and its cleaning process seeped trichlorethylene (TCE) into the groundwater. While Lockheed Martin, which acquired ABC when it purchased Loral Corporation in 1997, has directed remediation efforts in Tallevast for close to a decade, residents remain distrustful of their safety, a belief that is increasingly justified as rates of cancers and other illnesses exceed that of other Black communities in Florida.

Tallevast residents would have been better protected against direct exposure to the contamination had the county fulfilled the terms of its 1980s Community Development Block Grant. Called the “Tallevast Comprehensive Improvement Grant,” the funds were supposed to bring all of Tallevast’s properties onto Manatee County water and sewer lines. The county claims the funds were exhausted before homes in the eastern half of the community were connected.

After the contamination, Manatee County finally brought all residents onto water lines, but homes that were not connected to sewer during the 1980s renovations remain on septic tanks. In the past few months, the county, dismissing its obligations to its 40-year old improvement plan, has shamelessly proposed to Tallevast residents a gravity sewer project. If it progresses, they will be required to connect to the Manatee County sewer service at a cost nearly totaling $20,000 per home.

Despite Tallevast’s vulnerability to poisons left by a now-vanished industrial plant, a new wave of industries has encircled the community and threatens its already vulnerable environment.

Manatee County commissioners, in another act of dismissal, authorized the construction of bus depot that opened in 2016. Across Tallevast Road from the depot lies a 55-acre Amazon distribution facility. The commissioners rezoned the land for the warehouse Amazon now occupies, despite protests from Tallevast residents who were concerned about environmental impacts. Manatee County officials refuse to collaborate with Tallevast residents to support a road infrastructure that will accommodate the increased traffic on Tallevast Road, which inconveniences residents and diminishes air quality.

These dismissals affirm that Manatee County has already relegated Tallevast to the status of industrial site. The community’s land carries tremendous commercial value as a gateway for air and train transportation, despite the environmental hazards posed to residents.

As the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport continues its expansion efforts, Tallevast residents must endure air, noise and light pollution as well as the dangers of living adjacent to a busy airport. Earlier this year, two planes nearly collided while in airport space when one was cleared for takeoff from a runway on which another was authorized to land.

The Seminole Gulf Railway, nearly as old as Tallevast itself, also continues to endanger the community. Last March, a train derailed on tracks just steps away from Tallevast homes. The cargo aboard included 30,000 gallons of liquid propane gas intended to be used by Manatee County. The airport expansion, the proliferation of warehouses and the still unfinished remediation form a coordinated environmental attack on Tallevast.

Still, the dismissals continue. In November, the Governor Ron DeSantis Park opened less than two miles from Tallevast. That the park, with its green fitness trail, pickleball courts and playground is named after DeSantis belies a sweeping, statewide movement of commercial real estate development that now encircles Tallevast.

This movement is buttressed by directing public education toward seemingly benign, apolitical civic knowledge. However, these initiatives gloss over the business interests that dismiss the histories and experiences of those whose lives are needlessly sacrificed in the name of economic progress.

Put another way, Tallevast’s story needs to be elevated, not only for Florida’s historical memory, but also because when we remember it in years to come, we will realize that it told us Florida’s future.

James Manigault-Bryant, Ph.D., is chair and professor of Africana Studies and faculty affiliate in anthropology and sociology and religion at Williams College. Mafoudia Keita is a Mellon Mays Fellow, majoring in environmental studies, with a concentration in Africana Studies at Williams College.