By McKenna Hall
I grew up in the suburbs, in a house that was identical to others, bound by picket fences and sprawling verdant yards. There were children with their grubby bare feet running throughout the streets and darting behind bushes. Lemonade stands and kickball and neighbors asking you to come out to play were scattered throughout like dozens of acorns. Paths in the forest led to fallen logs and secret forts. Summers were spent in the sticky humidity walking to the local pool or riding bikes that meticulously balanced slushies and bags of chips. It was a suburban fantasy.
But then one day, some neighbors started to notice a smell. A rotting smell coming from the thick of the clouds hanging overhead. Illness and death had hid itself within these clouds, secretly running rampant throughout the streets. It latched itself within the people’s homes and deliquesced into their lemonade. Slowly, it found itself within the people and began to rot them as well. Some families decided to search for the source of this decay. They peeled back the suburban facade in order to discover the true nature of the suburb’s being – the suburb was a sacrifice zone.
This uncovering exposed the bones of the homes, which sat coated in a malignancy of coal ash. The flesh expected to protect the fledglings was a black sputum secretly deteriorating the children’s eyes and tongues. Every ray was suffocated by the smog until all the light had left the suburban town. In the ghost town, all that remained was a mass grave dug under a sign that read: “clean, modern, fuel-diverse, environmentally sound power-generation facility,” (OUC). This is what it means to be a sacrifice zone. Or, to be technical:
Sacrifice zones are areas that are being heavily polluted due to their proximity to industrial sites- such as a power plant. Companies know that local communities don’t have the resources to fight back, so the company sacrifices the resident’s health for their own economic gain.
Avalon Park, developed by investment banker Beat Kali, is located 20 minutes east of downtown Orlando, Florida. It is also located within a three mile radius of what is named by numerous (Nikki) as the south’s worst polluting coal plant (Sturgis). The town is consistently being built up with new apartments, preschools, parks, and other facilities. Despite the increase in development, the detriment caused by Stanton Power Plant continues to be largely ignored.
OUC’s Stanton Power Plant is responsible for releasing millions of pounds of chemicals into the atmosphere each year, far exceeding the state limit. These pollutants are extremely toxic with side effects including heart disease, kidney failure, birth defects, asthma, cancer, and liver damage, among many other harmful health effects.
A lawsuit was filed in 2018 stating Stanton was responsible for triggering a cancer cluster in the 32828 area code. The lawsuit was subsequently dropped due to insufficient evidence, but sources state that the Stanton Power Plant has been knowingly polluting the area to a detrimental degree for well over 30 years.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the 32828 area is in the 87th percentile for cancer and respiratory diseases due to hazardous air, meaning only a small number of the U.S is at a greater risk for these diseases in comparison to Avalon Park.
Being in proximity to coal ash waste ponds puts you at a higher risk of developing cancer. The coal ash contaminates drinking water with chemicals (such as arsenic) that create as high as a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer.
When Power Plants don’t follow state guidelines, entire communities are put at risk due to their pollution. Stanton Power Plant has had constant violations throughout the years for breaking the Safe Drinking Water Act (reported violations within the past 5 years: 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021), Clean Air Act (2018), and Clean Water Act (2017, 2018, 2021). With one of the most recent Safe Drinking Water violations occurring from July of 2019 to February of 2020 for the heavy amounts of TTHM, a known carcinogen, found being discharged into the drinking water.
OUC recently stated they’re conducting a plan to switch to natural gas by 2027, but the residents of Avalon Park don’t have that long. The Global Energy Monitor reported that an estimated number of 11 deaths, 15 heart attacks, 150 asthma attacks, 7 hospital admissions, and 6 chronic bronchitis occur each year as a result of the Stanton Power Plant. Six years is too long when lives are at risk. Action needs to be taken now to stop Avalon Park from being used as a sacrifice zone.
Going home used to be a serene activity. I would roll down my windows to allow for the sun to fall into my car and warm my skin to the sound of an aeolian tune. My drive through the familiar streets consisted of a new generation of barefoot children running wildly through sprinklers. Languid neighbors stood outside tending to their yards and washing cars, while waving in harmony as I passed by. Lemonade stands still sat perched in front of neighborhood signs, guarded by vehement eight year olds.
Going home used to be a serene activity. Now all I can see is the arsenic and lead being pumped through the water and raining down on the children playing in the sprinklers. Running children take breaths of air filled with carcinogens. The house I grew up in used to be a haven, but now is just a pile of coal ash. Avalon Park is a nebula of illness posing as the suburban ideal.
While Avalon Park is the anomaly, sacrifice zones are typically forms of environmental racism that target lower income areas and people of color. Sacrifice zones are another aspect of systemic racism that is used to sacrifice the lives of black, indigenous, and other people of color in America. This includes examples such as, “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana and the BP oil spill on indigenous communities. This is an egregious display of racism that needs to be actively addressed and combated.
For more information on sacrifice zones, told by the people experiencing it first hand, visit:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3114843/
https://grist.org/fix/americans-live-sacrifice-zones-lets-fix-that/
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/racism-killing-planet
McKenna Hall (she/her) is a junior studying English on the Creative Writing Track at New York University. She is interested in environmental justice, literature, and creative writing. She hopes to pursue a career that blends the three. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.
