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A graphic of a orange coal plant, with the blue silhouettes of people protesting. (Graphic by Lissa Deonarain)
On this week’s show, we’ll continue with the podcast mini-series Crosswinds from the University of Virginia’s Repair Lab and producer Adrian Wood. The show looks at the impact of coal dust pollution on Black neighborhoods in Virginia through the lens of environmental racism. In this episode, we’ll listen to how the looming gentrification of one community might impact the pollution.
Featuring: Music: Music Credit: “That Documentaries” by The\_Mountain via Pixabay
Making Contact Team Credits for Crosswinds Episode 2: Change
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TRANSCRIPT
Producer’s Note: This show features an abridged version of episode two of the podcast Crosswinds, which first aired in 2024.
Lucy Kang: You’re listening to Making Contact. I’m Lucy Kang.
On this week’s show, we’ll continue with the podcast mini-series, Crosswinds, from the University of Virginia’s Repair Lab. The show looks at the impact of coal dust pollution on Black neighborhoods in Virginia through the lens of environmental racism. We’ll start off in the second episode of the series with producer Adrian Wood as they take a car tour of Newport News, Virginia.
Mark’eta Kirts: Um, you don’t see any Targets – ha! You don’t see any Walmarts, haha. not a Starbucks in sight. Not a Starbucks, um, not a Wegman’s –
Lathaniel Kirts: Whole Foods is not nearby.
Mark’eta Kirts: Ha! Not nowhere near you.
Adrian Wood: We’re in the car with Lathaniel and his wife, Mark’eta.
Lathaniel Kirts: Oh, there goes the coal dust right there! Look at all the trains.
Adrian Wood: Jesus.
Lathaniel Kirts: Look how vast – And there go those piles.
Mark’eta Kirts: Look how much it is.
Lathaniel Kirts: Look how tall that pile is.
Mark’eta Kirts: Wish you could get a video of this.
I’m Mark’eta Kirts, native of Newport News. I am Lathaniel Kirts’s wife. And yeah, I’m born and raised here. I’ve been in the area for almost [chuckle] 35 years. So it’s basically three sections of Newport News. So, you have the Denbigh area, you have the Midtown, and then you have downtown. And really if you wanna push it to the four, it’s East End. So they always say anything past those railroad tracks is East End. And East End is the area where the coal dust is, which is poverty, health, wealth disparity, crime, and things of that nature.
Adrian Wood: The East End is another name for the Southeast Community. We pull off the highway on the last exit before it tunnels under the James River. Now we’re at the southernmost tip of Newport News, approaching the residential part of the Southeast Community. Newport News is a narrow strip of waterfront that runs about 20 miles North to South along the east bank of the James River. At the southernmost tip, a whole mile of waterfront is dominated by Dominion Terminal Associates and Kinder Morgan terminal – two coal terminals situated right next to each other.
Just east of the terminals is Jefferson Avenue, which runs North to South. In this area, Jefferson Ave separates the coal terminals to the West from the neighborhood to the East. Jefferson Ave ends where the water begins, south of the city – the James River connecting to the Elizabeth River in a natural harbor where the rivers start to turn into ocean.
Mark’eta Kirts: Used to come out fishing with my dad out here every other Sunday.…Actually, my mother lived here, and my auntie lived here and it’s [clap] of course, you can see how close you are to…
Lathaniel Kirts: Low income, Section Eight housing.
Mark’eta Kirts: Yep. So, and you have predominantly African American. Black and brown people that live here. Exactly where this house is, my uncle owned a house there, sold it and they tore it down. Go back here. It’s beautiful waterfront property.
Adrian Wood: Southeast Newport News has a gorgeous sunrise view over the water. The residents use the coastline for fishing, swimming, crabbing – this use makes a kind of value. It’s sometimes called use value – there’s value in their use of it. But the land in this area has a low exchange value – it’s relatively cheap on the market because of all the contamination and decades of government disinvestment.
High use value plus low exchange value equals money to be made for developers, who would sell that rich waterfront culture on the real estate market for a massive profit. New development puts the area in a precarious position in terms of gentrification. And there are no clear answers from the City about how new development might affect, or be affected by, coal dust. This episode, we’ll get into the complexity of what new development might give or take from Southeast Newport News. I talked to several residents about all the changes, and what stays the same.
Lawrence Turner: We’re sea people, you know? We fish, we crab. My name is Lawrence Turner, born and raised here in Newport News. We get on boats and we go out in the water. Like that’s a part of our culture and our heritage here.
Donquitta Clements: It’s beautiful. I don’t think any, not many people know how much a waterfront sits at the corner of Ivy Avenue.
Adrian Wood: Ivy Avenue is a short street that dead ends on the Elizabeth River. It’s 3 blocks away from the coal terminal.
Donquitta Clements: It’s beautiful. It’s a wonderful place If you love water. I’m Donquitta Clements. I live on Ivy Avenue. I grew up in the East End, been here for the last 32 years of my life.
Lawrence Turner: Growing up it was, it was, it was, it was fun. We were all over the place. We played sports, we played hot ball, which is a form of like a football, things like that.
Donquitta Clements: The community is like, it’s like everybody wants to give you a hug. The kids, you know they’re like, “What y’all doing today? Can I come to your house?” Then you have all the adults. If something happened, we’re all hands on. It’s almost like a little small town at this point, and I know it’s changing, but I feel like that part won’t.
Okay. My first encounter, I’m telling my age. I was 17 years old. and I lived out in an apartment complex called Dickerson Court –
Adrian Wood: Dickerson Court is no longer standing, but when Donquitta lived there in the 2000s it was right across the street from the coal terminal. It’s a few blocks west of where she now lives on Ivy.
Donquitta Clements: –and I couldn’t figure out why I kept getting sick. When I finally went to the hospital, they swabbed my nose and all this black stuff came out and they were like, “Where’d you say you live again?” And they explained that my respiratory issues was coming from where I live.
Adrian Wood: Do you have asthma?
Donquitta Clements: Yes, I do.
Adrian Wood: Donquitta moved away from where she lived in Southeast Newport News because of her health problems in the mid 2000s. At around the same time, Lawrence was also in the neighborhood.
Lawrence Turner: growing up, like, I would stay at my aunt’s home, and she stayed in Harbor Homes, which is on the terminal. Terminal Ave is right behind these projects. Maybe 15 steps, give or take, you know, so it was literally right there.
It’s just amazing. Cause you, if you look at, it’s like it’s mountains and mountains and mountains of coal. We would take a shower. And she would leave the window open to give it a chance to air out. When we would get in the shower, it’ll be like a little, I guess like a little like shelf, kinda sorta, we’d put like your soap and things of that nature, and it would be like black particles. When we’re talking about the, the, the coal contamination, we’re talking about air, air goes anywhere. It’s impossible to run from.
Adrian Wood: Lawrence and Donquitta were both able to move away from Newport News as they became young adults. Not many people who leave Southeast Newport News choose to come back, but these two did. The tightly knit Southeast Community was vital to Lawrence and Donquitta growing up and they wanted to contribute to it as adults.
Lawrence Turner: I was a school counselor for five years at Woodside High School here in Newport News, in Northern Newport News.
Donquitta Clements: I own an organization called Break the Cycle, and our main goal is to advocate for more equitable experiences that looks different on every level in economic justice, social justice, environmental justice.
Adrian Wood: For Donquitta, deciding to move back to Newport News was a health decision as much as it was a family decision. She has five kids who she homeschools with her husband.
Donquitta Clements: We didn’t come back because we wanted the coal dust, of course. We wanted to help. And we feel like if we come and try to be of some help and grow some plants and ask about community gardens and rally the kids to do positive things, that this can be an area that finally gets some light shed on it versus the negativity that’s always talked about it. We’ve lived there, we’ve grown up there, and now we plan to grow our own family there.
Adrian Wood: But Donquitta’s children are dealing with the same health problems she had. The doctors told her it was from the coal dust.
Donquitta Clements: The two toddlers always have a cough. It’s like they’re stuffy every day. The doctor was like, “I hate to tell you, but that it’s your neighborhood. They’re not stuffy all the time for no reason. They don’t have allergies. The headaches. It’s coming from the coal dust.”
Adrian Wood: There are risks that go along with coming home for Donquitta. Coal dust is one of them from being so close to the coal terminal, right there just blocks away from her beautiful waterfront community. Newport News stayed on Lawrence’s mind after he moved away. He travelled all over the country playing on his college football team. Afterwards, when he moved back home, it’s like he saw his city for the first time.
Lawrence Turner: So, in the USA, you can go anywhere in the USA and you can go to a waterfront and what you going to get? You gonna get a lot of wealth. Miami. New York City. DC. Newport News? You’re gonna get poverty. You got industry that’s right there with billions, trillions of dollars, and you’re going to get poverty. Newport News has the potential to be just as impactful and influential as a New York City. I just think, you know, if they would’ve never put it right there, um, I just see like a different trajectory maybe, sorta.
Adrian Wood: What would a Southeast Community without the coal terminal even be like? It’s hard to imagine. A gigantic new redevelopment in the neighborhood has some residents wondering if the changes will affect the coal dust, too. There are upsides to the development – infrastructure, opportunities. There’s downsides too: gentrification. Two main questions linger: how will the redevelopment affect the coal dust – will it lead to cleanup? And, how will the coal dust affect the redevelopment – will newcomers be protected from the toxic dust?
Adrian Wood: The place where Lawrence and Donquitta used to live, Harbor Homes and Dickerson court, was public housing that no longer exists. There’s no question for residents that it had become uninhabitable by the time it got demolished. But the exact reason why varies depending on who you ask.
I called the city to see if they could confirm.
Sheila McAllister: Well, it was old.
Adrian Wood: This is Sheila McAllister…
Sheila McAllister: Director of City Planning for the City of Newport News. It was old. it could not be rebuilt. And because of the proximity to – I’m not going to say proximity to the coal yard, but people did not like being that close to the coal yard. And we didn’t like people being that close to the coal yard.
And you have the um, interstate, and you get a lot of particles and things coming off the interstate. And then you have the industrial across the interstate.
Adrian Wood: That would be the coal terminal. It is next to a gargantuan shipbuilding facility that also potentially releases toxins into the air. City officials will often deflect complaints about the coal dust by pointing out how close the shipyard is. Or, they’ll point to pollution from the interstate which belts the neighborhood. Those factors all contribute to pollution, but because of the lack of close monitoring, there is also uncertainty around who’s at blame.
Salima Hamirani: I’m just jumping in to remind you that you’re listening to Making Contact. If you like today’s show and want more information, or if you’d like to leave us a comment, visit us at our new website, makingcontactradio.org. There you can access today’s show and all of our prior episodes. And now, back to the show.
Adrian Wood: This is the sound of the area in Southeast Newport News where Donquitta and Lawrence used to live. If you stand facing West, it’s just a big field now – you can see across the grass to the coal terminal, dozens of 10-story piles of coal. Behind me, to the East, is blocks and blocks of brand-new apartments with brick facades and balconies. The area is unrecognizable to someone who may have lived here in 2009, 2010. I came here to meet with community advocate and neighborhood consultant, Yugonda Sample-Jones.
I love your bright colors today.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Thank you. You gotta brighten it up. Show ‘em the sun a little bit.
Adrian Wood: Yeah, it’s summer. Right?
Yugonda greeted me with a big hug and a disarming smile. I was surprised by this because we had only met once before, six months prior, but that’s just Yugonda – she makes you feel like family. She wears bold, technicolor prints and has tattoos that say things like “just breathe.” In the time we were standing on the corner talking, four or five people honked and waved at her as they drove past, or said hi from across the street.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Heyyy, how you doin! So, he has a nonprofit, we used to walk the streets and …
Adrian Wood: In addition to running a community garden and doing grassroots organizing, she serves on several municipal committees and boards.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Okay, so this is Jefferson Avenue, between 16th and 12th Street right here.
Adrian Wood: Yugonda walked with me down the narrow strip of redevelopment that runs 10 blocks, south to north, on the other side of Jefferson Avenue from where Harbor Homes and Dickerson Court were. All of this is within sight of the coal terminal.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: We have the school that’s going there. It’s gonna be a park in the middle. Apartments here. It’s gonna be like a community center underneath, on the other side is gonna be houses. There’s gonna be another part down here. It’s a lot of projects going on!
Adrian Wood: This is all part of a sprawling redevelopment of the Southeast Community funded through federal Housing and Urban Development. The $30 million project is called the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative – the CNI.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: This is the meat of the Choice Neighborhood Initiative right here, right here. If we were to walk down there on 12th Street…
Adrian Wood: Yugonda’s nonprofit, EmPower All, connects government organizations and nonprofits to the Southeast community. This kind of bridge is much needed in big redevelopment projects like the CNI, where Yugonda worked as community liaison.
Yugonda took me on a driving tour of the whole CNI area. We drove past where Harbor Homes and Dickerson Court used to be, the area that’s now downzoned to industrial.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: And these are the apartments, the townhouses that we’re building. It’s a lot of development happening. I’m just so worried, like, if this land was, like, unbuildable, you can’t build residents, like, housing on that land because of the toxic ground. Like, [little laugh] it’s right across the street! And the only thing that’s really separating it is a man-made street. So, it’s the same land! Isn’t this land toxic as well? Or is it less toxic because it’s a little bit further away?
Adrian Wood: This is a question that’s come up more than once with all the redevelopment that’s going on in the Southeast community–if that land is contaminated, whether from coal dust or combined pollution, what will be done to protect the people who still live here, on this side of Jefferson Ave, and the new people who are moving in?
Yugonda Sample-Jones: This is King Lincoln Park. But the culture people in our community call it Pickett’s Beach. And that’s because Mr. William Pickett bought this land for us, um, back in segregation time because there wasn’t anywhere on the waterfront where people could be. They classify it as a wild beach. So, it’s not cleaned.
Adrian Wood: This is a place where yugonda got to enjoy the waterfront in the Southeast Community.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Yeah, I used to come out here when I was a kid. My mom used to bring us out here and I remember it was like none of that rubbish and stuff. It was a beautiful waterfront, and it was a lot of Black families that were out here. We used to sit out here and like eat crabs and stuff. So, when I returned back, I was like, “What in the world happened to our beach?”
Adrian Wood: While Pickett’s beach is now kind of overgrown with bushes and brush, hundreds of feet away, a state-of-the-art seafood market is being planned as part of the CNI.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: That seafood market is – it’s gonna be amazing. it’s gonna be overlooking the water. We have Franchise opportunities on the inside. It’s a rooftop entertainment, um, a lounging area outside. It’s going to be beautiful.
Adrian Wood: The new seafood market has monetary value on the market, so the City sees it as worth investing in.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: And it’s a huge investment. I love our city for investing and seeing the value in the East End, but it’s like, okay, who are you really doing this for? Empower the people through the process. Like– I – hmmph. I, have faith that this stuff is going to be cleaned up–
Adrian Wood: She’s talking about the coal dust as well as all the other environmental hazards from the interstate and shipyard.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: once, you know demographics change and stuff like that, but it’s like… why do we have to wait for things to change? Why do we have to suffer now for it?
Adrian Wood: Who do you think is going to clean it up?
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Oh, the city.
Adrian Wood: There’s good and bad that comes with changes like the CNI. The seafood market is just one example of how use turns to exchange value, and culture gets commodified, through gentrification. In this case, Yugonda and her family enjoyed use value of Pickett’s beach – they fished and ate crabs and hung out by the water. Now it’s being converted to exchange value – where newcomers to the area can buy that experience, or a version of it, at the seafood market. That transformation of value is part of how gentrification works – and gentrification is part of what the CNI is bringing to the Southeast Community.
On my walk with Yugonda through the neighborhood, we headed north – away from Pickett’s Beach, with new apartments to our right and the contaminated empty field to the left – beyond that, the towering coal terminal. Just north of the new CNI apartments are some older homes. They have porches and pointy roofs and very committed gardens. People in these homes deal with the coal dust too – but on this side of Jefferson Ave, they weren’t demolished or downzoned. They’re still here.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Oh, there’s Miss Millie. We can go talk to Miss Millie. She’s on her porch.
Adrian Wood: Oh great.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Hey, Miss Millie! How you doing?
Millie Taylor: Taking a walk?
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Yeah, we’re actually um, doing some recording and talking about the coal dust.
Millie Taylor: The what? Oh. Oh, it’s terrible!
Yugonda Sample-Jones: You wanna talk to her about it? Wait, you wanna talk to Adrian about it?
Millie Taylor: I can tell her about it – I can tell you it’s terrible down here. My tables are full of coal dust. My car! My name is Miss Millie.
Adrian Wood: Nice to meet you.
Millie Taylor: His name is Raymond.
Adrian Wood: Hi there, Mr. Raymond.
Raymond: How you doing?
Millie Taylor: But towards the coal dust is concerned–it’s all over our cars, all over. Every morning I come out here, I clean it up – not every morning, but most mornings, I clean the tables off. Come back the next day, they black all over. The flower pots and your porch. And then the window sill, it gets awful.
Adrian Wood: From her front porch, you can look across the field where Harbor Homes used to be and see the mountains of coal. You can hear the wind moving her wind chimes – wind that carries coal dust onto her porch, and into her lungs.
Mm. How long have you been living here?
Millie Taylor: We’ve been here since 1953 or 54. My neighbor just washed his house down the other day. Oh. I said, man, you got, that’s a whole different shade. Said, wait a minute. I saw him power washing it. Then I came back and I saw his railing. I thought they were gray. [laughing]
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Lord have mercy.
Millie Taylor: I said, “Howard.” He said, “Look, Miss Millie.” I said, “Howard. I thought your porch was gray.”
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Wow.
Millie Taylor: Look at that house. Whole new house!
Adrian Wood: Miss Millie is not just in eyesight of the coal terminal. She’s also just blocks away from the CNI and associated redevelopment. With all the changes that development is bringing downtown, Miss Millie and Yugonda wonder if that will affect all the environmental hazards as well.
Millie Taylor: I do think when these places being built come up and they put some white folks down there. [giggle] It’s gonna be some changes made down there.
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Did I tell you that? Did I say that?
Adrian Wood: If environmental cleanup finally happened in Southeast Newport News following white gentrification, it wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened in the US. A 2014 paper from MIT suggests that Greenpoint, a superfund site that is now a posh neighborhood in New York City, finally got the cleanup residents demanded for decades– but only after gentrification. In one interview, a resident says: “I really feel that many things are probably happening because of gentrification.” Gentrification led to environmental cleanup in other places too, like Chicago, LA and even Melbourne, Australia.
Ultimately, it’s the developers who are in control of this, not the residents and not the city. The developers are the ones driving prices up and creating exchange value out of that contaminated land. Will this be the case in Newport News, with the City’s new developments in the Southeast Community?
Over two hundred people used to live in the blocks where new CNI apartments are now being built. It was a public housing complex called Ridley Circle. The 1950s-era cement units were in terrible condition, with mold, asbestos and long-neglected maintenance issues. The people living in Ridley Circle had to relocate for the construction to happen. Some relocated families were moved into other public housing units, but most were offered housing vouchers. The city told former Ridley residents they could come back and move into the new homes. But not all of them are gonna make it.
There are financial requirements to be eligible to live in the new CNI housing.
Millie Taylor: Screening the people before you move them back in there, hmm?
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Mm-hmm. Yeah. They screen ’em, make sure that they’re working.
Millie Taylor: I mean, what are you, what’s the criteria?
Yugonda Sample-Jones: Well, because they were relocated because of the project, it shouldn’t be any barriers. But what I have seen is that they are looking at credit, they are looking at, um, what have you done in the time that you left Ridley circle, are you working now?
Adrian Wood: Some of those criteria, like credit and employment history, are barriers to people who want to return to the area.
That’s contributed to the displacement of some families who had lived in Ridley Circle before, to the disappointment of many, including Yugonda.
Donquitta Clements: How do you go tell a group of people that think they’re coming home that they don’t have a home to come home to, but when they ride through their neighborhood, there’s new homes.
Adrian Wood: This is Donquitta, again. The old Ridley Circle public housing were two-story apartments, on the small side with low ceilings and peeling paint on the exterior. The CNI homes are multi-story apartments with balconies and matte gray facades. There’s even two dozen brand new single-family houses.
Donquitta Clements: If you’re telling us that this neighborhood is for the re- the people who lived here and they, you know, all their blood, sweat, and tears in their community, but then you turn around and 80% of them can’t come back cuz they don’t qualify or some parameter…I hate to say it, but it seems created. …It feels definitely intentional.
Adrian Wood: Donquitta also worries for newcomers to the city who don’t yet know about the coal dust.
Donquitta Clements: I don’t think they understand the severity of what they’re coming to because it’s shiny. In the beginning it’s, oh, look at the new house. Look at the new neighborhood. Granted, Newport News is a wonderful city to live in. It’s a wonderful city, but that’s still something that’s harming us as a people. Period. It doesn’t matter about your race, your, your class, you’re going to be affected. Your plants will be dusty. Your house will be dusty. You’re outside – you will constantly be sweeping and mopping and power washing. And most importantly to me, your health will be affected by it. And they’re gonna be coming in by the droves, but they have no idea that there’s this situation that’s awaiting them.
Adrian Wood: The new construction is less than a mile away from the coal terminal. So not only are longtime residents being pushed out with rising housing prices and new development. Newcomers to the freshly constructed apartments are oblivious. What remains to be seen is if all the new energy, and new money, in the City will be what’s needed to spur municipal action on environmental threats like coal dust.
Lucy Kang: That’s the voice of producer Adrian Wood, from an abridged version of episode two of the podcast Crosswinds, brought to us by the University of Virginia’s Repair Lab.
And that does it for today’s show. To learn more, head over to our website at makingcontactradio.org. I’m Lucy Kang. Thanks for listening to Making Contact.
