Part of the problem is the gas-fired power station, which lights up at night, hums like an airport, and spews out toxins and greenhouse gases from a dozen towering stacks. In August 2021, a gas pipeline explosion threw Randolph residents out of bed, igniting a huge fireball that killed farm worker Luis Alvarez and his 14-year-old daughter Valeria. It is also bearing the brunt of the climate crisis with farmers forced to leave fields fallow or sell them off, many to solar farms, due to ongoing drought and water shortages. Pinal County has some of the worst air pollution in Arizona, according to the American Lung Association and the Environmental Protection Agency. The community is literally surrounded by cumulative and acute hazards. The agricultural fields and desert plains where children would ride their bikes and chase roadrunners are long gone, and Randolph is now virtually surrounded by polluting infrastructure including gas plants, pipelines, a hazardous waste site and a steel company contracted to manufacture Donald’s Trump’s border wall. There’s no store, no bar, no gas station and no park, just the church with a single lofty palm for shade. Today, only 150 or so residents live in an area the equivalent of seven football fields long by three fields wide, some in houses or plots purchased by their ancestors. Mechanization of the cotton industry led to the community’s economic and population decline, after which the nearby town of Coolidge began annexing the land around Randolph and converted it into an industrial area. It was one of the only places Black families could buy property, and by the 1960s the close-knit agricultural community, which was also home to Mexicans and Native Americans, boasted thriving stores, bars, churches and gas stations. Randolph is an unincorporated town in Pinal County first settled in the 1920s and 30s by mostly Black families from Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas who came to pick cotton in the Gila River valley. “Refusing to take no for an answer is incredibly common.” The community says it won’t back down, but nationwide utilities have a track record of getting what they want, according to David Pomerantz, director of the Energy and Policy Institute (EPI). “This plant is going to kill us, we’re already suffocating.” “We’re not giving up no matter what they offer,” said Guadalupe Felix, 45, whose family have lived in Randolph for three generations. This isn’t right.”Īt a recent community meeting held at the modest church, SRP offered to finance a new community center, air quality monitoring, and $50,000 in landscaping and signage among other projects if residents dropped their opposition to power plant expansion. “They are dangling goodies in front of us, but the community doesn’t want it, we already have too much pollution. This is not democratic,” said Ron Jordan, 77, whose family has lived in Randolph since in the 1930s. “We won, they lost, but they won’t accept it, and keep coming back. It was major victory for clean energy and environmental justice in Arizona, according to the Sierra Club, the environmental group which condemned the proposed expansion as “textbook environmental racism.”īut SRP has refused to take no for an answer, and residents fear that the state regulator might reverse its decision. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist.
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