"Heavy rains have dispersed highly toxic dioxins throughout the Sanders Beach neighborhood for years. Now residents hope the Biden administration will help put an end to their misery."
"PENSACOLA, Florida—As the sun set over Pensacola Bay, Dixie Wilkinson sat in a lawn chair on her back porch, overlooking her carefully tended yard that slopes toward the water. She gazed at the sinewy oak tree in the middle of the freshly cut grass, the same tree she had played under as a child.
The silence of the dusk surrounding her was broken only by a distant train whistle and the fluttering of wind chimes hanging from her carport.
Wilkinson thought about the land that she and generations of her family were raised on. “I would not want to live anywhere else. I’ve gone to different places all over. But this is my, you know, this is the place I love,” she said with a soft southern drawl, gesturing towards her yard.
Yet the soil and the groundwater in her neighborhood have been poisoned over the years, and she believes the contaminants have sickened her and her neighbors."
Agya K. Aning, Katie Surma, and Kristoffer Tigue report for Inside Climate News April 25, 2021.
