Public art project to focus on environment

by Erika McDonald

Barrels of toxic chemicals stored across the street from an elementary school in southeast Houston. Photo courtesy MCAH.

This month, children in southeast Houston will begin work on the beautification of a toxic dump that blights their neighborhood.

The Many Diversified Interests Superfund site, which stored more than 5000 barrels of used chemicals from refineries and chemical plants, occupies 36-acres in Houston’s Fifth Ward. More than 100 families live within close proximity to the site and Bruce Elementary School is located directly across the street. The property is surrounded by a chain-link fence which, upon completion of a public art project sponsored by The Museum of Cultural Arts Houston, will be adorned with a 1,920-foot mural painted by area children.

Reginald Adams, the museum’s executive director and Fifth Ward resident, said the culmination of the year-long project will coincide with the site’s scheduled clean-up in January 2004. In the meantime the museum, a non-profit organization Adams calls “a museum without walls,” will recruit children from neighborhood elementary schools and community centers to participate in the project.

At each location, a guest speaker will address children about the impacts of environmental pollution on communities and individuals. The recruited children will then work with a visual artist to design a picture based on what they learned. The pictures will then be painted on 240 four-by-eight-foot wood panels that will dress the fence around the site.

Adams said that, in addition to designing the visual element, the children will also be encouraged to write a poem or story about the environment to accompany the picture.

Adams said he believes the visual impact of what will be the largest mural in Texas will inspire Fifth Ward residents to become more involved in environmental issues that impact their neighborhood. He said taking an interest in the environment is particularly important for people in under-served communities.

“Whether they choose to get involved or not, they have to see it. Right now (the Superfund site) just looks like an empty lot, the paintings will serve as a powerful reminder of what went on in our neighborhood,” he said.

Adams said he thinks it is important for the community to get involved with the site now because after its remediation next year, it will be an attractive location for developers.

“Parents, youth, school administrators need to take greater ownership now,” he said. “When we don’t make an effort to be informed and aware, that’s when the wool gets pulled over our eyes and commercial industries can come in and do whatever they want.”

Adams said that even when communities are engaged, children still get left out.

“They can’t vote or pay taxes yet,” he said, “but if we’re going to raise citizens who understand the importance of volunteerism, we need to plant the seed now so that community service and stewardship of the environment won’t be foreign concepts later.

To get the project off the ground, Mothers for Clean Air, Fifth Ward Chapter secured a $20,000 grant from the federal Weed and Seed program, which helps fund neighborhood beautification projects. So far, Bruce Elementary School and the Julius C. Hester Community Center have agreed to take part in the project.

A 1998 Texas Department of Health, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry study concluded that 22 percent of the children in the Fifth Ward had elevated levels of lead in the blood compared to the 9 percent average for the rest of Texas. The elevated levels may be linked to the children’s proximity to the MDI site. The site is contaminated with lead and other metals from a steel casting operation that operated there decades ago. Although the buildings that once occupied the site were demolished and the barrels were removed, the soil is still dangerously contaminated.

MDI is one of five Superfund sites in the Fifth Ward community.