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September 27, 2005
Book Review---An Unreasonable Woman: The True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas
by William Baue
Shrimper-turned-grassroots environmental activist Diane Wilson transforms her experience fighting
corporate toxic emissions into a literary work of art imbued with the rugged beauty of the Texas
coast.
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An Unreasonable Woman is an unreasonable book. A reasonable author would use
correct grammar. Diane Wilson don't--she slips from "proper English" into the seaside
syntax of her native Texas tongue at odd intervals, sometimes while explicating a complex
wastewater regulation. A reasonable editor would exercise restraint with metaphors, excising the
overabundance of similes that defy expectation, such as Ms. Wilson's deft evoking of the subtlest
of human frailties through the description of a flap of a gray heron's wing. Thankfully, Chelsea Green editors retain Ms. Wilson's
rich prose that connects the most mundane doings of people to those of nature to illuminate deeper
understanding of both.
This unreasonableness is a conscious, or unconscious,
manifestation of the book’s core subject. Reasonable owners, managers, legislators, regulators,
judges, and lawyers would hold corporations accountable for their toxic emissions. This book
reveals that this is not always the case. Rather, it describes how a single woman must abandon
reason to do "unreasonable" acts--hunger strikes and other more direct actions--to hold
corporations and their supporters to account.
Although it tells an all-too-true story,
this book does not read like some nonfiction that bludgeons readers with data. Ms. Wilson focuses
on truth over facts--though she does not spurn the latter, as evidenced by descriptions of
stockpiling shrimp boxes full of documents acquired by Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. In fact, it is the
revelation of data that sets her activism in motion.
"A shrimper gave me this newspaper
article--he had three different types of cancer and huge lumps all over his arms that were like
tennis balls underneath the skin," Ms. Wilson said in a magazine interview. "The article was about
the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), which was
the first time industry in the US had to report the emissions they were putting out in the air, on
the land, and into the water--it was the first the public ever saw of it."
The 1986
Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA),
enacted by Congress in response to the deadly 1984 Union Carbide chemical release in Bhopal, India,
mandated that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) create TRI.
"It said we were the number one county in
the nation for toxic disposal--our county is real small, not know for anything at all, and it was
mentioned in this article four times," she continued. "That's not the type of information you can
sit on and say, 'I didn't see it"--I moved on it, and so that's where all my work started, right
there."
Ms. Wilson meets almost universal opposition to her attempts to find out more on
toxic emissions from the chemical plants in Calhoun County. The economic development associated
with these plants--owned by Alcoa (ticker: AA), BP (BP), Dupont (DD), privately-owned Formosa Plastics, and now-Dow (DOW) subsidiary Union
Carbide--overshadows their alarming, TRI-proven pollution emissions. What little support she
finds--a Houston environmental lawyer, an Austin environmental activist--eventually splinters from
in-fighting over how best to deal with her ultimate target, Formosa, which is constructing a new $2
billion plant before securing permits.
Her most significant support comes from unexpected
places--injured workers too intimidated by company retaliation to report toxic spills to
authorities, Texas Water Commission investigators who leak damning files that their superiors have
suppressed. However, the strength of her gathered evidence proves futile against the political
machinery supporting the new plant. Ms. Wilson comes full circle when a lawyer from EPA, the
organization responsible for TRI and enforcing environmental regulations, mistakes her on the phone
for a Formosa lawyer similarly named Diane and reveals numerous violations the agency is
overlooking.
When both allies and due process fail her, Ms. Wilson takes matters into her
own hands. The climax of the book involves the SeaBee (her 24-foot shrimp boat), Formosa's
wastewater discharge pipe, her
game-warden-fugitive-turned-county-commissioner-candidate-turned-Formosa-worker brother Sanchez,
three Coast Guard boats, and 12 protesting shrimpers.
Without spoiling the suspense, Ms.
Wilson survives and ultimately succeeds in forcing Formosa and other Calhoun County chemical plants
to shift to zero discharge, a costlier but environmentally-preferable form of emission. However,
focusing on these individual victories would obscure her larger accomplishment of inspiring readers
to act on their conscience. An Unreasonable Woman has the force of a sea squall, the colors
of not-quite sunrise, and the passion of blood drawn directly from her heart, with the authenticity
of ink from a bay squid. While she counts herself as "nobody particular," if she can act in
defiance of embedded power and in support of common people and our silent earth, so can anybody!
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