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This story was originally published by Capital B.

Four months have passed since a Louisiana oil facility burst apart, spewing a dense black sludge that drifted across homes, farms, and waterways as far as 50 miles away.

Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice and Louisiana environmental regulators have filed a sweeping lawsuit against Smitty’s Supply, the company that ran the facility storing oil and vehicle lubricants. But residents in the majority-Black town are skeptical that they’ll benefit from the $1 billion federal lawsuit.

Much of that belief stems from the fact that despite repeated calls for help, the black goo still clings to walls, roofs, and soil of more than half of the town’s properties, according to Van Showers, the mayor of Roseland, Louisiana.

“People want to know when they’re going to receive help, and there is nothing to make them think that this process would lead to that,” said Showers, who works at a local chicken processing plant and has struggled financially through the clean-up process.

That skepticism is rooted in hard experience — and in a broader history of environmental racism that has left Black communities shouldering disproportionate burdens. The gap has left residents in a state of prolonged uncertainty about their water, their health, and whether the legal action unfolding in distant courtrooms will ever reach their homes. It is a familiar pattern, particularly in Louisiana, where environmental disasters have consistently hit Black and low-income communities hardest while leaving them last in line for recovery.

Initially, residents in the town, where the average person earns just $17,000 per year, were told to clean up the mess themselves.

The explosion had sprayed the community of 1,100 residents with dozens of chemicals, including cancer-causing ones known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals.” One resident living on a fixed income told Capital B that in the weeks after the event, she went over $1,000 in credit card debt to replace the stained panels on her trailer.

However, in October, after sustained pressure from residents, the tide seemed to turn.........

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