This story was originally published by Capital B and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As a young boy in the 1960s, almost every weekend Elbert McGee walked a half-mile with his father through the wooded streets of Roseland, Louisiana, to the Tangipahoa River. There, he learned to swim and fish for bass, crappie, and the occasional catfish.

​“We had a good, good life as children,” McGee said, unloading fishing gear from his truck. “We grew up healthy and in community.”

Today, McGee still lives in the home where he was raised. But he no longer makes the 10-minute walk to the river to fish. Instead, he drives three hours to Grand Isle.

That change only came after August 22, 2025, when Smitty’s Supply, an oil facility in the majority-Black town, exploded. The disaster released an estimated 12 million gallons of oily liquid and chemical waste into the river, and painted hundreds of homes, churches, schools, and playgrounds with black oily streaks.

Within weeks, McGee’s then-15-year-old son, Markel, began having nosebleeds severe enough to make him miss school. A friend who is battling cancer developed a respiratory illness. Neither family has received a definitive answer as to whether those conditions are linked to the blast.

For McGee, who has a combined eight children and grandchildren, and other Roseland parents, the loss of the river has been surpassed by a much more pressing question: What does it mean to be a parent when you cannot stop harm from reaching your children?

Across Roseland and communities like it, protecting a child from refineries, railyards, and contaminated water becomes a never-ending, intimate form of vigilance—one Black parents shoulder disproportionately. Research shows Black children experience higher exposure to environmental toxins like lead, air pollution, and pesticides than children of any other race in the US, turning everyday parenting into an act of defense against threats they never chose and often cannot see.

“This is my home,” McGee said. “I have no other realistic option to leave.”

McGee, 63, has begun to sit with the devastating thought that he may have failed to protect his children by raising them here.“They’re not gonna be healthy here, especially doing anything in the dirt or the river,” he said.

“We can’t control the government or these companies,” he added. “We can pray on it. But you want the best for your children, and it hurts not to be able to give it to them.”

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality did not respond to Capital B’s........

© Mother Jones