CO-SPONSORED EVENT - Remembering Refining: A Community Conversation

Fisher Fine Arts Library (220 South 34th Stree)
Hybrid In-person/Online Event: Please register here.

THE PENN PROGRAM IN ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES hosts this Futures Beyond Refining roundtable, featuring environmental artist AMY BALKIN, environmental scientist PETER DECARLO (Johns Hopkins), Grays Ferry community experts CHARLES REEVES and TAMMY REEVES, and NY Times Magazine reporter LINDA VILLAROSA. Balkin’s "Area of Interest" billboard-as-visual-essay provides the event's dramatic backdrop. The conversation, offered in person and online, will be moderated by Professor BETHANY WIGGIN, coordinator of the collaborative Futures Beyond Refining project, launched in the immediate aftermath of the Philadelphia refinery explosion in 2019.

Two years after the explosion, these speakers bring diverse reflections on how Philadelphia’s long history of refining is being remembered, remediated, redressed–or not. DeCarlo is an important voice urging the need then and now for more comprehensive air monitoring around refining infrastructure. Villarosa’s 2020 lead story, “Pollution Is Killing Black Americans: This Community Fought Back,” documented community-based work for environmental justice in the wake of refining. Balkin’s “Area of Interest” was created in response to community desires for a memorial to the losses incurred from refining. The Reeves family has worked over generations to ameliorate harms and create opportunities in a predominantly Black community directly next to the refinery’s old north yard. Now, the refinery lands, divided into eleven Areas of Interest, are undergoing remediation by legacy owner, Sunoco, and swift re-development by the site’s new owner, Hilco. Despite promises of “green” opportunities and a re-branding of the site as the “Bellwether District,” the developer intends to retain fossil fuel infrastructure. The site, adjacent to multiple residential areas, is ground zero for climate flooding in Philadelphia.

This moderated conversation intends to prompt consideration of how the refinery and its legacies will be remembered–and how we can learn from and act on them. The Kleinman Forum space offers a rare opportunity to showcase Balkin’s 14x48 ft. visual essay on Penn’s campus after its display along I-76.

In this time of accelerating climate change and rising carbon emissions, the need to address the inheritances of fossil fuel infrastructure is more important than ever.