St. Croix’s indigenous Taíno name is Ay Ay; the island was originally inhabited by the Taíno and at least two other Indigenous groups. Christopher Columbus landed on St. Croix in 1493, and it was the site of the first documented conflict between Indigenous people and European colonizers. Over the next 200 years, the Indigenous inhabitants were killed and driven out by Europeans, leaving the island virtually uninhabited.

The Danish West India Company purchased St. Croix in 1733, and the island’s colonial economy was built on the labor of enslaved Africans, who were forced to work on Danish sugar plantations.

Slavery officially ended on St. Croix in 1848, but plantation owners were still able, by law, to force formerly enslaved workers into exploitive labor contracts. In 1916, Denmark sold the Virgin Islands to the U.S. in exchange for $25 million in gold.

Today, the Virgin Islands’ population is 76% Black, and many of its Black citizens are descended from Africans who were kidnapped by Europeans and taken to the Caribbean.

St. Croix remained a primarily agricultural economy until the refinery opened in 1967. Originally owned by oil giant Hess Corporation, the refinery soon became the largest in the world. Hess later reached a joint ownership agreement with Petroleos de Venezuela, and the refinery became known as HOVENSA. It was one of at least twelve refineries that were built by U.S. companies in the Caribbean between 1950 and 1970.

As oil production and demand grew throughout the 20th century, the Caribbean proved a convenient geographic hub: oil produced in Venezuela and even Nigeria could pass through on its way to U.S. markets, and Caribbean refineries could charge a better price than those in the contiguous U.S.

The refinery’s opening was a product of a plan by the Virgin Island’s government to transform St. Croix’s economy from agricultural to industrial. The territorial government was inspired by “Operation Bootstrap,” a set of initiatives Puerto Rico adopted in the 1940s to modernize its economy. Using tax breaks and subsidies, the Virgin Islands secured deals to bring the HOVENSA refinery, as well as a Harvey aluminum plant, to St. Croix.

David Bond, an anthropologist at Bennington College and an expert on the refinery, explains that these modern industries were marketed as opportunities for Crucians to finally achieve freedom and prosperity. Government advocates for the industrial plan emphasized the links between the agricultural economy and the island’s history of slavery.

A St. Thomas newspaper suggested that the new industries would “remove the social, economic shackles which have prevented progress on St. Croix.” The plan was billed as good for labor, too: one labor union representative described it as “one of the greatest things” to happen on the island.  Support was far from universal, however, and thousands of Crucian farmers protested the industry deal.

HOVENSA’s economic successes translated into big benefits for the Virgin Islands. Revenues from the refinery came to make up 20% of the Virgin Island’s annual budget, providing funds for government programs and cementing the territorial government’s dependence on the refinery. At the holidays, Hess trucks fanned out to St. Croix schools, making sure every kid on the island got a Christmas gift from Hess. Jobs at the refinery paid well and created a new middle class on the island. Sommer Sibilly-Brown, a lifelong

St. Croix resident and founder of the Virgin Islands Good Food Coalition, explained to me that many Crucians wanted their kids to grow up and go work at the refinery. “[I]t seemed like it would afford them the ability to send their children to private school, you know, to purchase a home . . . that was a nice, stable life.”

But many of the people who enjoyed the refinery’s hiring boom were not Crucians. Refinery management came from Texas, Louisiana, and New Jersey. Tradesmen with expertise in oil came from Trinidad and Aruba, and laborers came from the eastern Caribbean. The influx of outsiders to staff the refinery permanently changed the demographic mix of the island.

When the refinery opened, CEO Leon Hess bragged about its competitive advantages in the oil market: the company’s innovative operating strategy, its superior storage facilities, and its strategic location near cheap Venezuelan oil. But what really made the refinery attractive were the tax breaks it secured and the regulatory advantages St. Croix offered, as Dr. Bond uncovered in a recent article.

Unlike similar Caribbean locations, St. Croix was American, so the oil wasn’t subject to steep import tariffs. But the refinery also enjoyed a level of freedom from government oversight that was unavailable on the mainland. In 1966, the year refinery construction began, the Virgin Islands Industrial Incentive Board wrote, “word has gotten around Wall Street that corporations can get a businessman’s deal in the Virgin Islands,” free from anyone “peeking over [their] shoulder.”

“Word has gotten around Wall Street that corporations can get a businessman’s deal in the Virgin Islands,” free from anyone “peeking over [their] shoulder.”

The refinery’s business model and infrastructure were designed around non-accountability. The facility used pipelines to transport petroleum materials around the island: there were pipelines to carry the refined products to port for sale in the U.S., and pipelines to carry waste materials away for storage. The pipes carrying the valuable products for sale were built safely aboveground. The pipes carrying waste were built below ground, buried in salty sand where they quickly—and predictably—started rusting.

In 1982, the Environmental Protection Agency discovered the corroding pipelines were leaking hundreds of thousands of barrels of petrochemicals underground, some of which had formed a ten-foot layer that was floating on the island’s only aquifer. In 1994 EPA determined that all the pipes needed to be replaced, yet the facility continued operating.

Dangerous worker shortcuts were part of normal practice, too. Dr. Bond explained to me that because half of Crucians rely on rainwater cisterns for drinking water, air pollution problems on the island are also drinking water problems. Yet Dr. Bond collected stories from refinery workers who used the cover of darkness to vent benzene, a toxic pollutant that can cause cancer, anemia, and reproductive problems, into the air. Workers also recounted flushing mercury down drains, knowing that the drains flowed into bays frequented by local fishermen.

These practices continued unchecked until 2011, when St. Croix’s problems became so obvious that federal regulators could no longer ignore them. A series of refinery explosions, so loud they were heard from several miles away, cloaked the island in thick clouds of black smoke.

Internal oil spills triggered releases of noxious fumes that swept over the downwind neighborhoods and their 20,000 residents. The fumes sickened residents and caused dayslong school closures. EPA investigators were swiftly dispatched to the island. They exposed maintenance issues and problematic shortcuts, although several investigators also spent their evenings off at tropical themed parties with HOVENSA executive staff.

In 2011, EPA reached a consent decree agreement with HOVENSA for violations of the Clean Air Act. HOVENSA agreed to pay a penalty of $5 million, to spend $700 million on new pollution controls to reduce emissions from its refinery equipment, and to fund $5 million in projects to improve environmental health on St. Croix.

A year later in January 2012, HOVENSA announced it was shutting down the plant. Ms. Sibilly-Brown recalls the plant’s closure as a time of uncertainty. She had friends whose lives were built around working for the refinery, and her best friend, whose husband worked at the refinery, had to leave home to find work off the island. And no one knew what would happen to the polluted landscape as the refinery sat dormant.

In September 2015, the Virgin Islands government filed a lawsuit against Hess, claiming that its executives “conspired to strip the facility’s assets in order to leave the government with claims against a broke, polluted and inoperable refinery.”

The Virgin Islands government filed a lawsuit against Hess, claiming that its executives “conspired to strip the facility’s assets in order to leave the government with claims against a broke, polluted and inoperable refinery.”

The same day the government filed its lawsuit, HOVENSA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Bankruptcy enabled HOVENSA to sell the refinery, which it did in December 2015 to Limetree Bay Ventures, a partnership between private equity firms Arclight Capital and EIG. Instead of fulfilling its obligations under the EPA consent decree, HOVENSA spent over $400 million maintaining the refinery’s operability so that it could be restarted by its new owners.

Many Crucians were unhappy about the prospect of reopening. Deanna James, president of the St. Croix Foundation for Community Development, explained to local newspaper St. Thomas Source that after the 2012 closure, residents were overwhelmingly resolved that “the refinery was part of the island’s past.” They believed they could find something new to power their economy.

But the years following the closure were undeniably difficult for the Virgin Islands. A year after closure, the unemployment rate on St. Croix reached 17%. The Virgin Islands’ GDP fell over 13% in a year. The territorial governor’s office warned of an energy affordability crisis (the refinery had subsidized electricity and gasoline prices on the island), an erosion of the middle class, and hundreds of millions in lost tax revenues.

In 2016, St. Croix’s child poverty level was 37%. And then Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck. Hurricane Maria destroyed 70% of the buildings on St. Croix, including the island’s only hospital, and it devastated the already-weakened economy. An additional 12% of jobs disappeared, and government revenues were cut in half.

The territorial government saw the refinery’s sale as an opportunity to revitalize the Virgin Islands’ crippled economy. When the territory’s then-governor Kenneth Mapp approved an agreement between the Virgin Islands and Limetree Bay, he promised that the refinery would bring hundreds of millions in revenue to the government to support public employee wages, add to the government retirement system, and provide public services to the community.

But many Crucians saw the agreement as a giveaway to Limetree Bay. The contract included at least fifteen different tax exemptions, including tax breaks that would have otherwise supported the reopening of St. Croix’s hospital, which has remained closed since the hurricanes.

Environmental protection fared no better in the reopening process. In 2017, Governor Mapp sent a personal letter to President Trump asking him to expedite the federal government’s environmental approval process. And the private equity owners of Limetree Bay had some advantages working in their favor: the managing partner of Arclight Capital, Daniel Revers, is a major GOP donor with ties to Trump. Revers traveled with President Trump to China in 2017 for the purpose of recruiting Chinese investors for the refinery.

This close connection raised concerns about regulatory capture, and EPA’s actions only aggravated those concerns. According to internal EPA emails, obtained through FOIA requests, EPA used Limetree Bay to try out a new “customer liaison concept” for interacting with regulated companies.

One EPA official, Robert Tomiak, regularly met with Limetree Bay and offered to “serve as their front door . . . for anything they need.” Under EPA rules, refineries that are closed for an extended period generally need to apply for a new environmental permit to start back up. But despite the refinery’s eight-year-long closure, EPA allowed Limetree to reopen using HOVENSA’s old permit.

Local and national environmental groups promptly appealed the permit decision, and their fears about its consequences were soon vindicated. On February 1, 2021, the refinery reopened after nearly a decade closed. Three days later, on February 4, a toxic plume quietly flowed from the refinery’s flare stacks and showered oil droplets on the surrounding neighborhoods.

The official term for these oil droplets is “flare rainout.” According to EPA, inhalation or other contact with flare rainout can cause nausea, skin and eye irritation and hypersensitivity, liver damage, and possible carcinogenic effects. Flare rainout can result in “flaming rain,” which is exactly what it sounds like. As EPA describes it, flaming rain happens when oil droplets ignite in the refinery’s flare stack and “rain down, while on fire, on the facility and neighboring communities.”

“My body wouldn’t work. It felt acidic in my mouth, burned my throat. I started throwing up repeatedly. I thought I was doing to die. You don’t see it, but it gets inside your body. It gets inside you and tears you up from inside.”

One nearby worker reported, “I was working on a roof when I smelled something strange. I suddenly felt weak. My skin scratched. The smell was too strong, it knocked me down. I crawled off the roof, dizzy, stumbling. My body wouldn’t work. It felt acidic in my mouth, burned my throat. I started throwing up repeatedly. I thought I was doing to die. You don’t see it, but it gets inside your body. It gets inside you and tears you up from inside.”

Four flare rainout incidents occurred between February 4 and May 12. On May 12 Limetree Bay suspended operations due to a large fire that emitted dangerous levels of sulfur dioxide, a pollutant that damages the lungs. Two days later EPA used its rarely invoked emergency powers to order Limetree Bay to pause all operations because they posed “an imminent risk to public health.”

In July, the refinery’s owners once again filed for bankruptcy.

In the three brief months that Limetree Bay operated the refinery, flare rainout contaminated hundreds of drinking water cisterns and vegetable gardens. It permeated Frederiksted with a rotten egg smell (caused by hydrogen sulfide, an extremely hazardous gas). Three schools closed because so many teachers and students were nauseous from hydrogen sulfide exposure. The Virgin Islands’ emergency management agency received over 100 complaints from citizens experiencing headaches, sore throats, and nausea, and many residents sought medical attention at the local hospital. Families that lived downwind of the refinery were forced to sleep in their cars upwind.

The impacts of the refinery’s disastrous restart likely won’t become fully clear for decades, as the long-term health effects of residents’ pollution exposure continue to reveal themselves. And Crucians understand they cannot rely on anyone but themselves to conduct the health monitoring that they deserve.

Ms. Gerard and Ms. Sibilly-Brown got together with other community leaders, along with Dr. Bond, and organized a community survey to document the refinery’s continuing impacts. They found that health effects were severe in the predominantly low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods downwind of the refinery. Over 70% of survey respondents reported trouble breathing during Limetree’s episodes, and 66% of respondents reported severe headaches. The survey uncovered three deaths that loved ones attributed to toxic emissions from Limetree. Community members also provided testimonials of health issues that continue to haunt them. One Crucian shared: “[s]ince that time, I’m not okay. My body won’t work. I have trouble standing up, walking. I can’t get my balance. I keep getting sick. My immune system doesn’t work.”

“Since that time, I’m not okay. My body won’t work. I have trouble standing up, walking. I can’t get my balance. I keep getting sick. My immune system doesn’t work.”

The survey found that hundreds of homes were still waiting for their cisterns to be cleaned and hundreds of residents were waiting for medical assistance for respiratory ailment, several months after the refinery closed. Dr. Bond described to me the water crisis that persists through today. Residents’ water cisterns are still lined with petrochemical products, so they must rely on bottled drinking water provided by Limetree. Showering causes rashes.

Early on, Limetree staff went into neighborhoods to investigate the cisterns and cleaned up a few. They quickly realized the scale of the problem and gave up before Limetree filed for bankruptcy. To date, neither Limetree nor the government has conducted a comprehensive investigation into the impacts of the refinery’s restart on residents.

In December 2021, a bankruptcy judge in Texas approved the sale of the refinery to West Indies Petroleum, a Jamaican oil storage company. The new owners intend to restart the refinery yet again. The Biden EPA, with a newfound focus on environmental justice, informed the new owners that they will need to apply for new environmental permits rather than relying on the old permits Trump’s EPA issued. The owners will also need to negotiate a new consent decree with EPA.

Crucians are cautiously optimistic about EPA’s community engagement throughout this process, but they will have to contend with a territorial government eager to restart the refinery as quickly as possible. In April 2021, Virgin Islands governor Albert Bryan Jr. appealed to the White House to speed up the reopening while gas prices are high.

At each inflection point in the refinery’s history, corporate officials and government leaders have emphasized the benefits it brings to residents. Indeed, many residents’ livelihoods are closely linked to the refinery.

Yet the refinery is not legally bound to act as a good neighbor to Crucians. Under the rules of corporate law, companies like HOVENSA and Limetree Bay have a singular objective: to maximize profits for their owners. And although the Virgin Islands government offered both HOVENSA and Limetree Bay substantial financial incentives to operate on St. Croix, it secured few commitments in return.

Many Crucians have come to believe that they can’t trust the refinery to be a community steward of its own accord. Ms. Sibilly-Brown recounted to me a moment when her view of the refinery shifted. During the refinery’s resale to Limetree Bay, she attended a hearing with Virgin Islands senators and Limetree Bay officials. She was not fully against the refinery reopening, but she was disturbed by the process and the power dynamics she observed at the hearing. Community members raised compelling points: they suggested that a community benefit agreement should be developed, and they expressed concerns about Limetree Bay’s plan to form a “man camp” of workers shipped in from Texas and Louisiana.

Many Crucians have come to believe that they can’t trust the refinery to be a community steward of its own accord.

But the Virgin Islands’ political leaders largely disregarded these points and opted to ask Limetree Bay softer-hitting questions (“do you promise to be a good corporate citizen?”). To Sibilly-Brown, “it felt so disingenuous to a democratic process and to curating a real relationship with a big corporation.” The Virgin Islands government was in the midst of a financial crisis, and it seemed to Sibilly-Brown as though Limetree Bay was preying on their desperation.

Ms. Gerard’s perception of the refinery as a benevolent neighbor was transformed earlier, in 1989. Hurricane Hugo hit St. Croix that September, killing two people and damaging 90% of the island’s homes and businesses. Gerard was one of the few Crucians who prepared, because she heard from a friend whose husband worked at the refinery that the storm was projected to be serious. The refinery shut down for the storm, but the refinery’s storm data never reached the broader public.

In the chaos following the storm, President Bush sent 1,100 Army police to the island. At the request of Hess (the refinery’s owner at the time), many of these police were stationed at the battered refinery to protect it from looters. “Having guys coming off the plane fully armed with orders to shoot to kill my people, I thought, okay something’s off here,” Gerard explained. It became clear in that moment that Hess’ top priority was protection of its property.

The financial success of the refinery’s owners is routinely prioritized over the welfare of residents. But the owners are also largely free to come and go, protected from the lasting harms of any mistakes made on St. Croix. The refinery is a semi-permanent feature of the island, but from the perspective of corporate boardrooms, it is a more ephemeral entity. It is an asset on a balance sheet. A piece of paper that can be passed from owner to owner. Owners and executives routinely make life and death decisions about the refinery, but they do not live and die by the refinery.

Owners and executives routinely make life and death decisions about the refinery, but they do not live and die by the refinery.

The refinery’s private equity investors epitomize the opportunism of ownership. Private equity firms are known for getting in and getting out quickly, with the aim of rapidly turning struggling companies around and making short-term gains. The bankruptcy sale of HOVENSA was spearheaded by private equity firm Arclight Capital, who recruited investors and purchased the refinery. Boston-based Arclight invests the retirement funds of NFL players, Mayo Clinic doctors, and Maine teachers, among many others. Arclight created Limetree Bay Ventures LLC, the refinery’s official ownership company, and held a majority stake in it.

After Limetree Bay took over operations, the refinery struggled to restart, and Arclight was losing hundreds of millions of dollars. While the refinery experienced its first flare rainout incidents in February 2021, Arclight was quietly selling its stake in Limetree Bay. In June 2021, shortly before Limetree Bay declared bankruptcy, Reuters broke the bombshell news that Arclight had been fully divested for months.

The bankruptcy process, too, has prioritized the interests of refinery owners over Crucians. The main purpose of bankruptcy law is to give the bankrupt company a “fresh start” and find a new way to get economic value out of its property. Limetree Bay’s bankruptcy judge David Jones affirmed his commitment to this purpose when he started bankruptcy proceedings with the rallying cry, “let’s go save a refinery.”

The bankruptcy proceedings were handled in the Southern District of Texas, a popular forum for oil companies due to its favorable judges. The monthslong proceedings, which resulted in an auction sale to the highest bidder, West Indies Petroleum, featured few voices from St. Croix. Ms. Sibilly-Brown believes that the bankruptcy court overlooked critical considerations because it failed to account for the investments of the people who live on the island and are affected by the decisions made in Texas.

Since the refinery’s closure, Crucians have engaged in difficult conversations about the role of the refinery on their island. According to Ms. Sibilly-Brown, there are two disasters happening right now. One is an environmental disaster, as Crucians deal with the fallout of the refinery’s breakdown. The other is an economic disaster: the displacement of families from the island as refinery jobs disappear.

“These are the realities that bankruptcy court misses . . . you go to bankruptcy court in Texas with no context for what has happened to the people in the Virgin Islands, and you’re just talking about how investors lose money . . . and not how people are repaired . . . we don’t even get to say which company we think would be the best for us. That’s crazy.”

“We’re forced in this power structure to consider which one of these is more important, people being able to breathe clean air and have access to clean water . . . or families being able to pay their mortgage and raise their children and self-determined that the Virgin Islands is their home,” Sibilly-Brown explained. “These are the realities that bankruptcy court misses . . . you go to bankruptcy court in Texas with no context for what has happened to the people in the Virgin Islands, and you’re just talking about how investors lose money . . . and not how people are repaired . . . we don’t even get to say which company we think would be the best for us. That’s crazy.”

In our economic system, corporations are generally expected to be self-serving. We rely on other mechanisms, such as environmental laws, labor laws, and political pressure, to restrain corporations when their interests conflict with the welfare of citizens. Yet these protective mechanisms are largely inaccessible to Crucians. The St. Croix refinery has come to symbolize the federal government’s longstanding culpability in environmental racism, and in St. Croix racism is deeply interwoven with colonialism. As residents of a U.S. territory, Crucians are deprived of the rights and privileges many Americans take for granted. In a stark recent affirmation of this reality, the Supreme Court held in April 2022 that our Constitution allows the federal government to exclude territorial citizens from the Supplemental Security Income program, which provides a safety net for elderly and disabled people.

For the EPA, these dynamics have manifested in underenforcement of environmental laws in the Virgin Islands. EPA manages its Virgin Islands work from its office in New York City, and it has not maintained a consistent presence on St. Croix despite the ongoing series of environmental crises. In the decades between the refinery’s opening and the first major explosions in 2011, EPA was notably absent. According to Dr. Bond, when an EPA official came to the island in 2011 to address the explosions and the oil-filled aquifer, they were shouted offstage by residents furious about EPA’s neglect. EPA’s intervention in 2011 and its emergency action in 2021 formed an odd pattern in which EPA only showed its enforcement teeth during emergencies.

Crucians are hopeful that the Biden Administration will hold the new refinery owner to stricter environmental rules, but they have learned to take pollution monitoring into their own hands. Although the refinery’s major incidents generate big news and strong EPA responses, the daily releases of pollution into Crucians’ air and water are more insidious. Ms. Gerard explained to me that the refinery has been largely self-reporting its pollution levels, with no independent monitoring by the government. While she hopes it has been reporting accurately, there’s no way to know.

Crucians are hopeful that the Biden Administration will hold the new refinery owner to stricter environmental rules, but they have learned to take pollution monitoring into their own hands.

As a member of the St. Croix community, Gerard is “very aware of the high incidences of cancers and what appear to be very high death rates of the men and women who worked in the facility at its inception. They’d be a couple years older than I am, and a lot of them are dead.” Crucians understand this reality, but there’s no documentation to tie it down. And because the island is small, people with serious health issues often need to leave the island and are no longer tracked in St. Croix’s data. Community members have secured a grant from EPA so that if the refinery reopens, they can conduct their own pollution monitoring as a community science project—Gerard hopes this will build community awareness and involvement.

An even deeper obstacle that keeps Crucians cut out of refinery decision-making is the suppression of their political voices. A series of Supreme Court decisions between 1901 and 1905, known as the Insular Cases, decided that territories like the Virgin Islands are not on a path to statehood. As a result, Virgin Islanders have limited constitutional rights, cannot vote for President, and have only a non-voting delegate in Congress. Virgin Islanders are thus excluded from the political processes that guide the federal government’s environmental decisions and are left vulnerable to abuse by polluters.

Crucians also face a political power imbalance within the Virgin Islands government. The Virgin Islands has a governor and a legislature; the legislature is made up of fifteen senators, seven of whom are elected from St. Croix. Crucian senators, therefore, have a slight minority in the legislature, and this slight minority is significant in the context of the refinery.

The refinery is a significant source of government revenue, which supports state services on all three of the Virgin Islands, and it creates about 800 total jobs on the islands. The refinery also imposes huge costs on the Virgin Islands, in the form of pollution, worker injuries, and environmental degradation, but these costs are paid primarily on St. Croix. Often in legislative actions, most St. Croix senators vote one way while the eight other senators vote the opposite way.

According to Ms. Gerard, another part of the problem is the Virgin Islands’ centralized political power. Before 1954, the Virgin Islands had a municipal government system, which enabled broad representation: people of color, organizers, and activists were all represented in government. But in 1954, the federal government passed the Revised Organic Act, which completely rearranged St. Croix’s government.

With power concentrated in the governor and a handful of senators, decisions tend to reflect political and business influence, rather than the desires of the people.

At that time, “the U.S. government was still operating under Jim Crow policies, which they couldn’t really impose here. But this was a way to eliminate participation and centralize power,” Gerard told me. With power concentrated in the governor and a handful of senators, decisions tend to reflect political and business influence, rather than the desires of the people.

Ms. Sibilly-Brown believes that the creation of a Virgin Islands constitution could help break down the refinery’s power over the people. The Virgin Islands do not have their own constitution; their main governing document is the 1954 Revised Organic Act imposed by the federal government. To Sibilly-Brown, creating “our own constitution” that is “better curated to give us autonomy, presence, care, voice, and visibility” could be transformational for St. Croix.

In Spring 2021, a Frederiksted resident and former refinery worker recognized the smell of sulfur and rotten eggs coming from the plant. He had difficulty sleeping and experienced so much physical discomfort from the fumes that he evacuated his family to the other side of the island. His experience is documented in a class action suit brought by St. Croix residents against Limetree Bay. Residents are suing to get compensation for injuries and property damage, and these funds will enable many residents to make critical repairs, including cleaning up their oil-coated water cisterns.

The lawsuit is in good company—four class action suits have been brought against Limetree Bay since its final flare rainout incident in May 2021, and thousands of Crucians have participated in litigation against both Limetree Bay and HOVENSA. Litigation has been one of the only mechanisms available to residents harmed by St. Croix’s heavy industry. “It was the only way where people found recourse where bad things were happening,” Ms. Gerard explained to me. “St. Croix used to have more plaintiffs’ attorneys per hundred than any other place.”

Litigation has helped many residents receive compensation for their injuries, and, Ms. Gerard pointed out, it has also helped bring certain problems to the forefront of public consciousness. However, it is far from a silver bullet, and it has had little observable impact on high-up decisions about whether and how to operate the refinery.

Residents who bring suits against the refinery also face a smorgasbord of procedural obstacles that work in the refinery’s favor. First are the release forms. After the May 2021 flare rainout event, Limetree Bay hired workers to fan out to affected neighborhoods and ask residents to sign “Release of all Claims” forms, which offer upfront payments in exchange for residents signing away their rights to sue. Residents’ attorneys argue that this deters informed decision-making, and that it can pressure residents to agree to a payment amount far lower than they deserve.

The next obstacle is determining who to sue. Limetree Bay was owned by a confusing web of holding companies, and it is difficult to identify every investor. For example, because Arclight Capital was disinvesting from the refinery when the flare rainout events began, determining Arclight’s responsibility will likely be challenging.

Limetree Bay’s bankruptcy also throws a wrench in the class action suits. When Limetree Bay filed for bankruptcy, the court paused the class action suits in order to prioritize the orderly sale of the refinery. Limetree’s private equity owners argued that a pause was needed because the lawsuits would “distract its management from more pressing tasks.”

The lawsuits against Limetree will resume once bankruptcy proceedings are officially over. At that point, Limetree will use the money from the refinery’s sale to pay off as much of its debts as it can. Bankruptcy law establishes a priority hierarchy for who gets paid back first, and people who were hurt by the company (officially called “tort creditors”) are low on the list. In other words, there’s no guarantee that there will be any money left for them at the end.

Fortunately, Limetree was required to obtain insurance that should cover these lawsuits, but restrictions written into the insurance policies make it unlikely that residents will be made completely whole for the harms they have suffered.

Even without the delays from the bankruptcy proceedings, residents are unlikely to receive the compensation they need in a timely manner. These lawsuits often take years to work their way through the courts—a timeline that is untenable for residents who still cannot use the water from their cisterns, and who have no other source of assistance for repairs. And the ongoing litigation will not affect the refinery’s new owners, who are proceeding with plans to reopen.

These lawsuits often take years to work their way through the courts—a timeline that is untenable for residents who still cannot use the water from their cisterns, and who have no other source of assistance for repairs.

The class action suits have achieved one significant success so far. While the suits were paused, the bankruptcy judge ordered the St. Croix residents and Limetree Bay to engage in mediation—in other words, to negotiate a temporary agreement to address the ongoing environmental problems in their communities. Residents were able to secure a commitment from Limetree to administer a large-scale bottled water program, which provides clean, safe water to residents in neighborhoods hit by the flare rainout. This agreement has produced tangible benefits in St. Croix, but it is only a temporary patch on a larger problem.

As Crucians fight to get a say in the future of their economy, they also ponder what that future might look like. One source of inspiration is St. Croix’s unusual economic past. Between the U.S. purchase of the Virgin Islands in 1916 and the arrival of the refinery in 1967, St. Croix was the site of a grand experiment in public corporate ownership.

In the 1930s, the plantation system was shriveling as sugar prices collapsed. President Roosevelt saw the island’s distress as an opportunity to try out an ambitious New Deal idea: he called for the charter of a new public corporation that would take over the plantations and the sugar and rum factories, redistribute the farmland to homestead farmers, and direct all profits into social investments.

Dr. Bond catalogued this history in a series of articles published in the St. Thomas Source, intended to provide locals with documentation of the island’s past. The public corporation, called VI Corp and created in 1934, broke up the sugar plantations into five and ten-acre plots for homesteaders, and it provided money for farmers to build or improve their homes. It also employed workers in the reinvigorated factories and export facilities. The earnings from VI Corp were channeled into schools and healthcare: the Virgin Islands were able to expand public education, create adult education programs, build health clinics, and train new nursing staff.

This experiment generated national interest: the New York Times described the Virgin Islands as a battleground “between the economy of capitalism and private ownership, and so-called planned economy and public ownership.” Local government leaders fought the plan and argued that it “confined the natives” to “agricultural servitude,” but VI Corp had strong popular support.

And the experiment was a success: in 1931, 70% of St. Croix farmland was owned by fourteen individuals—by 1940, over 800 homesteaders farmed the land. VI Corp broke the ties between agriculture and the plantation economy, and it elevated the power of labor—several national labor leaders and even the NAACP’s Executive Director served in VI Corp’s leadership. In the first years of VI Corp, the agricultural economy thrived, unemployment plummeted, and public health metrics improved. VI Corp later expanded to provide additional programs, including a credit program to small farmers, a loan program for soil and water conservation, and tourism promotion.

When the Virgin Islands government decided to pivot to heavy industry thirty years later, it had to squash the opposition of thousands of Crucians who wanted the agricultural industry to remain.

As Dr. Bond put it to me, St. Croix’s experience with VI Corp provides a “vocabulary of possibility” for how the island could reorganize its economy to serve its people. VI Corp demonstrates that a corporation can serve dual objectives of economic success and community welfare.

St. Croix’s experience with VI Corp provides a “vocabulary of possibility” for how the island could reorganize its economy to serve its people.

It also challenges the narrative, proffered by the refinery’s advocates, that St. Croix’s modern economic system harnesses private ingenuity and creates personal freedom. Both VI Corp and the refinery are products of massive public investment. Yet the money and sacrifices that Crucians have poured into the refinery have not resulted in a mutually beneficial social contract.

So far, the Virgin Islands government has proven itself unable to imagine an economy without the refinery. But many Crucians imagine, and embody, a better future for the island. Ms. Gerard and Ms. Sibilly-Brown have taken it upon themselves to advocate for the health and welfare of Crucians, joining an expansive group of strong women leaders throughout St. Croix’s history. And they are both deeply and permanently invested in the island’s success.

Ms. Gerard formerly ran an insurance business on the island and is now the Executive Director of the Crucian Heritage and Nature Tourism Foundation, whose mission is to foster sustainable tourism that respects the island’s heritage and environment. Ms. Gerard can trace her roots on the island eight and nine generations back, and to her, St. Croix “has always been home.”

She recently moderated a community panel that brought residents together to brainstorm ideas for economic initiatives that could replace the refinery. Crucians had no shortage of ideas: they included opportunities to right-size the Virgin Island’s tourism industry, support the islands’ many emerging technology companies, promote renewable energy businesses, and stimulate a health sciences industry. And the work doesn’t end with idea-generating—Ms. Gerard is helping to form working groups to explore the community’s economic ideas and develop organizing strategies. While the refinery’s new owners work to get it ready to restart, Crucians will be organizing to build out their own visions for St. Croix’s future.

Although the refinery turned Ms. Sibilly Brown into an environmental expert, her true calling is revitalizing agriculture in St. Croix and building a sustainable local food system. She considers St. Croix “the love of her life,” and she has dedicated her career to elevating her community, particularly through her organization’s work supporting local farmers and bringing fresh local food to schools.

Ms. Sibilly-Brown and I talked about the VI Corp and the livelihood many Crucians built from it, and I asked her if she sees her work as linked to that history. She told me, “I hope that we reinstate an innovative thread that is relevant for this time and place. If any of what we do yields a step to rebuild that . . . that would be a life well spent.”

From The [F]law:

• Micaiah Barley, Plastic Recycling and Other Fairytales

From The Systemic Justice Journal:

• Jordan Mulevicz, Corporate Power, Consumers, and Climate.
• Samuel B. Stratton, Incorporating the Environment? Critiquing the Law’s Structural Bias Against Nature and in Favor of Business Interests.
• Breanne Parker, Fast Fashion, Consumer Complicity, & Corporate Accountability.
• John Ellis, Lie of Emission: The VW Scandal and the Future of Corporate Social Responsibility.