Last Thursday, September 24, 2024, people in Atlanta and across the state of Georgia received an emergency alert to prepare for the worst in anticipation of Hurricane Helene, a category 4 hurricane set to tear a path right through the state on its way inland from Florida’s Big Bend region. 

Now one full week since Helene made landfall, the American southeast is still reeling from the devastation and unprecedented flooding brought by what has become the deadliest hurricane in the contiguous United States since Katrina in 2005. Over 200 people are dead, with over 700 missing or unaccounted for as sobering reports pour in from places as far inland as Asheville, NC, where people were left stranded for days without food or electricity after flood waters washed away all major highways into the city.

While the extent of flooding in these mountain towns in North Carolina and parts of Tennessee was largely unforeseeable, the nationwide lack of governmental preparedness for climate emergencies was not. Last week, FEMA announced a nearly $9 billion shortfall for Hurricane Helene relief efforts the same day the Biden Administration signed off on another $8.7 billion weapons package to Israel. 

Atlanta, originally believed to be one of the potentially hardest hit places according to projections, was left relatively unscathed as the storm moved eastward up the coast. Regardless, there were still serious cases of flooding across the city, particularly in places such as the intown Peachtree Hills neighborhood or the Weelaunee Forest in Southwest Atlanta, where deforestation due to real estate development has exacerbated flooding. 

Atlanta has had flooding problems in the past, most notoriously associated with the haphazard construction of the $120 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (AKA ‘Cop City’) and related deforestation. The city has faced criticism recently for prioritizing city funding for Cop City over other areas of infrastructure, such as the city's archaic and frequently broken water system. Like a lot of places across the United States, the costs of these misplaced priorities are starting to show.

On Sunday, September 29th, however, while many Atlanta residents were still dealing from the residual damage from the natural disaster of Helene (and some in nearby Fayetteville dealing with a recently-all-too-common boil water advisory thanks to a water main break), the entire city was faced with an even more preventable, man-made disaster as a huge chemical explosion in nearby Conyers, GA, created a huge chlorine gas cloud that descended onto the city. 

The explosion originated from a facility owned by BioLab, Inc., a manufacturer of swimming pool and spa water treatment products, which is in turn owned by the private equity firm Centerbridge Partners. 

The plant has a troubling recent history of explosions, fires, and workplace safety violations. Four years ago, a similar explosion at another BioLab plant in Georgia released a chlorine vapor cloud over the area, just a month after a major fire at the Louisiana facility caused a nationwide shortage of pool products. Following the most recent fire this summer at BioLab’s Westlake, Louisiana plant, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board held the company accountable for negligence and identified five separate safety violations that contributed to the incident. The company was fined just $2,500, paid to local authorities, for the disruption caused by a separate shelter-in-place order.

Biolab’s private equity owners, including Centerbridge, have repeatedly extracted significant dividends from the company by increasing its debt load, with the most recent sale of a sister company generating $850 million in payouts. These financial practices have left BioLab vulnerable to bankruptcy, meaning that if the company defaults, unsecured creditors, including victims and contractors, may receive nothing. This trend, known as dividend recapitalization, is common in private equity and has led to similar disasters, with environmental and health consequences often ignored.

Despite these recurring accidents, the Rockdale County economic development authority in Conyers granted BioLab an undisclosed amount in tax incentives for an expansion of the site in 2019.

The cloud was first reported by passersby on social media. It was not until hours after the explosion that residents were issued a government alert of the potential hazard posed by the toxic chlorine gas. 17,000 people near the explosion were evacuated with over 90,000, including almost all of Metro Atlanta, told to shelter in place and not go outside. The effects are still being felt, and a large movement of community leaders and residents of Conyers are pushing to shut the facility down for good.

While Hurricane Helene, Cop City, and this most recent Biolab explosion may seem like isolated incidents, they all represent an unfortunate truth. Neither our infrastructure nor our government are prepared for the coming climate crisis, and those in power will continuously favor those that cause this crisis over those affected by it. These storms will continue to get worse while our government continues to funnel exorbitant amounts of money into the military industrial complex, militarized police, and further enriching the rich. 

The consequences of corrupt corporate governance have very tangibly showed up on my doorstep a lot sooner than even I thought they would. Climate change is killing us. Capitalism and corporate rule are killing us. And yet, when it comes to bringing any action on climate to our government - such as passing legitimate climate reform or, better yet, halting rampant doomsday capitalism and dismantling corporate rule by passing the We The People Amendment - we are often told that any meaningful investment into combatting the causes or effects of climate change would be too costly.

I would like to ask those that say that this: Can we really afford much more?