Published Jan. 17, 2019

PORT ARTHUR — At Edith’s Place, a nine-table restaurant on Procter Street in this industrial city, a mural painted over pale dandelion-yellow walls shows how things used to be. People gather on the sidewalk. Cars fill parking spaces along the street. Bold signs advertise local businesses.

Outside, reality paints a different picture. There are few open stores and little traffic. The downtown streets of the Gulf Coast city feel empty.

Port Arthur may be surrounded by prosperous oil refineries, but the city itself faces challenges. The refineries employ fewer workers than they once did, and those they do hire come from all over. The city’s unemployment rate stood near 8 percent in November, more than twice that of the state, and the median household income is $33,000 a year, well below the average for Texas.

Some residents worry about the air they breathe in the shadow of so much industry. On top of it all, the city is reeling from 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, which affected an estimated 80 percent of its households.

The mayor worries people are not sticking around. Between 2000 and 2010, Port Arthur’s population fell by 4,000, to a total of 54,000. And though 2017 estimates show a slight uptick, some think the number will dip below 50,000 in next year’s census — a change that would make the city ineligible for certain federal grants.

While some residents have come back to try and turn around Port Arthur, drawn by family and a sense of community pride, some seem discouraged by the state of things.

Edith’s Place offers a snapshot. On a recent weekday, restaurant manager Tiffany Guidry, 35, greets customers by name, including Willie Griggie, or “Mr. Willie.” The 66-year-old former refinery fireman holds a pork chop in his left hand and scoops grits with a fork in his right, as blues music plays.

Guidry returned to Port Arthur in 2017 to be closer to family. Her aunt and uncle opened the restaurant the same year, with a belief in the community’s spirit. They offer coffee for free. Her aunt, Diane Guidry, 50, thinks that with the busy port and refineries, more ought to be going on.

Two men come in and eat oxtail with hardly a pause. Both work at Chevron, but, by day’s end, they drive to their homes somewhere else. This isn’t uncommon: By Motiva’s count, more than 200 of its 1,550 full-time employees live in Port Arthur.

***

The Port Arthur City Council meets on the fifth floor of the Brutalist City Hall building downtown. The room offers views to the northwest of puffing refineries that sprawl beyond the historically black, west Port Arthur neighborhood. The big three — Motiva, Total and Valero — can refine more than one million barrels of oil a day.

On a Tuesday in November, Mayor Derrick Freeman sits on the dais. He is African American, as are the other six city council members. The major topic of discussion is fixing the city’s roads. By Freeman’s count, 340 miles of roadway need repair, at a cost of $1 million per mile. The city this year plans to spend $14 million, nearly a quarter of its $65 million operating budget, he said.

About one-third of that budget comes from industry agreements. The refineries in Port Arthur sit outside city limits. They have deals with the city to pay certain amounts in lieu of annexation, which could potentially bring Port Arthur more revenue but, as Freeman said, would also require taking on more responsibility, liability and staff.

Port Arthur still has a tax base that other local governments would envy, said Steven Craig, professor of economics at the University of Houston. Valero and Total overall reported adjusted net incomes of $2.2 and $10.6 billion, respectively, in 2017. What matters is how the local governments spend what they get.

“The question is: can you change your town or do you have to embrace what you have?” Craig said. “In some sense, I think the industrial towns that do the best they can to help the people they have are the ones that actually do sort of change.”

Like turning a big ship, changing Port Arthur takes time, Freeman says. Much isn’t discussed this particular morning — not the failing clay pipes that can prevent people from flushing toilets when it rains; not the dilapidated downtown buildings, where trees grow through windows; and not the Motiva lawsuit, which argued that the tax value is too high on the property where it operates the largest refinery in the nation.

Freeman, 42, is fresh-faced, with the melodic voice of a former radio DJ. He hopes to see people return to the city where old-timers dance a certain swing, Cajun fried shrimp comes with fried rice and a local museum honors city natives such as artist Robert Rauschenberg, NBA player Stephen Jackson and blues-rock singer Janis Joplin, who famously hated the place.

The mayor wants to erase the stigma that prompted him to move to Los Angeles two decades ago, leaving behind parents who had worked in refineries so he wouldn’t have to. Residents then applauded those who got out, Freeman said. But when his wife, Shannon, became pregnant in 2009 with the first of their four children, they came back.

Yes, he has concerns about the air and lack of economic diversity. But when people say, “I made it out of Port Arthur,” Freeman now sees people who left behind mothers, neighbors and classmates. He hopes others, too, will embrace their hometown and return, taking advantage of what they have rather than focusing on what they don’t.

“We need to shoot up a flare,” Freeman says in his office, where a fire alarm, later, inexplicably flashes. “Y’all come on home.”

***

Standing on a balcony on City Hall’s southeast side, Councilman Harold Doucet takes a break from the meeting that morning and smokes a cigarette as a ship passes. He’s 68 and carries himself with swagger, blaming past leadership for the city’s neglect. The Port Arthur of his youth and now, he says, are like “night and day.”

In 1895, an insurance salesman-turned-railroad-man, Arthur Stilwell, bought land for this namesake city. It would mark the end of his rail line, which began in Kansas City. Spirits told him not to make Galveston the terminus, he wrote, “because that city was destined to be destroyed by a tidal wave.”

The Great Galveston Hurricane hit in 1900, killing thousands. One year later, the Spindletop geyser blew, forever altering the landscape of east Texas — and Port Arthur. The Valero refinery was commissioned in 1901. What is now the Motiva refinery opened in 1903. In the decades that followed, people say, one could walk out of high school and up to the refinery gates and land a job.

The city, of course, continued to change. As in many places, school integration led to white flight. Today, 39 percent of Port Arthur’s residents are black and 21 percent are white. The three local high schools, facing declining enrollment, merged in 2002, ending spirited rivalries that went back decades.

Change also swept the refineries. Though they expanded, jobs became automated and companies tightened employee background checks. Economic activity shifted toward the northern part of the city, closer to Interstate 10, with the opening of a mall anchored then by J.C. Penney and Sears.

Downtown’s once-majestic buildings fell into disrepair. Lamar State College Port Arthur, established as the Port Arthur Business College in 1909 by a founder of Texaco, became an oasis in what was once the heart of Port Arthur. The Museum of the Gulf Coast draws tourists, but some ask the director why the area around it looks so desolate.

The mayor at one point tried offering empty buildings to movie directors looking for real-life sets to explode.

“You drove around and it was a little bit haunting,” said Eric Schaeffer, who heads the Environmental Integrity Project in Washington, D.C. “I remember thinking something happened here.”

***

Steering his black SUV through Port Arthur’s streets, community activist Hilton Kelley seamlessly shares his story. Kelley, 58, spent his early years in the city, in and out of public housing. He played among the pipelines with his brother. He joined the Navy at 19.

He wound up in California, but Port Arthur drew him back for good around 2000, with a mission of helping clean up the air. He tested the environment for pollutants. He staged protests at City Hall. Perhaps most significantly, through his nonprofit, and with help, Kelley sued Motiva and Valero over issues related to emissions. Both settled, and Kelley won a slew of awards.

The Beaumont-Port Arthur area now meets federal ozone requirements, but Kelley still sees problems. He and Neil Carman, clean air director of the Sierra Club’s Texas chapter, worry about the impact of what they say are large sulfur dioxide emissions. “The pressure has to stay on,” Kelley said.

There are also the troubling stories he hears from people like his brother, Billy, 57, who lives in Port Arthur because it feels like home but who says the smells of emissions give him overwhelming headaches. From people like his childhood friend Eddie Ray Brown, 59, who has stage IV prostate cancer.

Brown worked construction for refineries, then opened a barber shop and, to help kids stay out of trouble, a boxing gym. He figures the air quality and his diet helped bring on his disease.

He wants now to build a house in Winnie, 30 miles to the west.

Sometimes, he lies in the grass there, on the land he bought, and breathes.

Students with the Golden Triangle Empowerment Center practice bevelling pipes on Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018, in Port Arthur. “I’m training y’all to stay here and rebuild our community,” the 48-year-old program leader, Caroline Brandon, tells them. less Students with the Golden Triangle Empowerment Center practice bevelling pipes on Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018, in Port Arthur. “I’m training y’all to stay here and rebuild our community,” the 48-year-old ... more Photo: Jon Shapley/Staff Photographer Photo: Jon Shapley/Staff Photographer Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close A plea from Port Arthur: “Y’all come on home.” 1 / 10 Back to Gallery

***

On a November afternoon, Jeff Funkhouser sits in Motiva’s control room. A Bible and miniature American flag are on the table. A chalkboard displays inspirational phrases that he’s written: Get along with one another, do your part, encourage others to get involved.

Funkhouser oversees production at the 115-year-old plant, a highly secured complex that covers some 3,600 acres. By the company’s count, the plant produces enough gas to fill 600,000 cars daily and diesel for 700,000 more. It expanded significantly in 2007, and the company now is considering $6.6 billion more in additions.

Funkhouser, who lives in nearby Beaumont, believes the company operates in a way that makes Port Arthur a place where people want to live.

“This is a community of people,” Funkhouser says, “both inside the refinery and all around the refinery.”

The refineries sponsor local programs and events. Their representatives meet periodically with a group of residents.

In contesting their valuations, the refineries have created financial uncertainty for the Port Arthur school district, which paid back roughly $30 million to Valero after lawsuits over its tax value.

Still, refinery jobs are coveted. It took 10 years and a great deal of persistence for Kenneth Keyes to land his dream job there.

A former corrections supervisor, Keyes used to fret over bills with his family. Now, he takes them on vacation.

“It was nothing but a blessing,” Keyes said.

He wears an air monitor on his uniform.

***

The economic benefits haven’t made their way to Matashia Wilson’s second-floor unit at the Southwood Crossing Apartments. On an afternoon in December, the staircases look rusted. White paint splotches mark the gray-blue facade. The first floor, where she used to live, has been empty since Hurricane Harvey flooded it.

Wilson, 39, moved away after the storm. But, unlike others, she returned, eager to be close to her two children’s doctors. She works for a refinery contractor and rents an apartment with assistance from the Section 8 housing program. The director of the local housing authority said her new apartment should be safe to live in. Concerned about possible mold, she bleaches her air conditioning vent weekly in case.

“This is not right,” she said.

Many agree that Port Arthur residents will not get all of the disaster recovery funds they need to rebuild. Housing advocates say this is especially the case because of a flawed needs-assessment method that affects cities with more low-income residents.

When Harvey hit, Port Arthur was swamped by heavy rainfall. Five-hundred students left the local school district, where four in five students are considered economically disadvantaged.

More trouble followed. Last year, the city had 14 murders, more than any year since 1989, according to news reports.

City leaders now argue over how much low-income housing they want to have at all.

***

One can see why people walk away, no matter the ties. Others hope the city can turn the corner, in spite of the hurricane and the problems before it.

Perhaps the refineries will hire more people locally, they say. Three liquid natural gas plants are planned, with a total investment of at least $30 billion.

Perhaps the city council will fulfill a new vision. The mayor is trying to attract new businesses, clean up the streets and form a coalition with other industrial cities so they can better negotiate with refineries. Improvement is coming downtown, says the CEO of the local economic development corporation, with a cleanup and new housing planned

Perhaps young people, indeed, will return home.

It’s possible. At the Golden Triangle Empowerment Center, which trains people in refinery-related skills, a recent class bevelled pipes. The 48-year-old program leader, Caroline Brandon, tells students: “I’m training y’all to stay here and rebuild our community.”

Cuevas Peacock, 28, works in community development in Waco. He wanted to form a local food co-op in Port Arthur and plans to return one day because, he says, “I always felt that you need to take care of home first.”

On the north side, Fred Vernon, 30, runs a trucking company. Vernon worked as a welder after high school, then pursued accounting. Pricewaterhouse Coopers hired him in Houston, but he found himself wondering what it was all for. He started his business.

“I had a full heart when I came back home,” he said.

Emily Foxhall is the Texas Storyteller for the Houston Chronicle. She joined the Chronicle as a suburban reporter in 2015 after two years spent reporting for the Los Angeles Times and its community papers. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, the Texas Tribune and the New York Observer. She is a Yale graduate and Houston native. Contact her at emily.foxhall@chron.com. Follow her on Twitter at @emfoxhall .

Jon Shapley is a staff photo and video journalist for the Houston Chronicle. A native Houstonian, he joined the Chronicle in 2015. He previously worked at the NPR affiliate in Austin, as well as monthly magazines in Austin and San Antonio. He can be reached at jon.shapley@chron.com.

Design by Jordan Rubio

Subscribe

The Houston Chronicle is dedicated to serving the public interest with fact-based journalism. That mission has never been more important. Show your support for our journalism at HoustonChronicle.com/subscribe.