After years of fighting to shut down an oil refinery in Southwest Philly that residents said was a threat to public health, a group of organizers want to make sure the next business to move into the neighborhood doesn’t pose similar problems around the block. Reporter Nikki Schaffer brings us this story.
Nikki Schaffer The South Philly oil refinery was built during the Civil War, and neighbors say it had a lasting impact on the neighborhood polluting the area for one hundred and fifty years. Shawmar Pitts is co-managing director of a South Philly environmental justice organization called Philly Thrive. Shemar was born and raised in Grays Ferry, and he says the oil refinery was a silent killer.
Shawmar Pitts A torture, forever burning torch that just always burned bright. I remember specifically having a conversation with my dad when my mom had gotten sick with breast cancer, and it was like, What is it? Everybody keep getting sick. What is it? It got to be something in the environment.
Nikki Schaffer Health studies conducted by Drexel University researchers have found severe public health impacts for residents living near the former oil refinery and disproportionate rates of asthma, cancer and heart disease. In twenty nineteen, an explosion and chemical leak destroyed the refinery and the owner declared bankruptcy following the explosions. Philly Thrive launched a campaign to shut down the oil refinery and call for remediation of the land and reinvestment in the community. Rebecca Valentine is a volunteer for Philly Thrive. She has a background in environmental, health and environmental justice. She says the land at the former oil refinery site is being cleaned up, but only to an industrial standard, not a residential one.
Rebecca Valentine If you think about having a huge empty space, I think your thought immediately goes to let’s have parks there, let’s have housing there. But in this case, that land is so contaminated that it’s not really safe for that. We want something that will benefit the community in some way. And so that might be good jobs that go not just to people in Philadelphia, but specifically to the people who live around the area. Something that’s not going to contribute to more air pollution.
Nikki Schaffer After the oil refinery closed, air pollution improved in the city, especially in southwest Philadelphia. The thirteen hundred acres of land was sold to a company called Hilco Redevelopment Partners, also known as HRP. HRP is planning to redevelop the site into an industrial and innovation campus. Philly Thrive says they will continue to advocate for redevelopment plan With a binding agreement that is community centered and prevents a new kind of harmful company from moving on to the site, like AI data centers. Although HRP hasn’t yet announced plans to bring an AI data center to South Philly, groups like Philly Thrive are leveraging what they learn from their fight against the refinery to organize resistance to any efforts to bring data centers to the site, now or in the future. Philly? Thrive in People’s Tech Project recently held a workshop where participants could learn more about data centers and how to respond. Philly Thrive volunteer Campbell Simmons led a crafting Your narrative exercise.
Campbell Simmons The point of the exercise is understanding that, um, your story is important. And when you can bring your story and articulate it clearly and bring in data and education and facts. You can really touch people. You can move people. So we want to talk about.
Campbell Simmons What we believe we deserve as a community, but we all deserve and what we envision for Grace ferry. It’s helpful when you have a specific focus. So some of the impacts that we talked about were energy affordability, air pollution, water access, noise pollution, and surveillance. Choose one of those topics and think about how it’s impacted your life. Have you ever struggled to pay your bill? Have you known anybody who’s been impacted by air pollution? Have you been impacted yourself.
Nikki Schaffer During the exercise? Community members brought up concerns about health, pollution and coming up with the money to pay for the data center.
Multiple speakers A lot of my family members got cancer in me, but I’m a cancer free person. I just watched a lot go by. A lot of people passing away on me that lived in our community. And it would say.
Unknown Speaker 1 Right now, I can’t even afford to send my child to daycare except one day a week. We can’t afford a lot of stuff. And like, I just can’t imagine things getting more expensive.
Nikki Schaffer Organizers at the workshop shared that data centers produce a constant hum for cooling systems and diesel engines run by fossil fuels. Data centers are responsible for light and air pollution, and a large one can use up to five million gallons of water a day to cool their heating systems. Philly Thrive co-director Shawmar Pitts says something else happens when data centers come to town.
Shawmar Pitts When you put a data center in place, you have to build infrastructure into the electric grid. Who does that price fall on? It falls on us. They want to raise our electric bills on.
Nikki Schaffer As communities around the country fight against the proliferation of AI data centers. Philly Thrive is building on the movement that arose out of efforts to shut down the oil refinery to make sure their South Philly neighborhood stays data center free, and that any new development in the area meets the needs of residents and not just business owners.
Campbell Simmons We’re going to be spending a lot of time getting folks together, organizing people, and figuring out how we’re going to get in touch with our elected officials and telling them exactly what’s going to happen. And it’s not just about data centers. It’s about housing. It’s about air quality, and it is about environmental justice.
Nikki Schaffer For Around the Block. I’m Nikki Schaefer.
Multiple speakers When we fight, we win.
Multiple Speakers We win!
This story was broadcast as part of the June 21, 2026 episode of Around the Block.
Note: This transcript was machine-generated and may contain some spelling errors or other inaccuracies.