Doomstead Days at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery

One Sunday in February 2019, during my first winter in Philadelphia, an unusual fog descended over my neighborhood. The day was mild, and a haze hung over the buildings; it smelled of both sulfur and metal. I kept a handkerchief over my mouth as I walked to the laundromat, doubtful that its thin layer of synthetic fabric would prevent me from inhaling whatever filled the air. Wary of walking the two blocks in the smog to wait at home for the load to finish, I sat on a cracked plastic chair by the window and searched the internet for clues about the weather. According to one news meteorologist, we were in the middle of a temperature inversion, in which cold air is trapped close to the ground by a warmer layer thousands of feet above. The hot air acts as a lid, and pollutants that would typically travel into the atmosphere’s upper reaches remain in the layer we breathe.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued a code orange for Philadelphia and surrounding counties. Young children, the elderly, and people with respiratory problems like asthma, emphysema, and bronchitis were advised to limit their exposure to the outdoors. While the DEP’s advice seemed to suggest that too many solo drivers were to blame for the smog, I thought instead about the plumes emitted by the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) oil refinery, on the Schuylkill River, a threat I eyed each day as I drove on the highway to and from Camden, New Jersey, for work and school, a threat I knew was only a mile southeast of the laundromat.

On that February day when the foul smog smothered my neighborhood, I also searched for information about the refinery. I learned that the 150-year-old complex was the biggest on the East Coast, as well as the single-largest source of particulate emissions in the city, and responsible for nearly 16 percent of Philadelphia’s carbon footprint. On my commute, I’d take in the vista from the highway: the sprawling geography of South Philadelphia’s shipping crates, barges, and cranes—a stunning metallic and industrial landscape. The view evoked beauty and disgust, awe and terror, an amazement born of the tension between these poles, a physical sense of astonishment alongside a low, deep-seated dread.

The scholar Jennifer Peeples might describe what I felt as “the toxic sublime.” She uses the term to describe the feeling of dissonance...