“This is the worst I have ever seen.”
It’s been eight months since a massive explosion took place at Smitty’s Supply Inc. in Roseland, La., and residents are deeply upset with the pace of clean-up – or the lack thereof – and what they see as their government’s dismissiveness, absence, and/or duplicity.
“It’s time for our parish and local officials to stand up for us,” Arlene Hodges Bankston, a resident of Roseland, said on Saturday at a protest rally and march held in the town. “Big industry should be made to follow standards put in place to keep its surrounding citizens safe. But our state officials allow them to skirt the regulations in the name of profit. It’s time to put [an] end to profits-over-people.” Roseland is located in Tangipahoa Parish.
There was a huge explosion and fire at Smitty’s that rocked Roseland on August 22, 2025. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to lead the clean-up as the agency said in September, 2025. Smitty’s is a company that produces industrial and commercial lubricating fluids.
The EPA has recovered some 11.2 million gallons of total waste as of October 15, 2025, according to the agency’s website. But the response so far has been wholly inadequate, residents said on Saturday.
“What we’ve seen is a constant release of chemicals into these ponds that flow directly into the Tangipahoa River – it’s going unabated,” Jody Hart, a drone pilot who’s documented the impacts of the explosion and fire, said on Saturday. “We’re seeing wildlife die off. We’re watching oil sheens that never seem to go away. It just gets worse every day. Every time it rains, it gets worse,” Hart said. “So our Tangipahoa River from here down is contaminated to the lake. It’s wrecked. And who knows how long it’ll take to come back?”
Multiple people who spoke on Saturday also accused the EPA of lying about the explosion’s health risk. Freelance journalist Steve Middendorp posted documents on Facebook that suggest the EPA was downplaying the urgency of the health risk to the public, while acknowledging it internally.
“…there is an immediate risk to public health,” a memorandum written by Bray Fisher, an on-scene coordinator, said on August 27, 2025, according to Middendorp’s post. On the same day, the agency told the public that “…there is no indication of any imminent threat to public health.”
For Mike Bales, an affected nearby resident who’s spent a career working on environmental disasters, the degradation of the river is his main concern.
“My biggest problem with this thing is we’re eight months and we’re still getting product in the river,” Bales told The Rosenberg Brief. “What in the hell is going on?”
The river runs into Lake Pontchartrain. From there, the contamination can spread exponentially, Bales said, noting that shrimp, crabs and fish from the lake are caught and shipped all over.
“I have managed some very, very large incidents over my life,” Bales said told the crowd at the rally. “I’ve been part of (the) Exxon Valdez (oil spill), the BP oil spill, multiple hurricanes, well blow-outs, etc.,” he said. “This is the worst I have ever seen.”
“We’re eight months and still getting product into the river? Come on. From the top down: the EPA, the state. Where the hell’s our governor? It’s ridiculous,” Bales told the crowd.
Among other chemicals, Bales told The Rosenberg Brief that toluene has been found in affected areas. Toluene is a volatile organic compound.
From the very beginning, the Smitty’s explosion should have been designated as a “national response declared by the federal government,” Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré (Ret.), the featured speaker at the rally, told the crowd.
“I don’t think it’s still too late to do that if the state and the federal government want to do the right thing to correct the record and make this a national-level response like the BP response was,” Honoré said.
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