veryone’s Backyard

ackyackyackyackyackyararararardddddBEvvvvverererereryyyyyone’one’one’one’one’sssss

The Journal of the Grassroots Environmental MovementCenter for Health, Environment and Justice

Vol. 20, No. 4 ◆ Winter 2002

The Legacy of Agent Orange:Dioxin Contamination in Vietnam

Reflections on the National People of ColorEnvironmental Leadership Summit

Parents andTeachers ShutDown MoldyNew School

in Ohio

Lesson fromLove Canal:

EffectiveMeetings Build

StrongOrganizations

Center for Health, Environment and Justice

2 Everyone's Backyard

CHEJ STAFF

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Lois Marie GibbsSCIENCE DIRECTOR

Stephen LesterFINANCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR

Sharon FranklinORGANIZING DIRECTOR

Michele RobertsORGANIZER/TRAINER

Larry YatesDIOXIN CAMPAIGN COORDINATOR

Monica RohdeDIOXIN CAMPAIGN OUTREACH COORDINATOR

Heather Gormly-RackCHILD PROOFING OUR COMMUNITIES

CAMPAIGN COORDINATOR

Paul RutherLIBRARIAN

Barbara SullivanEDITOR

Ron NicosiaSCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

Danielle AsselinGRANTS MANAGER

Maryll KleibrinkMAJOR GIFTS MANAGER

Anita UyeharaMEMBERSHIP COORDINATOR

Sarah RamageBOOKKEEPER

Hae-Young KangADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

Dorothea GrossINTERN

Ryan Lester

CHEJ BOARD MEMBERS

MURRAY LEVINE, NYChairman

CLYDE FOSTER, ALConcerned Citizens Of Triana

VILMA HUNT, MA

LUELLA KENNY, NYLove Canal Medical Fund

PAME KINGFISHER, NMShining Waters

ESPERANZA MAYA, CAPeople For Clean Air And Water

SUZI RUHL, FLLegal Environmental Assistance Fund

ALONZO SPENCER, OHSave Our County

ABOUT CHEJ

The Center for Health, Environment and Justice is a nonprofit, tax-exemptorganization that provides organizing and technical assistance to grassrootscommunity organizations nationwide. The center was founded in 1981 by

Lois Gibbs, who together with her neighbors won the relocation of more than 900families from their neighborhood after it was contaminated by chemicals leakingfrom the Love Canal landfill in Niagara Falls, NY. Hundreds of people living nearcontaminated sites around the country contacted Lois as her efforts and those ofher neighbors captured national attention and proved, for the first time, that toxicwaste is not an abstract issue but one that’s in everyone’s backyard.

The center’s mission is to help people build democratic, community-basedorganizations to address public health and environmental threats. We believestrongly that the best way to solve local problems is from the bottom up, whenthe people directly affected speak for themselves and have a meaningful role, asequals, in any and all decisions that affect their lives, homes and family. Our fo-cus and resources are devoted to helping local community based organizationsform, grow, and become effective in achieving their goals. We do this by provid-ing information, advice, training, and support. We also refer callers to othergrassroots groups who are working on the same issues or fighting the same pol-luter.

CHEJ can help your newly formed group:◆ learn how to conduct successful meetings◆ raise funds◆ define a strategic plan to accomplish goals,◆ network with others◆ hold news briefings and press conferences◆ identify experts to assist with technical or scientific issues and questions

For more established groups, CHEJ can provide guidance and assistance onissues such as keeping people involved over the long haul, organizational struc-ture and board development, one- to five-year strategic planning, building work-ing coalitions, developing campaign and issue strategies, media training andassistance, and expanding beyond your existing geographical area.

CHEJ has staff scientists who can answer many of your questions and whocan review technical documents and tests results you need help with. The centeralso has a unique library of books, reports, government documents, subject andcorporate files, and videos that may have just the information you need.

Currently, CHEJ is coordinating two national campaigns:◆ Stop Dioxin Exposure, which is working to educate the public about the health

threat posed by dioxin and to move all levels of government to take steps toeliminate the sources of dioxin

◆ Child Proofing Our Communities, devoted to protecting children from pesti-cides and toxic chemicals in schools and day care facilitiesWe invite local groups to become part of these campaigns. Don’t hesitate to

contact us.


Winter 2002 3

Center for Health, Environmentand Justice, Inc.

150 S. Washington StreetSuite 300 (P.O. Box 6806)Falls Church, VA 22040

(703) [email protected] ◆ www.chej.org

Everyone’s Backyard is published quarterly by the Center for Health, Environ-ment and Justice, Inc. The editor is Ron Nicosia. Design and Production is doneby Page Artistry, Rochester, NY. Printed by Ecoprint of Silver Spring, Maryland.The cover and text are 100% recycled, 100% post-consumer waste paper, notrebleached with chlorine. Printed using low-VOC soybean inks.

Library of Congress #ISSN 0749-3940. Copyright by CHEJ. Reproduction by per-mission only. Unsolicited manuscripts, news items, artwork, photographs andother submissions are welcome. All submissions become the property of CHEJand will not be returned unless special arrangements are made in advance.

ackyackyackyackyackyararararardddddBEvvvvverererereryyyyyone’one’one’one’one’sssssVol. 20, No. 4 ◆ Winter 2002

WELCOME!

CHEJ E-ACTIONBULLETIN

Are you receiving CHEJ’s monthlyE-Action Bulletin? Our e-mail bulletin pro-vides the latest news about communitygroups we are working with, updates fromthe Child Proofing and Dioxin campaigns,and suggestions for ways to get involved.If you’d like to receive the CHEJ E-ActionBulletin, please contact us at [email protected] sign up online at www.chej.org.

CHEJ welcomes Michele Roberts as ournew organizing director. Michele holds amaster’s degree in environmental policyfrom the University of Delaware in New-ark and worked for 20 years on environ-mental issues for federal, state, and localgovernments. She has coauthored a reporton community participation in brownfieldspilot projects and written a national surveyon states’ environmental justice activities.Michele has already written her first articlefor EBY, an account of the Second NationalPeople of Color Environmental LeadershipSummit (p.11).

LESSONS LEARNED FROM 25 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE:BUILDING A STRONG ORGANIZATION THROUGH EFFECTIVE MEETINGSYour organization’s ability to attract and keep members will depend largely on the success of your meetings. . .................................................................. 4

PARENTS AND TEACHERS SHUT DOWN MOLDY NEW SCHOOLParents and teachers of Girard Intermediate School in Ohio took on thecity’s school board, shut down the mold-infested school, and fought tobring the “sick” building back to health. . .................................................................. 5

VIETNAM WAR STILL CLAIMING VICTIMS:THE LEGACY OF AGENT ORANGEThe U.S.’s use of herbicides in Vietnam left a legacy of dioxincontamination; the Vietnamese may be coping with the health consequences for generations. . ................................................................................... 8

REFLECTIONS ON THE SECOND NATIONAL PEOPLE OF COLOR

ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP SUMMITThe summit was a great opportunity to participate in workshopsand dialogues with the community leaders who have carried themovement forward. . ................................................................................................... 11

ACTION LINE .....................................................................................................12

CAMPAIGNS:CHILD PROOFING OUR COMMUNITIES .................................................. 20DIOXIN ...................................................................................................... 21

RESOURCES ...................................................................................................... 22

New York’s Syracuse United Neighbors(SUN) is fighting a proposal to put asewage treatment plant in an African-American community. In September, thegroup staged a lively protest outside thehome of a county official who supports theplant. For related story and photo, seeAction Line, p. 16. Photo courtesy of SUN.



One of the most important lessons that we learned atLove Canal and that has been confirmed over theyears is that an organized community invariably

fares better than one that does not organize. This is whydeveloping an organizing effort is so important.

In the last EBY, I shared my experiences on how to getpeople involved by going door to door. The next step inbuilding a strong organization is to bring people together toshare with each other and begin to define what they want todo about the problem. One critical component of a success-ful effort is holding effective meetings.

The value of planning and conducting a meeting toachieve maximum effectiveness cannot be over emphasized.Your organization’s ability to attract and keep members willdepend largely on the success of your meetings. The threekey elements of successful meetings are planning, outreach,and active participation.

PLANNING

Planning is crucial. You need to determine why you’re hav-ing the meeting. People won’t come to meetings unless theybelieve that it benefits them. So when thinking about thereason for having the meeting, ask yourself the question:How will this meeting give people something importantenough to persuade them to leave the comfort of their home?The reasons for the meeting should be spelled out in anyflyers and materials you prepare. Don’t call meetings just tohave meetings.

Once you are clear on the goal or objectives of the meet-ing, you can start to plan. Again, ask yourself several ques-tions:• Who do we need to have at this meeting?• How do we reach these individuals?• What is the best time for people to attend?• What place is most centrally located or most accessible

to the majority of the people you want to attend?

LESSONS LEARNED FROM 25 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

BUILDING A STRONG ORGANIZATION

THROUGH EFFECTIVE MEETINGSBY LOIS GIBBS

You should have an agenda and use it in your flyers orpitch to get people to come to the meeting. Leave a little roomin the agenda for important issues that come up just prior tothe meeting.

OUTREACH

Placing flyers in everyone’s door is a good way to let peopleknow about your meeting. However, to get a larger numberof people to come you need to go beyond leaving flyers. Youand your volunteers should knock on doors or phone peopleseveral days before the meeting to encourage them to attend.At Love Canal, volunteers (“street representatives”) wereresponsible for contacting a small number of households tonudge people to attend the meetings. The result was that ourmeetings had hundreds of people in attendance.

PARTICIPATION

The rule here is one facilitator and many voices. Instead ofhaving one or two people present information at your meet-ing, ask several people to give five-minute presentationsabout a fact, activity, news, fundraising, and so on. Leave adesignated amount of time for questions after each person,and be sure to stick to the time limits.

Create opportunities for a full floor discussion on someissue or activity. Most people cringe at the thought of peoplein a crowded room having an open-floor conversation. Yet,at Love Canal, where no one had formal facilitating experi-ence, we were able to have even the most heated debates inan orderly fashion. How? We established rules of behaviorand stuck to them. To help, we elected a sergeant at arms—a rather large man with a bellowing voice—who kept timeand enforced the rules. We encouraged everyone to com-ment, but they had to stick to the issues, avoid personal at-tacks, and limit themselves to three minutes. People will stopcoming to meetings if they are not active participants or ifeveryone who speaks is put on trial. Develop ground rules,

Next year, we will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the victorious community struggle at Love Canal. This is thesecond in a series of articles on organizing lessons learned in that struggle that remain relevant today.

continued on page 7


Winter 2002 5

When plans were announced in Girard, Ohio tobuild a new intermediate school for grades fourto six, parents and teachers were ecstatic. The

school it would replace had been built in 1919 and was ex-pensive to maintain and uncomfortable to teach and learnin. The new school opened in September 2000, only tenmonths after groundbreaking, while construction on thebuilding continued.

But the enthusiasm didn’t last long. The new buildingwas so rife with environmental hazards that teachers andstudents became sick only days after classes started. It tookangry parents working from outside the school and teach-ers working from within the school only nine months to havethe new facility shut down for repairs. Here’s how the par-ents and teachers of Girard Intermediate School took on thecity’s school district, shut down the school and brought a“sick” building back to partial health.

SICK SCHOOL SYNDROME

Parents credit fifth grade science teacher Chris Notareschiwith being the first to realize the link between teachers’andstudents’ health problems and the new building. Initially, theexcitement of teaching in the new school prevented Chrisfrom focusing on her burning eyes and bad headaches, butsoon she was spending time online trying to figure out whatwas making her and others sick. What she learned was thatpeople in a new building are under a virtual chemical assaultfrom gasses coming from paint, newly installed carpets andcarpet pads, particleboard in furniture and building materi-als, solvents, and pesticides. These chemicals, she learned,can make people sick, sometimes very sick.

Moreover, mold soon became a serious problem due toa leaking HVAC system and inadequate ventilation. A dis-tinctive “mold” odor permeated the building. Mold couldeven be seen beneath the carpeting. One teacher reported thatthere was mold in the library’s new books.

Throughout the fall, teachers and students in the schoolcomplained of burning eyes and nasal passages, sore throats,headaches, nausea, and fatigue. All of these symptomsseemed to diminish significantly when individuals wereaway from the building. In November, after the school nursetold her about “sick school syndrome,” Chris became con-vinced that people were getting sick from the new school.As building representative for the school, Chris felt obligated

PARENTS AND TEACHERS SHUT DOWN

MOLDY NEW SCHOOLBY PAUL RUTHER

to inform the school district of the building’s problems. Sheinformed Principal Bob Foley and Superintendent TonyD’Ambrosio of the teachers’ many complaints, and in mid-November, the superintendent reluctantly ordered environ-mental testing.

She and the other teachers recommended that the prin-cipal send letters home to parents warning them of thebuilding’s environmental hazards. However, several monthslater the superintendent presented Chris and other teach-ers with test results indicating that formaldehyde and otherairborne toxics were below detectable levels. Chris was

shocked. The superintendent now dismissed the teachers’recommendations with the reply that “there was simplynothing to report.” Only later did parents and teachers learnthat the environmental report the superintendent receivedin December had indicated that there were species of moldin the school “capable of being pathogenic to humans” andthat the superintendent had refused to authorize a caution-ary letter to parents on the grounds that it would induce“panic.”

Meanwhile, parents in the community were largelyunaware of the danger. Cathy Ross remembers that in No-vember her daughter was coming home from school withred eyes but that her symptoms were mild compared tomany other children’s. A friend who worked in the schoollibrary reassured her that the symptoms experienced bysome teachers and students were being addressed throughenvironmental testing and that there was nothing to worryabout.

While parents and teachers complained in person or inwriting to Principal Foley, their actions were not coordinatedand produced no results. Then, in early spring, one frus-trated community member leaked information to a local TVstation, resulting in a report on a “mysterious illness” plagu-ing the school. The report prompted Principal Foley—act-ing without authorization from the superintendent or school

MOLD BECAME A SERIOUS PROBLEM

DUE TO A LEAKING HVAC SYSTEM AND

INADEQUATE VENTILATION.



board—to finally send home the long-requested warningletter.

FORMING A PARENTS’ GROUP

Unsatisfactory conversations with the superintendent andseveral school board members galvanized Cathy to form aparents’ group. Tapping into widespread community angerand frustration, Cathy and several other parents drew 75people to the group’s first meeting, including the schoolnurse, Chris and several other teachers. The Girard Con-cerned Parents Group (GCPG) was born.

Prior to the meeting, Cathy and several other parents haddetermined that the City of Girard Board of Health could bea key ally in pressuring the superintendent and school board,and they scheduled the first meeting on the same night theboard of health was meeting. After discussing their concernsand recording the symptoms affecting their children, thegroup marched en masse to the health board meeting and de-manded they intervene to protect the school’s children andteachers.

GCPG then created a steering committee to inform thecommunity about the health issues. At the first community-wide meeting, microbiologists from Youngstown State Uni-versity gave a presentation on the problems of mold inschools. But the group’s efforts to impress upon the super-intendent the seriousness of the problem were not well re-ceived. The school administration informed GCPG that sincethe group was not an official party they were not deservingof information or communication.

The group’s frustration increased on learning that theschool board was intent on ignoring a ten-step directive fromthe health department that would improve environmentalhealth conditions at the school. The directive advised shut-ting down the school temporarily if all ten steps were notcompleted.

By May, Cathy had become GCPG’s principal commu-nity contact, and as the warmer months arrived, she beganto receive numerous calls from angry parents reporting thattheir children were sick. Because of the district’s strict atten-dance policy, not many children missed full days of school.But by April the school nurse was reporting that she wasreceiving an average of 64 students a day and sending manyof them home. This led to the rescinding of the school’s ab-sentee policy—but not to action to address the cause of thehealth problems.

THE TEACHOUT

The solution was for parents and teachers to work together.GCPG asked Chris, who by now had bronchial spasms andwas using an inhaler, if she and other teachers would con-sider holding classes outside. The group assured her ofGCPG’s support and promised complete solidarity if anyeffort was made to threaten teachers’ jobs. All 21 teacherssupported the plan.

Not surprisingly, when the day came, the teachers werevery organized and maintained class schedules perfectly. Forone and a half hours all of the school’s classes were taught

outdoors. But the response of the school authorities was swiftand heavy-handed. The principals of all of the city’s schoolsarrived at the intermediate school and ordered the teachersback into their classrooms, threatening that the superinten-dent would fire them if they disobeyed.

Once the teachers began to take the children back to theirclasses, the parents began to arrive. According to Cathy, byone o’clock, parents had taken home 280 of the 405 students.The media arrived around lunchtime when the teachers were

back inside, but local reporters managed to interview Chrisand film numerous parents removing their children from theschool. That afternoon Superintendent D’Ambrosio, vaca-tioning in Florida, called Chris, and, with ocean wavespounding in the background, demanded to know what itwould take to get the teachers back in the school. Chris’sreply, punctuated by the spasms of coughing, was that heshould shut the school down until it could be made safe. Thatweekend, the school board announced that it was closingdown Girard Intermediate School for repairs. The repairscontinued into the next school year, forcing the two youngergrades back to the old school while the sixth-graders movedto the city’s junior high.

FIGHTING FOR PROPER REMEDIATION

Once the school was closed, GCPG’s work really began. Theirbiggest challenge was to overcome the resistance of the schoolboard and get the school properly cleaned up.

The company hired by the school board to do testing atthe school found serious problems. Among them:

• The unit ventilators were found to be defective: theywere producing fresh air for only 6 to 8 children perclassroom when the average classroom had 24 stu-dents and a teacher.

• Analysis of carpet dust collected in April, 2001 re-vealed evidence of mold contamination “associatedwith a range of hypersensitivity diseases …known toproduce mycotoxins.”

• In a July 2001 report, the company noted that the su-perintendent had reported witnessing ductwork/in-sulation being subjected to moisture during construc-tion before being installed inside the school. The wetductwork had provided a fertile environment formold, which was then spread throughout the build-ing by the HVAC system.

Despite the school’s closure, school authorities contin-ued to be untrustworthy. The school board, for example,refused to test for mycotoxins and reneged on an agreementthat the GCPG would be present with its own testing com-pany when the cafeteria ductwork—a suspected mold

THE SOLUTION WAS FOR PARENTS AND

TEACHERS TO WORK TOGETHER.


Winter 2002 7

source—was removed. School board meetings becamestruggles where the GCPG battled the board over whatneeded to be done at the school.

FIGHTING TO REMOVE THE SCHOOL BOARD

By the fall of 2001, GCPG had decided that it could no longerwork with the school board and launched a legal effort tohave the board removed from their seats. GCPC charged theboard with negligence for failing to inform parents of thesevere health problems at the school. In less than a month,GCPG collected 2,100 petitions calling for the board’s re-moval and when the board succeeded in having the peti-tion thrown out on a technicality, 20 group members wentdoor to door, collected another 1,612 signatures in just sixdays, and resubmitted the petition. This time the petitionwas accepted and a trial date was set. The group won a bigvictory in August when the Ohio Supreme Court rejectedthe board’s claim that the county court did not have juris-diction in the case. In October, however, the County Courtof Common Pleas ruled in the board’s favor and allowedthe three board members in question to maintain their seats.

GCPG members have doubts about how effectively thegroup’s lawyer represented the issues, but some also havesecond thoughts about the legal strategy. Cathy Ross be-lieves that preparing for the trial took too much time andenergy away from other important work, such as holdingcommunity meetings and maintaining the group’s website.The legal fight also helped undermine the group process.“It was like putting all your trust in a pilot,” Cathy said. “Yougive your attorney everything you have and worked foreighteen months to get and then we just watched him crashit and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

In August 2002, Girard Intermediate School reopened after16 months of remediation work costing $500,000.

Despite conflict with the school board, the group suc-ceeded in having many of its health recommendationsimplemented. Carpeting was removed from the school andreplaced with tile that was allowed to offgas before theschool reopened. Armed with a statement from the boardof health, GCPG was also able to have the fiberglass liningremoved from the HVAC air ducts. (Fibers had become air-borne and were being transported throughout the building.)The fiberglass on the exterior of the ductwork is now en-cased in a plastic coating.

Girard Intermediate has also implemented the EPA’srespected Tools for Schools indoor air quality program,which school officials had promised to do since thebuilding’s opening. This program is a comprehensive effortto address the multiple issues that compromise indoor airquality in a school. A respected state health official coordi-nates Girard’s Tools for School program and has success-fully insisted, over the board’s objections, that Cathy Rossbe on the team.

The group’s work has had an impact beyond the inter-mediate school. Several of the city’s buildings are being re-

paired to diminish the presence of toxic mold. ThroughoutOhio, indoor air quality issues are more quickly addressedin schools so that the schools “don’t become another Girard.”GCPG member Julie Tammaro reported that her husband,a teacher in a nearby town, had filled out environmentalhealth questionnaires that were made mandatory for teach-ers in his school.

MORE TO BE DONE

The group’s work is far from finished. The school board hadpromised that carbon monoxide testing would be done inevery classroom with an adult present to monitor the tests,but the promised testing is yet to be done. And the groupnotes, with considerable frustration, that health problemsamong students and staff are still being reported. Julie’sthird-grader, who attended an elementary school connectedto the intermediate school by a hallway, became so ill inAugust from mold that his parents had to enroll him inanother school.

Despite the group’s fatigue from their two years of work,they continue to push for more changes, including replace-ment of the entire HVAC system. The group is well posi-tioned in the community to continue its fight. “They stillthank us,” says Julie. “You hear it everywhere you go.” ■

write them on a large piece of paper, and post them on thewall.

MAKING SURE THINGS GET DONE

People will attend meetings of a group that develops a repu-tation for getting things done. So as you develop youragenda, try to include items that the group can vote on atthe meeting. It is also a good idea to form subgroups to takeon specific tasks. Make sure that before you end the meetingit is clear who will take the action and when it will get done.Remember—when it becomes more work to prod people tocomplete their assignments than to do them yourself, it istempting to just go ahead and do them. Don’t. If you do, you’llend up doing everything.

There are a few other things to keep in mind about meet-ings:

• Make sure you announce when the next meeting is be-fore the close of the meeting.

• Begin the meeting on time and end the meeting on time!This is a golden rule! People are more likely to attend ameeting if they know it really will start at the stated timeand end on time.

• Finally, bear in mind you are not just accomplishing tasksfor a specific meeting—you’re working to build an or-ganization. ■Next issue: Group Structure

EFFECTIVE MEETINGScontinued from page 4



The U.S.–Vietnam War caused immense and protracted suf-fering in both countries. Some 3.14 million Americans servedin Vietnam, and more than 58,000 Americans were killed.Nineteen hundred are still listed as missing in action acrossCambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. In the U.S., the impact of thewar on the Vietnamese is much less well known. In NorthVietnam and South Vietnam together, at least three millionsoldiers and civilians were killed; 300,000 people are stilllisted as missing in action.

Now, more than 25 years after American soldiers leftVietnam, the impact of the war on the Vietnamese contin-ues. Today, this impact is caused not by bullets or bombs butby chemicals like dioxin found in soil and food and in thepeople of Vietnam. This impact may continue for years oreven generations.

These chemicals are the legacy of Operation RanchHand—the spraying of herbicides in South Vietnam to denycover to enemy troops and destroy the crops they dependedon. The operation began in 1962 and expanded as U.S. forcesin Vietnam increased, reaching its peak in 1967 when 1.7million acres were sprayed (Kolko, 1986). Between 1962 and1971, the U.S. military dumped 17 million gallons of herbi-cides on South Vietnam’s jungles, forests, and fields, target-ing an estimated 10-14 percent of the country (Hatfield).

The devastating impact of the spraying is still visibletoday. Where there were once large areas of thick, impen-etrable jungle, there are now open fields covered mostly withwild grasses that provide no food for people or wildlife. Fiftypercent of the mangrove forests have been destroyed, wip-ing out hundreds of natural ecosystems that may never berestored (Hatfield).

The most commonly used defoliant was Agent Orange,an equal mixture of the herbicides 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. Otherherbicide mixtures sprayed by the U.S. Army includedAgents Purple, Pink, Blue, Green, and White (agents werenamed for the colored strips on their barrels). Some agentshad higher levels of dioxin than Agent Orange, but moreAgent Orange was sprayed than any other. All of these mix-tures were contaminated with small amounts of 2,3,7,8-TCDD or, as it is commonly known, dioxin. Dioxin is con-

VIETNAM WAR STILL CLAIMING VICTIMS:THE LEGACY OF AGENT ORANGE

BY STEPHEN LESTER

At the first U.S.-Vietnamese conference on Agent Orange, held in Hanoi last March, CHEJ’s Science Director StephenLester presented a paper on the health effects of dioxin contamination in U.S. communities.

sidered to be the most toxic man-made substance ever tested.Exposure to dioxin has been linked to cancer, birth defects,damage to the immune system, and reproductive and de-velopmental problems. More than 170 kilograms of TCDDwere dumped on South Vietnam, the largest dioxin releasein history.

VIETNAM: AO WAS CHEMICAL WARFARE

The long-term impact of this intensive spraying on the Viet-namese was described in papers presented last March inHanoi at the first U.S.-Vietnamese Conference on AgentOrange, sponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Envi-ronmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Paper after paper de-scribed studies showing a higher incidence of reproductiveabnormalities among residents of sprayed regions and infamilies of veterans who fought in the south compared togroups from areas that were not sprayed. Reproductiveabnormalities included children born with birth defects,miscarriages, stillbirths, fetal deaths, spontaneous abortions,premature births, physical deformities, mental retardation,and nervous system disorders. These researchers firmlybelieve that the health problems they found were caused bythe spraying of Agent Orange.

Vietnamese scientists minced no words, describing theuse of Agent Orange as “chemical warfare waged by the U.S.on the country of Vietnam.” This is how the people of Viet-nam have felt since they saw the devastation caused by thespraying in the 1960s. Professor Le Cao Dai, one of Vietnam’spremier researchers on the effects of Agent Orange on hu-man health and former director of the Vietnam Agent Or-ange Victims Fund, described the use of Agent Orange dur-ing the war as a “matter of human conscious [sic] face to facewith the destructive power of the kind of weapon long de-nounced by mankind” (Dai, 2000).

U.S. DENIAL

The U.S. government denies that there is any definitive linkbetween these health problems in Vietnam and the spray-ing of Agent Orange. This denial sounds all too similar tothe way U.S. governmental agencies initially responded to


Winter 2002 9

claims made by American veterans that exposure to AgentOrange had caused their illnesses. It took years of pressurefrom American veteran organizations to expose fraudulentgovernment studies and efforts to deny any link betweenAgent Orange and adverse health effects in American veter-ans (Gibbs, 1995 and Sutton, 2002).

Veterans succeeded in getting the U.S. Congress to requestthe National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to review the dataon the adverse health effects of Agent Orange and dioxin. TheNAS completed this review and found sufficient evidencelinking numerous health problems with exposure to AgentOrange and dioxin (NAS, 1994). The NAS continues to reviewdata on the adverse health effects of dioxin every two years.The accompanying box shows what diseases and illnesses theU.S. government will compensate veterans for if they wereexposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

DIOXIN IN VIETNAM

Although the adverse health effects from exposure to dioxinhave been the subject of considerable research, until recentlylittle attention has been focused on the environmental effectsof the U.S. use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. This changed in1994 when the Vietnamese National Committee to Investigatethe Results of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam (called the “10-80” committee because it was formed in October 1980) hiredHatfield Consultants, an independent environmental assess-ment firm based in Canada, to study the environmental ef-fects of the spraying.

This study, funded primarily by Canadian governmentagencies, documented the impact of the spraying by collect-ing and analyzing hundreds of soil, water, and sedimentsamples. Fish and wildlife samples were also collected. Thetesting found that high concentrations of dioxin persist inVietnam today.

Much of the Hatfield work focused on the Aluoi Valleyin central southern Vietnam near the Laos border. This areawas selected because it has remained largely rural and un-developed since the war and any dioxin found here wouldlikely reflect residue from the spraying and not be confusedby modern sources such as industrial operations or agricul-tural applications. The Aluoi Valley was also an integral partof the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which the U.S. sprayed heavily withAgent Orange during the war (Hatfield, 2000). The reportgoes on to say that if the levels of dioxin found in the AluoiValley were found in soil in Canada or the U.S., these siteswould be considered contaminated and require immediategovernment action.

There were also many U.S. military installations in thevalley that were heavily sprayed to reduce groundcoveraround the bases. One former U.S. airbase contained thehighest levels of dioxin found in Vietnam—898 parts per tril-lion (ppt) TCDD. Fish (52 ppt), duck tissue (82 ppt), and pondsediment in this area also contained high levels of dioxin.Agent Orange and other herbicide mixtures were likelyspilled or dumped at these sites, posing a long-term threatas the contaminants slowly seep into the surrounding ground

ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS FROM EXPOSURE TO DIOXIN INAGENT ORANGE

Many people concerned about dioxin have asked CHEJabout the health-related problems that men andwomen experienced during their military service in Viet-

nam. Some of our brothers and sisters who fought in that war hadhigh exposures to dioxin because of the Army’s use of Agent Or-ange and other herbicide mixtures that were used as defoliants.

The veterans of this war fought for years to get the U.S. gov-ernment to undertake health studies to answer questions aboutexposure-related diseases. These studies failed to find a connec-tion between dioxin exposure and veterans’ illnesses and werelater found to be fraudulent. Veterans’ groups succeeded in dis-crediting the government studies and in getting the NationalAcademy of Science’s Institute of Medicine (IOM) to conduct anindependent assessment of the health effects associated with ex-posure to dioxin.

The IOM committee examined more than 230 epidemiologi-cal studies of workers, soldiers, and residents in communities withexposures of dioxin to identify any health problems present inthese groups. The committee’s report was published in 1994 andis updated every two years.

Many of the studies that the IOM committee evaluated iden-tified connections between exposures to dioxins and adversehealth problems. Veterans’ organizations such as the VietnamVeterans of America (VVA) believe that there are other health-re-lated diseases associated with exposure to dioxins and they

continue to push for further studies.The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs currently provides

disability benefits to Vietnam veterans who are unable to workdue to health problems for which there is a “positive association”with herbicide use in Vietnam. These illnesses are:

• non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma• Hodgkin’s disease• soft tissue sarcoma• chloracne• respiratory cancers• prostate cancer• multiple myeloma• acute and subacute transient peripheral neuropathy• porphyria cutanea tarda (PCT is a liver disorder character-

ized by thinning and blistering of the skin).• type II diabetes

To find out more about the efforts of Vietnam Veterans ofAmerica to obtain disability benefits for illnesses related to her-bicide exposure, contact them at their office at 8605 CameronStreet, Suite 400, Silver Spring, MD 20910 or by phone at 301-585-4000, or visit their website at www.vva.org.



water and soil. Other hotspots include sites where damagedspray planes dumped their cargo (Dai, 2000). It’s likely thatthere are hundreds of hotspots around former U.S. militarybases and at other sites in southern Vietnam (Hatfield, 2000).

The Hatfield study found high levels of dioxin in pooledhuman blood samples collected from men and women morethan 25 years old. This is consistent with studies done by Dr.Arnold Schecter, professor of environmental sciences at theUniversity of Texas at Dallas. In a study done in the mid-90s,Schecter found high levels of dioxin in blood samples fromadults living in South Vietnam compared to the north(Schecter, 1995). In a more recent study of 43 residents fromBien Hoa City, a heavily sprayed area of South Vietnam lo-cated about 20 miles north of Ho Chi Minh City (formerlySaigon), Schecter found that 95 percent of the residents hadelevated dioxin blood levels (Schecter, 2001). Dioxin bloodlevels as high as 413 parts per trillion (ppt) TCDD were found,with a median level of 67 ppt compared to a median of 2 pptin Hanoi, which was not sprayed during the war. BothSchecter and Hatfield found high levels of dioxin in the bloodof Vietnamese born after the war, indicating that the envi-ronment remains contaminated and that dioxin is presentlymoving through the food chain into people.

The Hatfield report recommends that comprehensivestudies be done on the link between Agent Orange and healthproblems (Hatfield, 2000). To address the problems causedby Agent Orange, the study recommends that the govern-ment set up a public health plan to ensure that people do noteat contaminated food and establish a program for decon-taminating affected lands. The study also recommends thata reforestation program be set up and funded through inter-national assistance.

REFERENCESDai, Le Cao. Agent Orange in the Viet Nam War, History and Consequences. Hanoi, Vietnam: Vietnam Red Cross Society, 2000.

Gibbs, Lois. Dying from Dioxin. Falls Church, VA: Center for Health, Environment and Justice, 1995.

Hatfield Consultants Ltd., and National Committee For Investigation of the Consequences of the Chemicals Used During theViet Nam War (10-80 Committee). Development of Impact Mitigation Strategies Related to the Use of Agent Orange Herbicide in theAluoi Valley, Viet Nam. West Vancouver: Hatfield Consultants Ltd, 2000

Kolko, Gabriel. Anatomy of a War. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.

NAS (National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans ofExposure to Herbicides). Veterans and Agent Orange: Health Effects of Herbicides Used in Vietnam. Washington, DC: National Acad-emy Press, 1994

NIEHS (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences). United States-Vietnam Scientific Conference on Human Healthand Environmental Effects of Agent Orange/Dioxin, Summary of Presentations, Organizing Committee, Vietnam Ministry ofHealth, March 3-6, 2002, Hanoi, Vietnam. Abstracts available at www.niehs.nih.gov/external/usvcrp/project1.htm.

Schecter, Arnold, et al. “Recent Dioxin Contamination From Agent Orange in Residents of a Southern Vietnam City.” Journal ofOccupational and Environmental Medicine, 43 (5): 435-443, 2001.

Schecter, Arnold, et al. “Agent Orange and the Vietnamese: The Persistence of Elevated Dioxin Levels in Human Tissues.” AmericanJournal of Public Health, Volume 85 (4): 516-522, 1995.

Sutton, Paul. “The History of Agent Orange Use in Vietnam: An Historical Overview from the Veteran’s Perspective.” Paperpresented at the United States-Vietnam Scientific Conference on Human Health and Environmental Effects of Agent Orange/Dioxins March 3-6, 2002 Hanoi, Vietnam.

WHAT’S NEXT

What will happen in Vietnam is uncertain. Vietnamese offi-cials say they aren’t seeking U.S. war reparations or damagesfrom the chemical industry, but they want the U.S. to helpthem identify hot spots and clean them up. They also wantthe U.S. to provide humanitarian aid to address the manyhealth problems connected to the spraying of Agent Orange.At the same time, the government in Hanoi is reluctant tomake demands of the U.S. government at a time when thetwo nations have just begun normal trade relations.

In March, scientists from both countries signed an agree-ment to conduct joint research to assess the impact of thespraying. The U.S. is willing to fund basic research projects.The U.S. is also paying for some initial testing of hotspots andproviding technical training to the Vietnamese to build theircapacity to do their own testing for dioxin. But the U.S. is notwilling to pay to clean up hotspots or to address the healthissues raised by the Canadian and Vietnamese studies.

It is unclear how satisfied the people of Vietnam are withthis agreement. They don’t know where the many hot spotsare, they lack the funds to pay for the cleanup, and they don’thave the medical resources needed to provide health care andtreatment for those who are ill. While doing more research isalways valued, many feel that doing more studies comes at“great expense” as Agent Orange continues to destroy theenvironment and the health and the lives of many people(Dai, 2000). As Dr. Nguyen Trong Nhan, Chairman of the VietNam Red Cross, has said, “[A]s human beings, we cannot ingood conscience forget. We must take action now, not delayany longer, for the sake of those who have been hurt by AgentOrange” (Dai, 2000). ■


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The First National People of Color EnvironmentalLeadership Summit, held in Washington, D.C. inOctober of 1991, continues to be considered by many

as perhaps the most important event in the history of the en-vironmental justice movement. The summit produced a pow-erful declaration on the principles of environmental justicethat provided direction to the growing movement and con-tinues to inspire activists.

Based on the accomplishments and impact of that sum-mit, activists felt the need to reconvene with a celebratoryanniversary and next-steps agenda. The Second NationalPeople of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, heldOctober 23-27, 2002 in Washington, D.C., attracted over athousand participants from all over the United States, as wellas from countries such as Mexico, the Dominican Republic,Puerto Rico, Panama, Guyana, Ecuador, South Africa, andIndia.

As the new organizing director for CHEJ, I came to thesummit to learn and share. Based on the goals establishedby the national planning committee for this summit, I at-tended with a great deal of excitement and expectation. Thegoals included:• assessing the progress made since 1991;• developing strategies to build on the assets and successes

of the current environmental justice movement;• broadening the scope of the movement to include work

on economic issues, immigrant-bashing, globalization,welfare, governmental accountability, and the overallhealth of communities;

• improving the lives of people of color over the next 10 to50 years;

• spurring the growth of grassroots involvement at a levelsufficient to achieve systemic change.Numerous key events, plenary sessions, and workshops

kept participants engaged in a constant flow of stimulatingdialogues. Plenary sessions such as Affirming Local Concernsfor a National Agenda and Developing Community-Driven Le-gal and Organizing Strategies were very empowering. Work-shops such as Finding Solutions for Corporate Pollution, Min-ing Impacts on Indigenous Lands and breakout sessions on

REFLECTIONS ON THE SECOND NATIONAL PEOPLE

OF COLOR ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP SUMMITBY MICHELE ROBERTS

Vieques, Incineration, Youth Organizing 101 and Climate Justicewere extremely informative. These sessions stimulated dia-logue and networking that well reflected the intended goalsof the summit.

The workshop on incineration that I attended was alearning experience for all involved. Tom Goldtooth of theIndigenous Environmental Network described the impacts

of incineration in Alaska on the indigenous population. Af-ter community leaders in Arkansas and Michigan sharedexperiences from their incinerator fights, including dealingwith “good old boy” politicians, a community leader fromNew York City responded that they shouldn’t allow thesepoliticians to stop their efforts and shared how she won herfight. She told the group that if you can’t gain support fromelected officials you should organize not only to further yourenvironmental goals but to challenge the officials in the nextelection. Towards the end of the workshop, an activist fromthe New York City-based organization Waterfront Neighbor-hoods invited the entire workshop to come to New York andhelp counter pro-incineration propaganda at a conference inNovember.

The summit opened and closed each day with a celebra-tion of various cultural experiences. One evening Africandrummers and dancers performed. Asian youths led theopening activity one morning with a friendship-buildingceremony, handing out strings that were to be placed on thewrist of the person seated next to them; the recipients thenwished for prosperity for the person giving them the strings.On the last day of the summit, I participated in a circle dancewith Native Americans.

At times, however, there was a level of tension that re-sulted in occasional protests. Tension and frustration began

HEARING ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED

AND THEIR WILLINGNESS TO CONTINUE TO ORGANIZE

LEFT ME FEELING MORE EMPOWERED AND DETERMINED

TO ASSIST IN THEIR DAILY ORGANIZING STRUGGLES.

continued on page 23

Michele Roberts, CHEJ’s new organizing director, was a participant at the October summit.



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WHAT IS ACTIONLINE?

At CHEJ, we see ActionLine as the heart of Everyone’sBackyard. This is the placewhere we tell the stories of thegrassroots groups we’re work-ing with. We strive to call atten-tion to the movement’s creativeenergy and accomplishments.We also see Action Line as away to share strategies and ac-tions that work and to stay up-to-date on industry trends andtactics.

Although we rarely men-tion our role, CHEJ is provid-ing organizing support or tech-nical assistance to most of thecommunity groups we reporton. For other Action Line sto-ries, we draw on a large net-work of friends and support-ers, developed during twentyyears of working withgrassroots groups. We encour-age contributions from organi-zations that, like CHEJ, sup-port grassroots organizing andfrom community groups them-selves.

ALABAMA◆ Hundreds marched in Anniston onSeptember 8 as part of the NationalAction for Safe Chemical WeaponsDisposal and Environmental Justicesponsored by the Chemical WeaponsWorking Group (CWWG). Environ-mental and social justice organizationsfrom around the country joined localactivists to demand that the U.S. Armydrop its plans to incinerate chemicalweapons and adopt safer alternatives.Speaking to an overflow crowd at apress conference before the marchand rally, Reverend Fred LeeShuttlesworth, a founder and currentvice-president of the Southern Chris-tian Leadership Conference (SCLC),declared that “Anniston is the place tobreak the back of pollution just like webroke the back of segregation in Bir-mingham.” Participants marched be-hind a banner that read “Justice=SafeDisposal, No Incineration.” RufusKinney of Families Concerned aboutNerve Gas Incineration led the rallyin Zinn Park, where speakers called forcontinued actions to stop the incinera-tion. Martin Luther King III, currentpresident of SCLC, told the crowd,“We’re going to keep coming back untiljustice is done.” Following the rally,

CWWG circulated a sign-on letter amongmembers of the Congressional BlackCaucus. At the end of November, CWWGjoined 11 other groups in a federal lawsuitto halt the Army’s plans to begin liveagent trial burns within the next fewmonths. The lawsuit cites the dangersposed by incineration emissions, the ex-istence of alternative technologies, andthe disproportionate impact the incinera-tion will have on African-Americans in theAnniston community.

◆ Anniston residents fighting to holdMonsanto accountable for contaminatingthe town with PCBs got more good newsthis fall. Last winter, in an important legalvictory, a jury found that Monsanto and itscorporate successors, Pharmacia Corpo-ration and Solutia Inc., are liable forMonsanto’s PCB pollution in Anniston.However, during a 60-day public commentperiod, residents and state officialsstrongly criticized the initial settlement inthe case as an attempt to stall and limitthe cleanup of the town. The result is anew settlement, announced this Octoberby the Justice Department, that will allowthe cleanup of PCB contamination to be-gin two years earlier and places the U.S.EPA—rather than the companies—incharge of a risk assessment of the healthhazards posed by the PCBs. In addition to

the 70-acre Solutia facility, the studywill now cover all sites throughout theAnniston area where PCBs have beenfound. The EPA will oversee thecleanup itself. The companies agreedto provide $3.2 million to establish afoundation for the special educationneeds of children in the area, thoughthis is considerably less than the $10million the community had been seek-ing. The community continues to pushfor a program to monitor residents’health, a key demand not addressed inthe revised settlement.

ALASKA◆ Kodiak Islanders have been hard atwork protecting their community from afacility that is burning soil contami-

National Action for Safe Chemical Weapons Disposal and Environmental Justice onSeptember 8 in Anniston. Photo courtesy of the Chemical Weapons Working Group.


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nated by the U.S. military. This fall, theAlaska Department of EnvironmentalConservation (DEC) found that the SoilProcessing, Inc. incinerator on the is-land was operating within legal limits.On the eve of statewide elections,members of the Women’s Bay Com-munity Council contacted the gover-nor and their state legislator to raiseconcerns about the facility. Afterelected officials contacted the DEC,the agency announced that “more de-tailed lab results” showed that theemissions of particulates were twicethe legal levels. The facility then, ac-cording to the local newspaper, “volun-tarily shut down” until at least nextspring. A spokesperson for the DECtold the paper, “We’re grateful to thecommunity and individual residents ofKodiak who have diligently expressedconcern about the air-quality condi-tions.” The Kodiak Island Borough As-sembly, the local government, alsoresponded to community concerns,reversing a position that allowed thesoil incinerator to operate as a “similaruse” to an asphalt plant without havingto get zoning approval.

◆ In October, Alaska CommunityAction on Toxics (ACAT) released theresults of a study showing elevatedlevels of PCBs and the pesticide DDTamong Saint Lawrence Island Yu’pikpeople. The average PCB levelsamong residents were several timesthe U.S. average. The highest PCB lev-els were found among residents whospent the most time at or near the mili-tary base at the Northeast Cape. Thearea of the former base encompasses9 square miles and includes at least 23sites contaminated with solvents,heavy metals, dioxins and furans, as-bestos, and PCBs. High levels of DDTwere found in the residents ofGambell, which is near another formermilitary base. The study was con-ducted by the State University of NewYork Public Health and the Environ-mental Research Center at Oswegoand Norton Sound Health Corporationand is part of a four-year project, Envi-ronmental Justice for Saint LawrenceIsland, which is funded by the NationalInstitute of Environmental Health Sci-ences. ACAT coordinated the study,working closely with the villages ofSavoonga, near the Northeast Cape,and Gambell.

ARKANSAS◆ Citizens Advocating Safe Environ-ment (CASE), with CHEJ’s help, has beenpressing for better oversight of WasteManagement’s Tontitown landfill for years.This fall, CASE suffered a setback whenthe Arkansas Department of Environmen-tal Quality agreed to the reopening of thelandfill, even allowing a major increase inleachate. However, earlier this year, awhistleblowing former employee chargedthat the landfill had serious problems, in-cluding a massive hole in the liner—andthese allegations have now been con-firmed by the media. The FayettevilleMorning News reported in September thatother Waste Management executives weresaying that the company had covered upserious problems at the landfill. CASE,supported by the local Sierra Club, hasintensified its calls for a criminal investiga-tion into the issue.

CALIFORNIA◆ In a big victory for Barrio Logan resi-dents in San Diego, Master Plating, ametal plating plant emitting toxic fumesinto the neighborhood, agreed to closedown operations this fall. Under pressureto act from the community and the Envi-ronmental Health Coalition (EHC), stateand county agencies conducted air testinglast winter, finding high levels of cancer-causing chromium 6 in the neighborhood.The county filed a lawsuit to close MasterPlating down and a superior court judgehalted the plant’s chrome-plating opera-tions. In September, the plant’s owneragreed to shut down all operations and toremove all hazardous materials. In a pressrelease, Paula Forbis, director of EHC’sToxic-Free Neighborhood campaign,praised the action of the agencies but alsocalled attention to the work still to be donein the community. Zoning laws in BarrioLogan, a mostly Latino community oftwenty thousand near the San Diego ship-yards, allow polluting industries to be lo-cated next to residences and schools.“There are dozens of facilities like MasterPlating in these residential neighbor-hoods,” Forbis said, “and the health of localresidents can’t wait for problems to be ad-dressed one by one every ten years.” EHCwill use a $750,000 grant it received thisyear from the California Endowment, afoundation that focuses on health issues,to work with residents on drafting a newcommunity plan and revising zoning laws.

COLORADO◆ The Environmental JusticeProject continues to fight a cementplant in the Boulder area that is seek-ing permission to burn tires. The groupcontacted the state environmentalagency and found that numerous pastviolations by the plant had been “plea-bargained” down to lesser violations. Inaddition, the plant does not have thecertificate of designation from thecounty required for it to burn tires. Lo-cal government officials are saying thisdoesn’t matter, but the group is pre-pared to fight this issue.

FLORIDA◆ According to Citizens Organizedfor Environmental Justice (COEJ) inJacksonville, the group is “on the brink”of getting a major city park closeddown because of the presence of in-cinerator ash dumped there manyyears ago. They continue to picket thepark every Saturday, as well as regu-larly making their presence known atcity council meetings. COEJ previouslywas successful in getting a school onanother incinerator ash site closed.COEJ is also carefully watching theEPA-ordered testing of incinerator ashsites in order to see which may needremediation.

◆ Former U.S. EPA ombudsmanRobert Martin is the new president ofthe Legal Environmental AssistanceFoundation (LEAF) based in Tallahas-see. Martin resigned from the EPA lastApril in protest and disgust after EPAAdministrator Whitman placed theombudsman’s office under the EPAinspector general, limiting Martin’s abil-ity to independently investigate cases,and confiscated Martin’s computersand files while he was traveling. LEAFprovides legal assistance to commu-nity groups in Florida, Alabama, andGeorgia and monitors federal and stateregulatory activities.

GEORGIA◆ According to local word of mouth,the would-be landfill developer thatCitizens to Save Candler County hasbeen fighting told an opponent in aneighboring county: “You’re reason-able, but that Candler County group is



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just about crazy.” Members of Citizenshave heard from several reliablesources that the landfill effort is beingdropped. A local leader told CHEJ thatCitizens’ success was due to gettingorganized quickly, calling CHEJ earlyfor advice, getting yard signs up afterthe call, and getting the message outevery week through articles in the pa-per that the group was in this for thelong haul.

ILLINOIS◆ Two years ago, Concerned Citi-zens of Ogle County (CCOC) in thenorthern part of the state defeated aproposed landfill expansion. Local sen-timent was expressed in a three to onevote against expansion in a non-bind-ing referendum, and the landfill opera-tors withdrew the proposal beforecounty officials were scheduled to voteon it. Now the issue has been raisedagain, and CCOC plans to bury theproposal once and for all. The dump isstrongly supported by the mayor, soCCOC is working on getting at leastthree city council members to opposeit. The group is actively mobilizing andis optimistic that city council will voteagainst it.

KANSAS◆ Prairie Watch in Miami County ineastern Kansas is fighting a proposedpower plant. Despite strong local oppo-sition, the power plant has gotten thepermits it needs. Clearly, though, Kan-sas City Power and Light is still afraidcommunity pressure will stop the plant– so afraid that it held a secret ground-breaking ceremony for the plant. Theutility not only didn’t invite the public; itmade public officials who came prom-ise not to talk about the event. The lo-cal paper has dubbed the company“Kansas City Paranoia & Light,” andPrairie Watch plans to give them a rea-son to be paranoid. The Novemberelections brought one new member tothe county commission and createdtwo new positions on the commission,and Prairie Watch is moving to takeadvantage of these political changes.

LOUISIANA◆ Concerned Citizens ofLivingston Parish (CCLP) are not

impressed with the new secretary ofLouisiana’s Department of EnvironmentalQuality (DEQ) and his desire to improvehis agency’s public image. A Septembereditorial in the Baton Rouge Advocateexplained that “an audit of DEQ earlierthis year by Legislative Auditor DanKyle’s office found that 73 percent ofsolid-waste facilities in Louisiana wereoperating with expired permits” and thatDEQ “failed to collect 75 percent of thefines it imposed between 1999 and 2001— $4.5 million worth out of $6 milliontotal.” CCLP is keeping the pressure onthe DEQ and on the Waste Managementdump in their community; a recent flyerurged residents to call the DEQ andcomplain every time they detect an odorfrom the dump, the biggest industrialwaste landfill in Louisiana.

MAINE◆ In September, the Natural Re-sources Council of Maine reached anagreement with two companies securingsafe storage of the 85 metric tons of mer-cury left at the HoltraChem Manufactur-ing Company plant in Orrington. Twentytons of the mercury was on its way lastyear to India when protests by activists inboth the U.S. and India stopped the ship-ment. The unprecedented agreementcalls for Mallinckrodt, Inc., current ownerof the former HoltraChem site, to payMercury Waste Solutions, Inc., thenation’s largest recycler of mercury, tostore the mercury for at least four yearsand would allow the federal governmentto purchase the mercury in order to per-manently retire it. Under legislation spon-sored by Maine Senator Susan Collins,the U.S. EPA would have the authority toacquire surplus mercury and have re-sponsibility for permanently retiring sur-plus mercury stocks. The HoltraChemmercury has already been shipped to asecure site in Wisconsin, allowingMallinckrodt to move forward with a fullcleanup of the former chemical plant.

◆ The Environmental Health StrategyCenter, a new nonprofit founded by MikeBelliveau, will serve as a bridge betweenenvironmental and public health groupsworking to eliminate mercury and dioxinand other persistent toxic chemicals. Itsfirst campaign will aim at getting munici-pal agencies to phase out the use ofPVC products.

MARYLAND◆ Following up on its Septembermarch for increased enforcement oftruck regulations, Little WashingtonCivic Association (LWCA) held anenvironmental town hall meeting inOctober. Two hundred residents cameout to express their concerns abouttruck traffic, health, and undesirableland use to about a dozen elected offi-cials, candidates, and other county andstate officials. LWCA will be followingup with post-election letters to key can-didates. LWCA is also working with theCoalition for Central PrinceGeorge’s County to set up an envi-ronmental team that will take on issuesimpacting that part of the county. AnLWCA leader spoke at a rally that waspart of the People of Color Environ-mental Summit and was interviewedon a radio program on WashingtonD.C.’s Pacifica station, hosted by envi-ronmental activist Damu Smith.

MASSACHUSETTS◆ Housatonic River Initiative isproud to report that despite decades ofresistance by General Electric the firsthalf mile of the cleanup of PCBs in theHousatonic River has been completedand the U.S. EPA has begun work onthe next mile and a half. But the impactof GE’s misuse of PCBs extends fardownstream and into communitiesthroughout the Pittsfield area. A HRIcommunity health study has identifiedelevated skin rash and thyroid prob-lems in the Lakewood neighborhood,which adjoins former GE facilities. Anegregious example of GE’s legacy ofPCBs in Pittsfield is Hill 78, an unlinedPCB dump 50 feet from a neighbor-hood school, where PCBs have beendumped since the 1950s—and are stillbeing dumped today. HRI, joined byToxics Action Center, HousatonicEnvironmental Action League, andCitizens for PCB Removal awardedHill 78 a place on Massachusetts’ DirtyDozen list in an event held at GE’s“House of the Future,” a 15-year-oldshowcase for plastic construction inPittsfield. HRI has received TAG fund-ing from EPA to review risk assess-ments and studies to be done inpreparation for the 2005 EPA decisionon whether the “rest of the river” down-stream will be cleaned of PCBs.


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HRI is among the sponsors invitingcommunity groups with health–relatedconcerns about PCBs to join themearly next year for a PCB Health Con-gress to be held in Fairfield, Connecti-cut. Other groups involved inorganizing the Congress are HudsonRiverkeeper, Hudson River CARE,Brockport, New York’s Residents En-vironmentally Acting for Change(REACH), and the Housatonic Envi-ronmental Action League. HRI canbe contacted at 413-243-3353 [email protected].

◆ The Quincy Environmental Net-work has negotiated an agreementwith the developers of the Quarry HillsProject, a golf course and residentialproject built partly on a landfill site. Abreakthrough in the negotiations camewhen the developers agreed not to usesludge pellets from the MassachusettsWater Resources Authority on the site;the pellets have been found to havehigh levels of dioxin. The developers,who were facing many financial pres-

sures to complete the project, made anumber of other concessions in the nego-tiations, which were facilitated by localgovernment officials.

MICHIGAN◆ An agreement between the MichiganDepartment of Environmental Quality(DEQ) and Dow Chemical could relieveDow of liability for massive contaminationof Midland and areas downstream toSaginaw Bay, one of the largest water-sheds in the Great Lakes basin. Theagreement, announced in November,would allow dioxin levels in the soil to be10 times higher than the standard thatapplies in the rest of the state. The agree-ment also would ultimately require citi-zens to prove health problems before anycleanup would happen.

According to documents obtained inOctober by members of the Lone TreeCouncil, Environmental Health Watch,Ecology Center and Michigan Environ-mental Council, Michigan’s current attor-ney general has raised concerns about

the legality of the agreement. The DEQignored these concerns and pushed toget the consent order signed beforeGovernor-elect Jennifer Granholmtakes office; Granholm campaigned ona platform to eliminate dangerous per-sistent chemicals like dioxin.

At a public comment meeting in No-vember, Dow tried to put its own spinon the story by holding a special mediabriefing that was closed to the public.Activists from the region along withGreenpeace protested outside holding“Wanted” posters of Dow CEO MichaelParker and signs that read “MichiganDEQ: A wholly owned subsidiary ofDow Chemical Co.” As a result, wordgot out through the TV news that DEQhas been working hand in glove withDow on the agreement. As part of theexpedited process, the DEQ has limitedthe public comment period to 30 days.Activists have filed a petition under theNatural Resources and EnvironmentalProtection Act to intervene in the pro-cess and create a more reasonabletime frame for comment.

◆ Families Against Incinerator Risk(FAIR) continues to fight three electedofficials from Ypsilanti Township whoare holding out for an incinerator planthere. Among those on FAIR’s side arethe American Lung Association, theEcology Center, the Michigan Envi-ronmental Council, and the entireYpsilanti city council. Earlier in the year,FAIR tried to recall the three officials,but the recall petition was thrown out bya local court. The Washtenaw CountyDemocratic Party passed a resolutioncriticizing the three Democratic officialsand the incinerator.

NEVADA◆ African-American, Latino, and Na-tive American activists from around thecountry joined together on October 12,Indigenous Peoples Day, at the NevadaTest Site and in Las Vegas, in supportof the “Action for Nuclear Abolition”events underway there, at which 61 ac-tivists were arrested. Kalynda Tilges,executive director of the ShundahaiNetwork, the Nevada-based groupwhich coordinated the overall event,stated, “People of the four colors andthe four directions are coming to Ne-vada to stand in solidarity with the

In his documentary Good Things to Life, to be released this winter, MickeyFriedman tells the story of the community fight to get GE to clean up Pittsfield.Photo courtesy of Mickey Friedman and the Housatonic River Initiative.



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Western Shoshone, whose homelandis the location of the world’s first high-level nuclear waste dump.” At the LasVegas news briefing, Mildred McClainof Citizens for Environmental Jus-tice in Savannah, Georgia said, “Weare coming together from across theworld to say no to nuclear energy andnuclear weapons.” Another speaker,Charlotte Keys of Mississippi’s JesusPeople Against Pollution declared,“The land, air and water do not be-long to President Bush.” LoriGoodman of Diné CARE (CitizensAgainst Ruining our Environment),a Navajo group, added. “At the top ofour priorities is our demand that thegovernment clean up its own mess!”The national delegation of grassrootsenvironmental justice activists weremembers of the BASE (Building Ac-tion for Sustainable Environments)Initiative of the Peace DevelopmentFund.

NEW HAMPSHIRE◆ A former drum-cleaning site inPlainfield is getting public attentionafter the developer that bought theland found signs of contaminationthere. PCBs, lead, and VOCs werethen identified by the Department of

Environmental Services, and eventuallythe U.S. EPA took responsibility for thesite. In response to inquiries from nearbyresidents about piles of dirt on the site,the EPA responded that the agency isplanning to use thermal oxidation or soilwashing there, and that they don’t have toissue a record of decision, don’t have tohold public meetings, and if anybodywants to know anything about the site,they should file a Freedom of InformationAct request. With support from CHEJ, theresidents are forming a group and havecontacted their member of Congress.

NEW JERSEY◆ The Youth Action Brigade in BergenCounty is gearing up again. Last year, thegroup fought a plan to develop housing inthe forestlands owned by United Water inthe county. The company owns largeamounts of land, which provide a forestbuffer protecting the reservoir that is a keylocal water supply, and the Brigade be-lieves that a housing development in thisarea would put the water at risk. The issuewas resolved when the state and localitybought the land in question and took it outof risk of development. Unsurprisingly,United Water’s real estate subsidiary isback this year with another plan to de-velop housing on an even larger tract of

land in the forest buffer area. The Bri-gade will be opposing the developmentproposal, starting with a mass demon-stration at the local planning commis-sion, but has also contacted UnitedWater to urge them to get out of thereal estate business.

NEW YORK◆ Syracuse United Neighbors(SUN), a group that has been leadingneighborhood fights in Syracuse fordecades, is now fighting a proposal byOnondaga County to put a footballfield-size sewage treatment plant inSyracuse’s mostly African-Americansouth side. SUN and the other mem-bers of the Partnership forOnondaga Creek say that an under-ground storage facility for storm-re-lated overflow of sewage would be abetter alternative—cheaper and moreeffective in the long run as well asfairer to the neighborhood. While cityofficials support the proposal to buildthe underground facility, county offi-cials remain committed to the sewagetreatment plant because of its lowerinitial cost. In September, SUN mem-bers picketed County Executive Nicho-las Pirro’s house with signs, fliers anda 10-foot effigy of Pirro swirling down atoilet bowl. SUN followed this up in Oc-tober with a press conference outsidePirro’s office. About 15 SUN memberscrowded into Pirro’s office demandingthat he return to talks between the city,county, the Department of Environ-mental Conservation, and the commu-nity to resolve the issue.

◆ Friends of Westland Hills contin-ues to fight against a proposal to builda middle school on a contaminated sitein what is now a park. An environmen-tal scientist living in the community hasidentified serious lead and asbestoscontamination derived from a scrapyard that operated for decades on thesite. The push for the middle schoolcomes in part from a citywide groupthat advocates smaller middle schools.The school system is carefully limitingthe footprint of the school site to try toavoid contaminated areas and haswithdrawn all plans for playing fields,etc. Technical questions about land useand conversion of park property havedelayed construction of the school.

Syracuse United Neighbors outside of County Executive Nicholas Pirro’s house inSeptember. Photo courtesy of SUN.


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◆ The People’s Environmental Net-work of New York (PENNY), whichplans to serve the Onondaga Countyarea, held an environmental summit inSyracuse in October, attracting about100 people. A wide range of environ-mental groups participated, and com-munity fights on diesel emissions andsewage disposal were also repre-sented. Keynote speaker Larry Yates ofCHEJ urged environmentalists to buildorganized grassroots power and to in-clude direct action in their range of tac-tics. PENNY hopes to marshal unifiedsupport for area environmental fights.

◆ Local and state authorities haveacknowledged that the site of ShorePark in the Long Island town of PelhamManor was used as a firing range anda dump for incinerator ash and otherwaste – but still insist that the site issafe for recreation, even though thereapparently has been no soil samplingat the site to support their claim. Re-cently, Westchester Health and Envi-ronment Action Team (WHEAT)’sresearch into DEC documents indi-cated that as much as 50,000 tons ofincinerator ash may have beendumped on the site. As we go to press,WHEAT has gotten almost 500 signa-tures on a petition asking for testing ofthe Shore Park site.

◆ Tenants in an apartment buildingnear Ground Zero are now facing newrisks, as 18 cell phone antennas havebeen added to their building, some ofthem within a few feet of homes occu-pied by small children and pregnantwomen. While the effect of electromag-netic radiation on humans is still notfully understood, some studies suggestthat the impact at the cellular levelcould be especially serious for devel-oping fetuses and infants. The tenantsbelieve the landlord’s decision is moti-vated by a desire to drive out rent-stabilized tenants who have doggedlyremained in the building despite priorharassment and the events of 9/11.They have held building meetings, andtheir situation has been featured in afree newspaper that reaches hundredsof thousands of Manhattan residents.

◆ In October, the Coalition of Im-pacted Neighborhoods (COIN) helda “Charms and Challenges of WesternNew York Toxic Bus Tour” that stopped

in Cheektowaga, Hickory Woods,Tonawanda, Lewiston/Porter, and thewest side of Buffalo. Local, state, andfederal policymakers as well as resi-dents of affected communities were onthe tour and at each site were welcomedby scores of community residents whodescribed the challenges they face livingnear or on top of polluted sites. Themessage to policymakers was “clean uplocal sites and refinance the stateSuperfund program.” The toxic bus tourunited area groups, and the media cov-erage the tour generated helped get theword out about New York’s toxic sites.Contribusted by Citizens’ EnvironmentalCoalition

OHIO◆ After teachers and students at aLeavittsburg school near a constructionand demolition landfill and adjoining re-cycling plant became sick, Our LivesCount (OLC) applied extensive pres-sure to force the Agency for Toxic Sub-stances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)to perform air tests to determine if thesites were emitting hydrogen sulfide.ATSDR’s testing revealed that hydrogensulfide levels were high enough to cause

headaches, dizziness, nausea, andeye, throat, and upper respiratory irrita-tion. OLC members have released vid-eotapes showing illegal, after-hoursdumping at the recycling plant andrecylable items being buried by bull-dozers. OLC believes that the recyclingplant has practiced illegal dumping foryears and is pushing for the city to re-voke the facility’s permit immediately.

◆ Blanchard County’s PreserveEveryone’s American RuralLifeStyle (PEARLS) has been fightinga quarry run by National Lime andStone for more than a year. They re-cently made contact with opponents ofa quarry proposed by the same com-pany in the Allen-Bath area. Whencompany representatives found outthat PEARLS members were at ameeting of these opponents in thenearby Allen-Bath area, they just left,not even showing their faces in themeeting. The new group, in recognitionof the help they were getting, and thefact that they are fighting the same en-emy, named itself Allen-BathPEARLS. Not long after the groupformed, the company dropped its plans

Cheektowaga Citizens’ Coalition demonstrate across the street from Buffalo CrushedStone, one of the points of their toxic triangle, during COIN’s toxic bus tour. Photocourtesy of Citizens’ Environmental Coalition.



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for the site, and now the Allen-Bathgroup is working to make the area astate park (and watching out for otherquarry plans that may pop up.) In rec-ognition of her work in her communityand other communities, Theresa Allen,founder of Blanchard County PEARLS,received the 2002 EnvironmentalWatchdog of the Year award from theOhio Environmental Council.

OREGON◆ Community Against RailroadPollution (CARP), with technical sup-port from CHEJ, continues to organizefor a cleanup of the railroad yard inEugene. Media coverage of the grouphas increased, partly because thegroup has been involved in severalevents. At a community picnic, thegroup chose a logo in a contest whileenjoying good food and good company.In October, CARP held a communityforum jointly with the Whitacre Com-munity Council, the Oregon ToxicsAlliance, and a new legal supportgroup, the Northwest EnvironmentalJustice Center. A packed room full ofcommunity residents heard presenta-tions about the health threat to thecommunity from the contaminated rail-road yard, and 20 people signed up towork with the group. Earlier the sameday, the groups held a press confer-ence at the railroad yard, the site ofdecades of carelessness with chemi-cals. For extra irony, they stood in frontof a Union Pacific sign warning em-ployees, “If it’s not safe, don’t do it.”CARP got coverage on three local TVchannels, and a front-page newspaperstory is in the works.

◆ After decades of makingViewMaster toys in the Beavertonarea, Mattel has moved the factory toMexico, leaving behind extensive con-tamination from chemical solvents.Former workers and residents haveformed Victims of TCE Exposure(VOTE), with their first goal being ad-equate free medical care for people inthe community. VOTE held afundraising event in Portland that gotsome media attention, and now isplanning a memorial rally and commu-nity meeting at the water tower of theformer plant. The water tower, whichprovided TCE-contaminated water to

plant workers, has become a symbol ofthe contamination in the water there.

PENNSYLVANIA◆ Hazleton’s Group Against Gas(GAG) continues to receive crucial sup-port in its fight for relocation. Congress-man Paul Kanjorski, who represents theirarea, has introduced legislation enablingresidents of gas spill areas to relocate orget equity from their homes. (Gas spillsare not covered under Superfund.) InSeptember, GAG members, supported bylocal and state elected officials, came toWashington to support the legislation,which has stimulated bipartisan interest.The trip brought GAG more media atten-tion. In an editorial, the Harrisburg Patriot-News wrote that “those who thinkenvironmental concerns are mostly balo-ney and see government regulation asoverly oppressive should talk to folks inHazleton” and noted that the evidence ofcancer from the gas spill, “like the fumes,is overpowering.” A representative fromConcerned Citizens of Eastern Avenue,a group from Washington D.C. that isfighting for action on an underground stor-age tank leak, joined GAG to support theirefforts and spoke to Congressional staffand media.

EPA Administrator Whitman is yet tofollow through on commitments made tothe group in the presence of U.S. SenatorArlen Specter and RepresentativeKanjorski last spring. In late October, 85Laurel Gardens residents at a GAG meet-ing signed a letter to Whitman, counteringclaims by Region III EPA staff that GAG’sconcerns were simply based on misun-derstandings and failures of communica-tion. After GAG distributed the letter tonumerous politicians, the EPA respondedby assigning a certified mediator from theSuperfund program to work with thegroup, but GAG has informed the media-tor they are only interested in mediation ifit involves a serious discussion of reloca-tion.

PUERTO RICO◆ In early October, the U.S. Departmentof Defense acknowledged that it had usedchemical and biological weapons inVieques during military exercises duringthe 1960s. The same week, Puerto Rico’ssecretary of health released health datashowing an increase of cancer casesamong the Vieques population. At a press

conference in Washington D.C., theCommittee for the Rescue and De-velopment of Vieques (CRDV) re-newed its demand for an immediatetermination of the U.S. military activi-ties on the island and for a comprehen-sive cleanup of toxic contaminationcaused by the military and met withmembers of Congress to press theircase. Later in the month, CRDV mem-bers participated in a Peace forVieques Walk-a-thon in New York andin the Environmental Justice Summit inWashington. The Bush administrationannounced last year that the U.S. Navywould leave Vieques by May, 2003, butmilitary exercises are still scheduledfor early in the year. The CRDVpledges to continue with civil disobedi-ence actions until the Navy withdraws.During the last exercises, in Septem-ber, protestors entered U.S. Navybases in an effort to stop the bombing;military police arrested about 20people and used tear gas severaltimes against nonviolent protestersoutside the bases.

SOUTH CAROLINA◆ Organized by Citizens Organizedfor Rights and Empowerment(CORE) in the Holly Hill area, 70people came out to a Title V hearingon one of several local facilities withserious air emissions problems. Threehundred residents signed CORE’s peti-tion supporting CORE’s position, in-cluding residents of neighborhoods notpreviously involved with CORE. COREgot 2000 flyers out, in their county andthe next one. Two local polluting plantshave requested meetings and hiredcommunity mediators to talk to CORE.

TEXAS◆ The West Memorial School of Katyrecently reopened after a five-monthremediation that resulted from sevenmonths of determined organizing bythe Parent Action Group. Theremediation was primarily to removetoxic mold that caused dramatic healthproblems among teachers and stu-dents. Group members are questioningthe remediation techniques and arealarmed by the continued presence ofmold in the school. Because otherschools in the district face similar, if notworse problems, the group has con-


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tacted parents throughout the district inan effort to create unified pressure onthe school board. The group is de-manding a more open remediation pro-cess to ensure that past mistakes arenot repeated.

VIRGINIA◆ The Federal Energy RegulatoryCommission (FERC) approved DukePower/Tennessee Gas’ plan for a natu-ral gas pipeline in rural southwest Vir-ginia. Earlier, FERC had denied Dukethe expedited decision the companyhad requested on the pipeline due to“controversy” over the proposal. TheBlue Ridge Coalition (BRC), whichhas organized much of the “contro-versy,” vowed to seek a rehearing andto appeal the decision. The group alsoexpressed hope that Duke’s ongoingfinancial and legal problems would ulti-mately doom the project.

Working on another track, membersof the BRC showed up in numbers at astate government forum on environ-mental issues. Virginia state officialshad come to Appalachian SouthwestVirginia to push a park bond issue, butBRC members from four countiesdominated the evening with their oppo-sition to the pipeline. They focused onthe Virginia Marine Resources Com-mission, which has authority overVirginia’s streams and rivers, several of

which the pipeline would cross, and calledon the state to respond to citizen and en-vironmental concerns if FERC continuesto fail to do so.

WISCONSIN◆ Stop Unnecessary Road Expansion(SURE) has combined grassroots orga-nizing, pressure on local governments,media work, and a federal lawsuit in whatlooks to be a successful effort to block amajor highway plan in Waukesha andWashington counties. SURE reports sev-eral new positive developments. First, thestate has begun to cut back highway ex-pansion plans because of the pooreconomy, and has put the Highway J/164plans on hold. Second, SURE met withthe mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s larg-est city, and has forged an alliance to op-pose the highway. Third, the federal judgein SURE’s lawsuit to block the project hasbegun asking the Wisconsin Departmentof Transportation serious questions aboutgroundwater contamination at a keybridge construction site on the highwayroute. SURE and the Sierra Club havedrawn media attention to wells near thebridge that have been contaminated by anold landfill.

◆ Effective organizing and outreach byMenomonie Area Citizens ConcernedAbout Ethanol seem to have put an endto plans to build an ethanol plant in the

middle of the town. The plans for theplant got underway in late 2000 whena former mayor met secretly with thecity council. The council subsequentlyvoted 10-1 for the plant. Concernedresidents visited St. Paul, Minnesota,where there are major problems withodor from an ethanol plant, thenformed Menomonie Area Citizens Con-cerned About Ethanol to educate thecommunity. Slowly, despite continuingsupport from the current mayor and thelocal newspaper for the project, sup-port for the project eroded. In October,the board of zoning appeals denied theStonic Company the permits it neededto build the plant. Activists are nowraising questions about the local eco-nomic development agency, which pro-moted the project.

CANADA◆ Grassroots local action, backed upby international support, has resultedin a serious and probably fatal setbackto plans for the PCB incineratorplanned by Bennett Environmental,which would treat up to 200,000 metrictons of contaminated soil, sludge, andother debris from across NorthAmerica. The Ontario Ministry of Envi-ronment issued what local activistscalled “a stinging condemnation” of theproposal and told Bennett that it couldnot move forward without significantchanges. Bennett has now withdrawnthe proposal in order to modify it.

Public Concern Temiskaming,which helped lead the successful fightagainst the Adams Mine Dump, ac-tively fought the proposal at every step,raising issues at one public meetinguntil the chair of the government-ap-pointed citizen’s advisory board shutdown the meeting, and confrontingOntario’s environment minister with 50protesters when she campaigned inthe area. Public Concern also spon-sored a visit to Kirkland Lake by oppo-nents of a similar Bennett-run facility inSainte Ambroise, Quebec. The Quebe-cois activists warned that despitepromises from Bennett, dioxin levels intheir area had gone from 50 parts permillion (ppm) to 3040 ppm in the firsttwo years of part-time operation of thefacility.

continued on page 22

Public Concern Temiskaming’s giant moose, decked out in a full toxic waste suit,was part of a 300 vehicle cavalcade opposing the Bennett facility on a rainyFather’s Day. Photo courtesy of Public Concern Temiskaming.



CHILD PROOFING OUR COMMUNITIESC A M P A I G N P A G E

Child Proofing Our Communities is a locally-based, nationally connected campaignaimed at protecting children from environmental health hazards in schools and childcare settings by raising awareness, empowering community members, and encour-aging concerned adults to take action at the local level. For information on thecampaign, publications, and updates on our activities, visit our website atwww.childproofing.org.

CAMPAIGN ADVISES SENATE ONGREEN SCHOOLS

On October 1, CHEJ Executive DirectorLois Gibbs testified on behalf of theChild Proofing Our Communities cam-paign before the Senate Committee onEnvironment and Public Works (EPW).Gibbs spoke on a panel titled GreenSchools: Environmental Standards forSchools.

Gibbs’s testimony focused on theurgent need for school siting legislationto prevent the widespread practice ofbuilding schools on or near contami-nated sites. Gibbs cited the campaign’sJanuary 2002 report, Creating Safe Learn-ing Zones, which revealed that in just fivestates there are nearly 1,200 schoolswithin a half-mile of a known toxic site.“Failure to act,” said Gibbs, “wouldplace tens of thousands of children atrisk of being exposed to toxic chemicalsat their place of learning.”

To remedy this situation Gibbscalled for:• the establishment of community-

based school siting committees;• a categorical prohibition on build-

ing a school within 1,000 feet of ahazardous waste disposal site orgarbage dump;

• a three-tiered evaluation/assess-ment/remediation process ap-proach based on a California statelaw, which is the country’s onlystatewide legislation requiring as-sessment and remediation of poten-tially contaminated property.Moreover, Gibbs called for this pro-

cess to be federally funded “to supportschools that apply for the assessment,remediation and construction of healthyschools on otherwise unsafe sites.”

In response to Gibbs’s testimony,EPW chairman Jim Jeffords (I-VT) calledfor “federal guidelines that take a child’ssmall size and developmental needsinto consideration.” Senator HillaryClinton (D-NY), a strong advocate forprotecting children against environ-mental hazards, stated that “establish-ing uniform guidelines would providelocal communities with the tools theyneed to locate schools in places that willallow our children to learn, grow, anddevelop in a safe and healthy environ-ment.”

The panel included Claire Barnett,executive director of the HealthySchools Network, who called for thefunding of the “Healthy and High Per-formance Schools” provisions of the“Leave No Child Behind Act of 2000,”and Alex Wilson, publisher of Environ-mental Building News, who made rec-ommendations concerning how the fed-eral government could support“high-performance school design, con-struction, and operation.”

Several grassroots groups whowork with the campaign were also in thepacked hearing room. Veronika Carella,chair of the Howard County (MD) PTA’sHealth and Environment Issues com-mittee, submitted written testimonycalling for legislation and funding forleast-toxic integrated pest managementpolicies. Joellen Lawson, a special edu-cation teacher from Newtown, Con-necticut, submitted testimony describ-ing how her exposure to mold ended her23-year teaching career. Joellen hasturned her tragedy into action andfounded a group called the CanaryCommittee of Teachers and Parents whoare addressing indoor air quality issuesin Connecticut schools.

The EPW committee required ex-amples that indicate the serious natureof the problem. Ten of the 11 situationssubmitted to the committee are fromcommunities the campaign has workedwith. (Complete descriptions are in-cluded in Lois Gibbs’s writtentestimony, available atw w w . c h i l d p r o o f i n g . o r g /epwtestimony.html.)

THE GREEN FLAG PROGRAM

The campaign has officially formed anew committee to develop a school-based award program for studentgroups in schools. The Green Flag pro-gram will award green flags to schoolswhose student-led, adult-coordinatedgroups achieve serious, positive envi-ronmental improvements in definedprograms. The committee is in the pro-cess of establishing a tiered criteria sys-tem by which it will reward schools forenvironmental achievements in areassuch as integrated pest management(IPM), recycling, and indoor air quality.The committee is meeting monthly viaconference calls.

The Pesticides committee has al-ready produced a guide for awardingschools the green flag. The four-leveltiered system has both mandatory stepsand suggested activities, with awardsbeing presented to student groups andtheir adult coordinators for the success-ful completion of each level; the greenflag—the final award—would beawarded to groups who successfullyimplement an IPM policy.

ABC’S REPORT IN HIGH DEMAND

With the beginning of the school yearcame numerous requests for copies ofthe ABC’s of Healthy Schools, which wasreleased in August by the Healthy Build-ings committee. The list of those askingfor the report includes school inspectorsand facility managers in locales rangingfrom Denver, Colorado to Radnor Town-ship, Pennsylvania. Exciting news camefrom the Ohio Department of Health: thedepartment is interested in providingcopies of the primer to all 650 of thestate’s school districts and is exploringthe possibility of getting a grant to payfor printing costs. ■


Winter 2002 21

DIOXINC A M P A I G N P A G E

The Dioxin campaign is a national grassroots effort to eliminate dioxin and ini-tiate a public debate on the role of government in protecting the health of theAmerican people. Dioxin is the highly toxic by-product of industrial processesinvolving chlorine. The campaign works with hundreds of community organiza-tions to modify or shut down dioxin-emitting facilities, such as waste incinera-tors, chemical manufacturing plants, and paper mills. For more information onthe campaign, publications, and updates on our activities, please visit our websiteat www.chej.org.

CAMPAIGN VICTORY—CHANGESAT THE SAB!The Science Advisory Board (SAB) ofthe U.S. EPA was created to providescientific peer review of agency docu-ments. CHEJ and others who partici-pated in the SAB’s review of the dioxinreassessment have seriously ques-tioned the SAB’s independence andobjectivity. The dioxin review processwas dominated by panel members, in-cluding the chair, with connections todioxin-generating industries and whodownplayed dioxin’s health and envi-ronmental impacts. This obvious biasled to a highly politicized review pro-cess aimed at delaying, if not prevent-ing, the agency from finalizing the re-assessment and releasing it to theAmerican people.

In November 2000, representativesfrom 19 organizational members of theDioxin campaign, including CHEJ andthe Vietnam Veterans of America, andnine scientists gave testimony explain-ing why the SAB committee should ap-prove the agency’s dioxin reassess-ment. All of those who spoke werepassionate and had a unified message.

Campaign participants held silentdemonstrations at this meeting, distrib-uting a press release and holding upsigns that highlighted the connectionsseveral committee members had to di-oxin-generating industries. These ac-tivities seemed to inspire several com-mittee members, who at criticalmoments in the debate, spoke out aboutthe issues of conflict of interest, bias,and lack of transparency in the SABprocess.

During the time it took for the SABto review the dioxin reassessment, thecampaign succeeded in getting a diversenumber of people to testify at SAB meet-ings. Throughout this time, the cam-paign worked with SAB staff and partici-pated in meetings of the SAB executivecommittee to raise concerns not onlyabout the dioxin process but about theSAB process in general.

Now, two years later, there arechanges at the SAB. To begin with, oldstaff are leaving. Don Barnes, SAB staffdirector for more than 20 years, and SamRondberg, the lead SAB staff person forthe dioxin review with more than 20years at the SAB, both retired this year,and two other SAB staff have departedas well.

In June, 2002, Vanessa Vu took overas SAB staff director and immediatelyannounced that the SAB would hold twopublic meetings each year to listen to thepublic as part of an “ongoing effort toimprove policies and procedures.” Atthe first meeting, in September, the SABdistributed a new booklet providinginformation about how panels areformed—the first time this process hasbeen written down and made availableto the public.

While the booklet does not addressthe issues of how balance on the paneland conflicts of interest are defined, cur-rent SAB staff seem committed to ad-dressing these issues in future meetingsinvolving the public. The SAB also hasplans to develop guidance policies toclarify the roles of panel chairs andmembers, SAB and agency staff, and thepublic in the production of SAB reports.

It’s clear that the turnover in al-most half the SAB staff and its newreadiness to address the issues of bias,conflict of interest, and panel forma-tion can go a long way towards tak-ing the SAB back to where it shouldbe—providing expert peer review forscientific documents prepared by theEPA. The activities and pressure gen-erated by Dioxin campaign membersplayed a major role in bringing aboutthese changes. Congratulations!

WHITE HOUSE BLOCKS BILLON POPS TREATY

More than 130 countries, includingthe U.S., have signed the StockholmConvention on Persistent OrganicPollutants, commonly know as thePOPs Treaty. The treaty would phaseout the use of dioxin and 11 other ex-tremely toxic chemicals and includesa mechanism for banning additionalchemicals. As of the beginning of No-vember, 24 countries had ratified thetreaty. The U.S., however, is unlikelyto join them anytime soon.

Before the Senate votes on ratifi-cation of the treaty, Congress mustpass legislation to implement thetreaty in the U.S. Implementing leg-islation introduced last spring on be-half of the White House by SenatorSmith (R-NH) would require con-gressional action before chemicalsadded to the treaty could be bannedin the U.S. In contrast, the bill intro-duced by Senator Jim Jeffords (I-VT)would give the EPA the necessaryauthority to regulate additional POPswithout congressional approval.

Environmental and public healthgroups, including Physicians for So-cial Responsibility, World WildlifeFund, Oceana, U.S. PIRG and theCenter for International Environmen-tal Law, worked hard with Senatestaff on a compromise that would stillinclude a streamlined process forapproving new POPs. In October,however, the Bush administrationimposed new conditions on addingchemicals to the treaty. Republicansthen withdrew their support for thecompromise bill, killing it for thisyear. ■



RESOURCES◆ The Factory Farm Project of the GlobalResource Action Center for the Environ-ment (GRACE) has an outstanding website that provides a wealth of infor-mation on the environmentaland health impacts of fac-tory farms. The project hasnow published an invalu-able guide to fighting thesefarms covering both research and organizing. How toConfront a Factory Farm provides guidance on developinga campaign strategy, working with the media, andfundraising, and includes excellent resources to get youstarted, including sample letters, petitions, meeting agen-das, questionnaires, and ordinances. The guide also takesyou through the steps of researching and requesting in-formation in order to challenge permit applications andpursue enforcement of environmental regulations. Avail-able in both print and web versions; the web version,which contains links to GRACE resources and otherinternet sites, is extremely well-designed and convenientto use. (Grace Factory Farm Project, June 2002; 212-726-9161; available online at www.factoryfarm.org)

◆ The revised and expanded edition of Prescriptions fora Healthy House: A Practical Guide for Architects, Builders,& Homeowners is a comprehensive and extremely well-written guide to building a safe, nontoxic home. Thesources and health effects of indoor air pollution—includ-ing VOCs, mold, radon, radiation, and pesticides—are ex-pertly explained, and alternative materials, designs, andpractices are carefully described and evaluated. The au-thors address virtually every aspect of exterior and inte-rior construction, as well as furnishings, appliances, andheating/cooling and electrical systems. The many casestudies, diagrams, photos, tables, and long lists of prod-ucts and suppliers enhance the usefulness of the book. TheChild Proofing Our Communities campaign used Prescrip-tions for a Healthy House as a resource in preparing its re-port, The ABC’s of Healthy Schools. (Paula Baker-Laporte,Erica Elliot, and John Banta; New Society Publishers, 2001;315 pp; $26.95)

◆ The Fatal Harvest Reader is an exceptionally strong col-lection of articles devoted to exposing the social, environ-mental, and health consequences of our industrial and glo-balized system of food production and to exploringalternative models. The essays contrast traditional and in-dustrial agricultural practices, address specific aspects ofindustrial agriculture—the devastating impact of pesti-

cides, the health risks posed by geneti-cally engineered foods, the destruc-tion of biological and cultural diver-sity—and identify the corporate andinstitutional power structures thatdrive the system. Edited by AndrewKimbrell, the director of the Center

for Food Safety. (Island Press, 2002;369 pp.; $16.95. A larger volume with photo-

graphs is available for $45 in paperback.)

◆ Phthalates are industrial chemicals that are used asplastic softeners or solvents in many different consumerproducts. They are also known reproductive toxins. Fol-lowing up on a government study that revealed thatwomen of child-bearing age had potentially dangerouslevels of phthalates in their bodies, Health Care WithoutHarm, the Environmental Working Group, and ComingClean had 72 beauty products, including deodorants, hairproducts, hand and body lotions, and nail polish, testedfor the chemicals. Not Too Pretty: Phthalates, Beauty Prod-ucts & the FDA lays out the results: nearly three-quartersof products tested contained these dangerous chemicalsbut not one of the products lists the chemical on its ingre-dient label. (July, 2002; 20 pp; available online atwww.nottoopretty.org) ■

The Temsikaming First Nation, who are indigenous to thearea, also took a strong stand against the facility, as they hadwith the Adams Mine plan, and issued a statement askingBennett to leave and pledging to do “what is necessary to pro-tect our lands.”

The Ontario Farmers Association, with many members nearthe proposed site, also vigorously opposed the Bennett proposalout of concern that farmland and water would be harmed.Parmalat, a major dairy distributor, announced that it might notcontinue to purchase milk from the area, northern Ontario’s larg-est dairy region, if the incinerator went into operation.

In the northeastern U.S., which is downwind from the pro-posed incinerator site, environmental groups like Cancer Actionspoke out against the incinerator. And since a new PCB incinera-tor in North America would be a major setback, international net-works, including the Basel Action Network and theInternational POPs Elimination Network, mobilized theirmembers to oppose the facility.

Over 60,000 letters were submitted during the public com-ment period listing deficiencies in Bennett’s environmental as-sessment document. ■

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Winter 2002 23

The Center for Health, Environment and Justice remains an advocate, educator, organizer and leader in the grassrootsenvironmental movement through the generous support of our members, Partners, Guardians and key foundationsand institutions. CHEJ would like to acknowledge the following individuals and institutions that made critically

important donations to support our work between September 14, 2002 and December 9, 2002. Our members number in thehundreds, and are therefore too many to name. However, each gift, no matter what the size, is very much appreciated.

WITH SPECIAL THANKS

with the limited registration materials, accommodations, andfood, especially for the youth and those on scholarships,problems that were due to cost overruns. The lack of lan-guage translators made it difficult for the Spanish-speakingcommunity to effectively participate at the summit. In addi-tion, the number of meeting rooms was inadequate andyouth were not able to meet and plan their activities.

Nonetheless, I found the summit a very rewarding ex-perience. For me the highlight was being able to meet andtalk with Hazel Johnson, who I consider to be the “motherof environmental justice.” Her organization, People for Com-munity Recovery, has led the fight for environmental justicein an area of Chicago’s South Side called the “toxic dough-nut” because it is completely surrounded with toxic indus-tries and dumps.

I first had the pleasure of hearing Hazel Johnson at theFirst African American Women in the Law Conference heldin 1995 in Washington D.C. Hearing her story and her com-mitment to fight for justice for her family and communitystrengthened my own commitment to the movement. I was

thrilled to be able to share my feelings with Mrs. Johnson andthank her for all that she has done for the movement. Ap-parently I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, for Mrs.Johnson was one of several women at the summit honoredfor their accomplishments at a dinner on the summit’s finalnight.

Others who I was meeting for the first time also left adeep impression—for example, activists from Youth from theBronx whose goal is to “green the ghetto” and VirginiaTownsend, a community activist from Holly Hill, SouthCarolina who is seeking organizing assistance in her fightfor relocation against Giant Cement. Hearing about whatpeople have accomplished and their willingness to continueto organize left me feeling more empowered and determinedto assist in their daily organizing struggles.

Leaving the summit, I believed that those who attendedwill indeed help fulfill the ambitious goals set by thesummit’s planning committee. True, it will be a challenge,especially given the current administration in Washington.But the participants of the first summit have made tremen-dous strides in advancing the goals of the movement. Thepeople I met at the second summit are committed and readyto do the same. ■

LEADERSHIP SUMMITcontinued from page 11

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veryone’s Backyard

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Transcript of veryone’s Backyard