Love Canal activist Gibbs advises PRIDE:
Youve got to fight it politically
- 8/22/07
By NEAL F. RATTICAN, Courier-Times Editor
If they are to prevail, opponents of the proposed expansion of
the Upper Piedmont Environmental Landfill in Person County must
understand they are in a political fight.
The advice came Saturday from someone who learned that lesson the
hard way in the late 1970s.
Lois Gibbs, the housewife-turned-activist who led the fight
against the polluted environment in her Love Canal neighborhood
of upstate New York a campaign that ended with the
evacuation of the entire neighborhood and the federal
governments creation of the Superfund to clean up toxic
waste sites was the featured speaker in Roxboro for a
Saturday afternoon rally hosted by Person County PRIDE (People
Rising in Defense of Ecology).
The PRIDE rally was one stop on a 10-county Dont Dump
on Us Keep North Carolina Healthy tour by environmental
groups urging state leaders to oppose mega-dumps and
to adopt sound policies for dealing with solid waste in North
Carolina. That tour, featuring Gibbs and other speakers, ended
with a final stop in Raleigh on Monday.
Gibbs is now the executive director of the Center for Health,
Environment and Justice (CHEJ), which she founded in Falls
Church, Va. in the wake of the Love Canal saga nearly 30 years
ago. She assisted in setting up her own props at Saturdays
rally in Roxboro, including the 20-foot-tall inflatable yellow
duck, bearing banners that cautioned, Dont be a
sitting duck for mega-dumps.
By times, upwards of 75 to 100 people were on hand for parts of
the scheduled five-hour rally, which unfolded in the shade of the
pavilion at Merritt Commons. Tables along the inside perimeter
offered a variety of informational brochures ranging from
recycling tips to a Person County Pollution Scorecard
listing chemicals being released into the environment by county
industries. Giveaways included table savers and portable trash
receptacles made from recycled products. PC PRIDE T-shirts were
available as were free bottles of water and free sandwiches
furnished by pimento cheese spread maker Our Pride Foods of
Roxboro.
About five minutes before the slated 2 p.m. start of the program,
the pavilion lost electric power, rendering the public address
system useless and idling the compressor for the inflatable duck,
which slackened as it lost air. Some PRIDE members viewed the
coincidence with more than a little suspicion. When power was
restored about an hour later, in time for Gibbs main
address, Gibbs advised the crowd that the restoration was the
result of a volunteer bringing in solar panels, which generated
power to run the public address system as well as to restore the
yellow duck to its rightful stature.
(Roxboro City Manager Jon Barlow advised The Courier-Times this
week that the pavilion lost power apparently because too many
items were plugged into electrical receptacles, which triggered a
ground fault. That, he explained, necessitated pushing the reset
button on the ground fault receptacle in order to restore power
to the facility.)
PC PRIDE is steadfastly opposed to the proposal by Republic
Services of N.C. to expand the landfill it operates in
southeastern Person County. It is urging the county to opt for
running its own landfill limited to collection of Person
Countys waste when the countys existing contract with
Republic expires in 2017. PRIDE also is encouraging the county to
adopt a zero waste goal.
Last week County Commissioners Larry Bowes and Kyle Puryear, both
of whom have publicly indicated they are leaning in support of
landfill expansion, confirmed being subjects of apparent acts of
intimidation. Bowes said he received a phone call in which the
anonymous caller expressed support for PRIDEs stance and
vowed that if Bowes continued to support the Republic proposal he
would not live to vote on expansion.
Puryear reported finding three bags of garbage spread on his
front lawn when he was leaving home for work one morning last
week.
Responsibility for the incidents has not been determined, but
last Friday, PRIDEs board of directors released a statement
voicing disapproval of the attacks against the
commissioners and vowing it does not condone such acts.
Gibbs commented on the threat and garbage-dumping incidents in
her remarks Saturday, saying she was certain PRIDE was not
responsible for them. But she also suggested that the incidents
actually might have been perpetrated to discredit PC PRIDE.
I know that PC PRIDE had nothing to do with dumping trash
on somebodys front yard, Gibbs said. And I know
that PC PRIDE didnt call somebody up and threaten them.
What happened here is that you guys [PRIDE] got attacked.
Gibbs posited that the acts might have been intended to distract
PRIDE from its main focus and to create apprehension.
Who got hurt in that? Not the guy who was threatened. Not
the guy with the trash in the front yard, Gibbs said. But,
she added, Now people are saying, Well, did PC PRIDE
really do that or not?
Thats the silliest stuff Ive ever seen.
Ive traveled for 26 years and this is pretty silly,
she said. And is it coincidental that it all happened when
we were coming to town with our 20-foot duck? Maybe. Maybe
not.
Gibbs drew on her experiences in the Love Canal disaster to
instruct her Person County audience on how to block expansion of
the landfill.
At Love Canal, she said, we learned that the
science is important and the technical information is important,
and we realized that there were some legal handles we could use,
and all of that is important in the bigger picture. But the way
to win this fight, ladies and gentlemen, is political. I know
nobody likes that
. But you need to make it politically
advantageous for your representatives to vote the right
way.
Gibbs said that back in the 1970s she thought she was living the
American dream in her Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls,
N. Y. But after her young children kept getting sick for reasons
doctors couldnt readily explain, Gibbs read a newspaper
article through which she learned for the first time that a
chemical dumpsite existed in her neighborhood.
There were 20,000 tons of chemicals buried three blocks
from my home, she related. From the article, she said she
also learned that the elementary school that my son,
Michael, was attending kindergarten in was on the perimeter of
the dump, and that the playground that I took him to twice a day
was on top of the dump. Chemicals would come up from the dirt and
children would get chemicals on their fingers, Gibbs said.
A study of the neighborhood commissioned by the City of Niagara
Falls and the State of New York, concluded, Gibbs said, that
Love Canal posed an imminent health risk to the people
living around it, and that chemicals were evaporating from
the soil into homes.
Some homes had levels of chemicals above workplace
standards related Gibbs, explaining, What that means
is that a 160-pound man could not, would not legally be allowed
in that home for 40 hours a week because it was too dangerous for
a worker. In these homes were pregnant women, innocent children,
living 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
And the governments were aware of that, she said.
For the most part, she said, adults in Love Canal were healthy,
but the children and pregnant women proved far more susceptible
to the environmental toxins from the dumpsite.
She said the neighborhood conducted its own door-to-door health
survey to try to determine the scope of illness.
What we found was, 56 percent of our children were born
with birth defects. Fifty-six percent of our children had three
ears, double rows of teeth, extra fingers, extra toes or were
mentally retarded.
There were 22 women in Love Canal who were pregnant,
and of those 22 pregnancies, only four normal babies were born.
The rest of those pregnancies ended in miscarriages, stillborn
babies or birth-defective children.
Gibbs said a subsequent study by the New York Health Department
essentially confirmed the results of the neighborhood survey. But
instead of fixing cause of the health problems to the chemical
dumpsite, the health officials said, Gibbs recounted, We
dont believe those birth defects were related to Love
Canal. What we believe those birth defects are related to is a
random clustering of genetically defective people.
By that point, Gibbs said she and neighbors were ready to sue but
that first a lawyer disabused them of the notion that businesses
cannot legally poison people. Indeed they can, the lawyer went on
to explain, by virtue of permits and licenses that actually allow
for certain amounts of chemicals to be leaked into the
environment.
Thus, Gibbs said, permits and licenses allow corporations, in
effect, to take a certain amount of quality of life away
and poison a certain amount of people, much as hunting and
fishing licenses allow hunters and fishermen to take a certain
amount of game and fish.
The analogy works, Gibbs related, except for one thing. If
you have a hunting and fishing license, youre never ever,
ever allowed to take the babies.
She continued, When were talking about toxic poison,
when were talking about solid waste, when were
talking about leachate which sounds very complicated but
its just wet garbage and chemicals mixed together
you are talking about something that children, unborn children
and young children, are most susceptible to. Thats why at
Love Canal we were healthy as adults; we didnt have that
many problems. But our children were born with 56 percent birth
defect rates. It is the children that are harmed by these sorts
of things.
At Love Canal, Gibbs said, What we learned is that lawsuits
work
but theyre not going to right the wrong. What
you need to do is fight politically.
Thats what Love Canal activists did, Gibbs said, by dogging
then-New York Gov. Hugh Carey throughout his reelection campaign.
In time, that won recognition of the Love Canal situation,
evacuation of 900 families from the neighborhood, creation, in
1980, by the Carter Administration of the federal Superfund for
toxic waste site cleanup and gained for Gibbs the moniker,
Mother of the Superfund.
For Personians who would stand against landfill expansion, Gibbs
exhorted, This is a political fight. Youve got to
fight it politically. Youve got to politely, but seriously,
get in the face of those who are making this decision.
You
need to ask your faith leaders to come forward and to help you.
And you need to ask other people to get in the face of
these folks and say, Look were really
concerned. Not disrespectfully. Not nasty. But clear. That
this cannot go forward. This is not what you want for your
community. You need to be clear.
Dont let the things
they put in your way stop you.
Gibbs suggested it would be better economically to build a
recycling center that would create jobs for people and keep money
in the community.
Thats the type of economic development you
want, she said. Not taking somebody elses
trash.
Gibbs concluded her remarks to Personians, You guys have
sacrificed hugely. Hugely. You already have a landfill
thats still got a 10-year life on it. Youve already
sacrificed. Youve done your fair share.
You can stop
now. Youve paid your dues. Make them see that its
only going to hurt you.
http://www.roxboro-courier.com/newsnowstories/ts082207-3.html
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