The person that I have chosen to write about for this blog post is Lois Gibbs. Lois is the founder and executive director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ), but she is really known for her involvement in the Love Canal disaster. Lois had no prior association or involvement in community activism before the issues with Love Canal became present in 1978. Lois lived in Niagara Falls, New York, was a housewife and had two young children. During this time there were a lot of rumors being spread about chemical waste being spilled into the waters contaminating their drinking water and even seeping into people's basements in their homes. It seemed that there were a lot of health issues, like epilepsy, urinary tract infections and asthma, surrounding this community and Lois began to wonder if this was due to the spilling of the toxic waste. After conducting a survey she found out that only 4 out of 22 pregnancies were "normal" pregnancies and that within the whole population 56% of the children were found to have birth defects. She associated this finding to the 21,000 tons of chemical waste that her neighborhood sat on top of. With this information she formed the Love Canal Homeowners Association. When she presented this information to the government along with a petition to close down the schools and relocate all of these families she was basically told that there wasn't enough information present and that they couldn't do anything about this. After years of fighting this against the state, local, and federal government, they eventually evacuated 800 families and they began to clean up Love Canal.
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| This is a picture of someone protesting against the contamination of Love Canal. |
The person who inspired Lois and really got her career started was Michael Brown. Michael was a reporter for the Niagara Gazette staff who wrote a series about the 21,000 tons of chemical waste that was being dumped into a waste dump in their town. Michael was the one who discovered the issues at Love Canal, he was the one who essentially got the ball rolling on things. It was the Hooker Chemical Company that was responsible for the dumping of this toxic chemical waste, and as people became aware they tried to issue out pieces in defense to their actions but Brown ignored them and continued to do some investigating. He began to check with different homeowners about reports of chemical waste oozing down their basement walls and into their backyards. He even collected samples from sump pumps to help strengthen his investigation. He even began to write books one of which was titled, "Laying Waste: The Poisoning of America by Toxic Chemicals." This book was put into articles in the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly Rolling Stone, and other magazines across the US. He was one of the first people to dive into one of the most significant environmental issues during his time. His reporting got him nominated for three categories of the Pulitzer Prize and an award from the Environmental Protection Agency. Without Michael Brown and his eagerness to report and investigate on such big issues the issues at hand in Love Canal would not have been dealt with like they were, they may not even have been dealt with at all and a lot more people would have been sick as a result.
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| Image of a warning sign posted in Love Canal. |
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Photo by Mike of the calm before the storm. For some reason when I think of Lois Gibbs an image of the calm before the storm comes into my mind. She just seemed like the peace before all of the chaos to me. She was trying to bring peace to her community before a massive storm of angry people and protests broke out but nobody wanted to listen to her and so a storm broke out anyways.
Section 2: Event or Policy related to Lois Gibbs
Besides her accomplishment and involvement with the events of Love Canal, Lois Gibbs has achieved some other remarkable things. For example she formed the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste in 1980 due to the almost 3,000 letters she received in the mail asking for help on how to solve other areas toxic waste problems. This was later renamed the Center for Health, Environment and Justice. The CHEJ is an environmental crisis center that has information, resources, technical assistance, and training to thousands of community groups around the nation. Their purpose is to form local organizations to protect neighborhoods from exposure to hazardous wastes. Lois works particularly with diverse communities and she works to strengthen the environmental justice movement. The CHEJ coordinates regional and national campaigns focused on specific issues to bring power into the corporate and government decision-making processes. If you visit the actual site of this organization you can see all that they have accomplished and all that they are about. Some of the things the write about and try to educate people about are the relationship between the coronavirus and the high levels of pollution, they have recently sued the Trump Administration for Waterway Protections, etc. So they are still very active and very much continuing on with protecting the environment and educating as many people as possible about a variety of different issues, not just issues on hazardous waste.
Photo by Daniel of a toxic waste dump site.
Section 3: Another Event/ Policy Related to Lois Gibbs.
Another thing that Lois contributed to was the US Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund. This is used to locate and clean up toxic sites throughout the US. They clean up some of the most contaminated land and respond to environmental emergencies including oil spills and natural disasters. The Superfund program specifically focuses on making sure that people can live and work in healthy and safe environments. This agency was created in 1980 in response to the issues revolving around Love Canal and it was originally called the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Responsibility Act. It is informally called Superfund. This is what allows the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated sites and it forces the people and companies responsible for the contaminations to reimburse the government for clean ups done by the EPA or perform the clean ups themselves. Some of the things they have achieved over the years is they have provided oversight to 242 removal actions to address imminent threats to communities, they have completed a cumulative total of over 96,000 remedial site assessments, they have about $390 in appropriated funds, etc.
A diagram of the process the CERCLA goes through.
Section 4: How Lois Gibbs and Events/ Policies Related to her Affect the Life of People in Keene, NH
Without Lois Gibbs and her aggressive fight for environmental justice the people of Love Canal would have never been relocated and they would have never seen justice and gotten the proper clean up that their community deserved. The rivers and homes of the people would have been completely ruined and the numbers of unsafe pregnancies and birth defects would be extremely higher than they were. Without the media attention and the number of supporters that Love Canal generated there wouldn't have been the creation of the new policies and agencies like the CHEJ and the Superfund program. It was very important that all of these things fall into place the way the did because without one small detail happening the whole thing would crumble and potentially would have never happened. Without the Superfund program there would still be thousands of toxic dumping sites contaminating peoples homes and drinking water.
On another note this affects the life of people in Keene, NH specifically because the Environmental Protection Agency that was created with Lois Gibbs is also apart of New Hampshire. It deals with protecting the air, water, toxic waste, etc. There is a Clean Air Act Permitting in the EPA's New England region. The Superfund project also runs into New Hampshire and they have cleaned up a decent amount of sites including some landfill sites, some waste oil sites, etc. Without these events we wouldn't have anything protecting us from consuming contaminated water, excessive pollution in the air, and toxic landfills exposing people to violent amounts of toxic waste and different health problems.
Section 4 Optional: Environmental Policies vs Individual Choices
In my opinion individual choices are much more effective than environmental policies. Environmental policies only get started because of individual choices. By this I mean that we never enact laws or rules just because it is always based on events that have happened in the past that we are trying to keep from happening again. Most of the environmental policies come from people making choices to do certain things to protect the environment and then enforcing these decisions. Making a difference starts with you and when enough people come together to fight against one thing that's when the real progress is made. All of this relies on individuals making a choice to do better and do whatever they choose. You can enact a policy all you want but it all comes down to what that person wants to do. Without Lois Gibbs doing what she did and making the decision to keep on fighting for justice most of the policies enacted wouldn't have been brought up. Individual choice is the most powerful weapon because you can use it even without environmental policies and you can always have your individual freedom/ choice, but you won't always have policies to fall back on.
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I've heard of the Love Canal toxins prior to this but never had I heard of Lois Gibbs. This entire story resinates with me because something similar is happening in my region. It is not bad enough to cause for relocating people but in the next town over from mine there is PFOA in the water supply and the people of the town have to drink from bottled water provided by the local government. I was not aware that there is a team that specializes in such events and clean ups, I wonder if they played any role in the discover in Hoosick Falls, New York (the town I spoke of). I like that you included images of the time of the event as well as more current images pertaining to the event, the protest image really helped show the severity of the problem. This also connects to my life at home because my grandfather's well water also contains PFOA, luckily it is far less severe than that of Hoosick Falls but it shows just how far the contamination has spread as his house is about 20 minutes from that town.
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