Lois Gibbs
 Lois Gibbs (AP Photo/Scott Stewart) |
In 1978, a 27-year-old housewife named Lois Gibbs discovered that her son’s elementary school in the seemingly idyllic neighborhood of Love Canal, N.Y. was built on top of a toxic waste dump. So was the adjacent playground where Gibbs brought her younger daughter to play almost every day. Her children suffered from multiple unexplained illnesses — asthma, pneumonia, seizures, blood disease. Now, Lois thought, she might have an explanation. Gibbs went door-to-door and heard similar stories from her neighbors — epilepsy, urinary tract infections, birth defects. With Gibbs as their inadvertent leader, the neighbors formed the Love Canal Homeowners Association and began fighting for the school to be closed and for residents of the neighborhood to be relocated. In the heat of the battle, members of the group held two EPA officials hostage for six hours. The hostage-takers feared they’d be arrested; instead, two days later, President Jimmy Carter agreed to relocate 833 families. Gibbs’s work led to the creation of the EPA’s Superfund cleanup program, and Gibbs’s herself went on to create the Center for Health, Environment and Justice to help other communities fight back against environmental threats. |
