Annual
Brown Bag Lunch Series, February 2005
Fighting Toxic Pollution in the Upper Valley
Outline of a talk given to a League of
Women Voters Forum
1.
Introduction of myself--Lindsey Hoddel
from the Toxic Action Center in Montpelier
2.
Introduction to Toxics Action Center
-Our
mission: to work side by side with residents to prevent and clean up
pollution
-Started
in 1987 in Boston
-Presence
in every New England state now
-Vision
of future is having a Toxics Action Center office in all 50 states
-Some
of the groups I work with:
-VT
-Moretown
and recent victory and appeal
-IBM in Essex junction with Alliance @ IBM
-Williamstown and TCE contamination
-NH
-CLEAR in Claremont
-REACH in Hopkinton
-AWARE and EANNH in Bethlehem
-Statewide coalition being built
3. Go through campaign planning
model—my goal of this talk is to
give you all a better sense of how to build a plan and stay organized
so that you can win. This doesn’t just apply to environmental problems.
You can use this model to address changes you’d like to be seen in your
schools, your zoning laws, your neighborhoods
-Goals
-Process
-Decision
Maker and Influences
-Tactics
-Plan/Timeline
4. And
focusing on just the Upper Valley, I’d like to tell you a little
bit more about a couple of local fights I’m involved with
-Bethlehem
-Leachate incineration
-Casella owned landfill that keeps expanding—points to our growing
problem of garbage—we don’t need more landfills, we need more recycling
facilities, incentives and less trash production on the front end
-Articles about growing stench
-Residents have been involved for 6 years
-Town is suing for local control but they keep losing
-CLEAR
-Fight against incineration
-Health effects of incineration
are clear
-Incineration is an archaic technology; we’re taught
it’s good but it only reduces waste by 30 percent and disperses
pollution into the air instead of containing it in a landfill, or
reducing it in the first place and really solving our increasing
problems with garbage
-Residents
are very sick: endometriosis, unexplainable and painful skin
rashes, cancers and asthma
-Pressuring local elected officials not to sign
contracts with the incinerator
-Air testing to make sure the
incinerator meets current standards; it’s also grandfathered
-Also involved with statewide
coalition to pass legislation banning incineration of C and D waste
-Norwich
-Underground oil storage tank
spill, pools of oil in front lawn
-Not only problem, because 4
other condos have tanks put in at same time, potentially leaking, or
could in the future
-Condo association owns tanks,
but doesn’t want to pay for it because their insurance doesn’t cover
contamination, as many policies don’t
-We helped by securing funding
from state’s underground storage tank fund
-We also helped by hiring an
environmental consulting company that has particular expertise in oil
clean-up
-Company state hired has a really
bad track record, so we made sure a good company heads clean up and
monitoring into future
Back to
LWVUV home page
www.uppervalleyleague.org
League of
Women Voters of the Upper Valley