Love Canal activist to speak at University of Richmond
January 19, 2007
Lois Gibbs, an environmental activist who led an effort to move families out of their Love Canal, N.Y., neighborhood when they discovered it was located on a 20,000-ton chemical waste dump, will speak at University of Richmond Feb. 6.
Gibbs will speak at 7 p.m. in the Brown-Alley Room of Weinstein Hall. Her talk is sponsored by Women Involved in Living and Learning (WILL), Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program (WGSS) and Richmond Quest. The talk is open to the public at no charge.
Gibbs will discuss "Citizen Activism for Environmental Health: The Growth of a Powerful New Grassroots Health Movement."
Gibbs is founder of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, which helps communities fight environmental injustice. She is known as the "mother" of the Superfund, legislation that seeks to clean up hazardous waste sites around the nation.
Her activism started in 1978 when she discovered, after reading in the Niagara Falls Gazette, that her neighborhood and local elementary school were located on a toxic waste dump. She began to realize that the dump was causing an array of illnesses, such as epilepsy, asthma and urinary tract infections, that had hospitalized her children.
When the government refused to listen to her pleas to clean up the dump, Gibbs organized her neighbors into the Love Canal Homeowners Association. Eventually, the State of New York closed the school and purchased the 239 homes closest to the dump. Gibbs fought two more years until President Jimmy Carter moved 900 families out of the area in 1980. Congress enacted the Superfund legislation that year to help clean up other toxic waste sites around the nation.
Gibbs continues to teach community groups and individuals about the basics of advocacy and helps them understand technical information in environmental studies. She also fights to stop polluters from setting up facilities in minority or low-income neighborhoods.
For more information, contact WILL at (804) 289-8578 or will@richmond.edu.