Effective and Uncredited: Women and Environmental Actions
Riley Segal
Public knowledge about changes in environmental legislation is often limited to new policies and the topics they address. Though actors such as the Environmental Protection Agency and movements like environmental justice have become recognizable terms in the legal sphere and everyday life, many of the people who helped push them into relevancy and keep them topical have faded to the background or into the shadows. This is true for many women and even more so for women of color.
Scientist Rachel Carson was one of many women who spurred action prompting major changes in environmental law and on public knowledge of environmental issues. She is fairly well-known, though the public is perhaps less familiar with her than they should be. Her most celebrated book, Silent Spring, was published in 1962 and described how the permeation of chemical pesticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) in the food chain accumulated in animals and human beings.[1] Silent Spring examined these chemicals’ negative impact on ecosystems and entire species, as well as the harmful ramifications felt by humans, such as cancer and genetic damage.[2] Carson called for tightening regulations on these chemicals, as well as bans on the most dangerous ones, and also suggested searching for alternative pest control methods.[3] Predictably, the book was met with hostility from the pesticide industry; chemical companies such as Monsanto tried to smear Carson’s research and her reputation, even accusing her of being a “Communist or hysterical woman.”[4] Nevertheless, Carson had already captured the public’s attention.
Public outcry against these chemicals heightened in the wake of Silent Spring, and attention from the government soon followed. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy ordered the President’s Science Advisory Committee to look into the issues Silent Spring raised, and its report that followed supported her contentions.[5] Carson’s work prompted a push for environmentalism, the foundation of which started the movement that ultimately led to the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.[6] The establishment of the agency gave laws such as the Clean Air Act more teeth in effectively setting and enforcing standards.[7]
Before Carson, however, there was Dr. Rebecca Cole. Dr. Cole was born in Philadelphia in 1848 and became the second Black female physician in the United States.[8] Part of her practice included treating underserved communities.[9] Outside of her role as a physician, Dr. Cole had a particular interest in public health. At this time in the 20th century, Black communities faced higher rates of tuberculosis.[10] The cause for the disparity was disagreed on – sociologist W.E.B. DuBois attributed it to ignorance regarding hygiene in Black communities.[11] Dr. Cole pushed back on this theory, though, and instead pointed to white physicians’ failures in treating Black people as well as the disproportionately unhealthy living conditions to which Black people were subjected.[12] She agreed that low-income Black neighborhoods suffered from higher rates of disease, but attributed the cause to what now would be called “structural inequality.”[13]
Dr. Cole’s assertion that racially discriminatory housing practices resulted in more crowded, unhealthy living conditions for Black people is an early manifestation of an environmental justice concern.[14] The modern environmental justice movement examines the intersectionality between health risks, the environment, race, and socioeconomic status, among other factors.[15] Dr. Cole’s observations and theory easily slot into that framework. To address these harms, Dr. Cole advocated for “Cubic Air Space Laws” to address the systemic cramming of people in poorer neighborhoods into tighter spaces.[16] Even though this advocacy may not have spurred concrete legislative action, her contributions to public health and early recognition of environmental justice cement her as an important figure in the development of environmental law.
Moving forward in time, Lois Gibbs & the housewives of Love Canal and Elene Thornton & the residents of Griffon Manor advocated for the creation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA[17]) of 1980, better known as the Superfund program. The Superfund program allows the EPA to clean up sites contaminated by hazardous waste and compels parties that caused the contamination to take responsibility by either reimbursing the government for the EPA’s cleanup or performing the cleanups themselves.[18]
Love Canal, New York was used as a hazardous chemical dumpsite by Hooker Electrochemical Company between 1942 and 1953, where chemicals were stored in leaking drums, which contaminated the soil and groundwater.[19] The drums were buried, and the site gradually became home to a school and about 100 homes.[20] All the while, the chemicals continued to leak into the community, leaching into the groundwater and homes.[21] Instances of children burning their hands after touching soil on the school playground were reported over the years, but it wasn’t until 1978 that the contamination became obvious.[22] Residents also reported high rates of birth defects, miscarriages, and precursory symptoms of cancer.[23] In 1978, federal and state officials revealed the threat of the dumpsite containing 20,000 tons of chemicals.[24]
Gibbs demanded action from the government, including compensation for relocation for Love Canal residents.[25] Despite having no advocacy training and only a high school education, Gibbs spearheaded the effort to organize her community and challenge policies governing hazardous waste disposal.[26] She founded the Love Canal Homeowners Association (LCHA) and organized actions such as protesting, conducting research, and raising money to push the government into action.[27] Their actions intensified, even lighting a lawn on fire, spelling out “E-P-A” with the flames and temporarily holding EPA inspectors hostage, with residents blocking the pair from leaving a community meeting for six hours, to get President Jimmy Carter’s attention.[28] The LCHA also conducted a study that the EPA later corroborated, though the state initially dismissed it as “useless housewife data.”[29] Gibbs and other white housewives were the predominant leaders and participants in these actions.
It must be noted, however, that the work of the LCHA initially did not extend to the protection of Black residents of Love Canal. Many Black residents were renters residing in Griffon Manor, a public housing project.[30] Racist and classist perceptions of residents for being both Black and renters persisted. After facing exclusion by LCHA, the Concerned Love Canal Renters Association (CLCRA) was created and led by Thornton.[31] Despite friction at times, the two groups ultimately worked towards the same goal. However, CLCRA lacked the media attention LCHA received, and there is significantly less information on Thornton and CLCRA’s work than there is about Gibbs’ and LCHA’s.
Gibbs sought permanent relocation for Love Canal residents and was ultimately successful – the government purchased all homes for a combined $15 million.[32] More than 900 families were moved out of the affected area.[33] However, the relocated renters were not compensated and had more difficulty finding new homes.[34]
The cleanup was costly as well. Hooker, now Occidental Petroleum, paid $129 million to the federal government for the cost of the cleanup and relocations, in addition to paying $98 million to the state of New York.[35] The sheer severity of this effort spurned the creation of the Superfund program.[36] The contribution of these women to the birth of CERCLA continues to play an important role in cleaning up other contaminated sites around the country today, especially considering many of these sites are located near disenfranchised communities.
In that same period, a Black attorney named Linda McKeever Bullard brought the first environmental discrimination lawsuit in 1979: Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corp.[37] The class-action lawsuit was filed as an effort to prevent a sanitary landfill from being constructed close to a high school.[38] The neighborhood of the high school was middle class, predominantly Black, and suburban.[39] Bullard theorized that race influenced municipal decisions on where to dump solid waste.[40] Her husband, Dr. Robert D. Bullard, conducted research that corroborated her theory, finding that 82% of garbage in Houston was dumped in Black areas despite Black people making up 25% of the population.[41] The lawsuit alleged that the siting decision of the Texas Department of Health was racially motivated, and that its motivation was racially discriminatory.[42] The court did not find in favor of Bullard’s clients, however, because of a lack of proof of intentional discrimination.[43] Though the landfill was ultimately built, Bullard’s theory and her decision to file on behalf of it sparked awareness of environmental injustice on the basis of race.
Women continue to be at the forefront of combating environmental injustice in modern movements. Some activists like Greta Thunberg are more mainstream, but others, such as Rosemary Ahtuangaruak are less well-known. Ahtuangaruak, a community leader health aide in Nuiqsut, Alaska, has been outspoken against the oil and fossil fuel industries impact on the Arctic.[44] Working as a health aide since 1986, she noticed village members suffered from respiratory ailments that worsened when oil and gas processing created natural gas flares.[45] She has also highlighted the impact of these industries on species in the area, particularly the animals that the Iñupiaq people rely on for food.[46] Her written statement calling for stronger regulations on oil and gas companies was presented to Congress’s House Committee on Natural Resources.[47] Ahtuangaruak continues to speak out about how ConocoPhillips’ oil-drilling development (the Willow Project), would further the harm on her village and its food sources.[48] Her community advocacy has been recognized by Earthjustice, which filed a lawsuit to stop the oil-drilling project.[49]
Environmental advocacy and environmental injustices are not going away. As lawsuits continue to be brought, environmental legislation is examined or created, and the climate crisis looms, it is necessary to keep in mind the intersectional issues emphasized by the women in these spaces who continue to lead and do the work for their communities, and to learn from the efforts of past women environmentalists.
[1] See The Story of Silent Spring, NRDC (Aug. 13, 2015), https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring.
[2] Id.; see also Debra Michals, Rachel Carson, National Women’s History Museum (2015), https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/rachel-carson.
[3] Rachel Carson | About EPA, US Environmental Protection Agency https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/rachel-carson.html (last updated Sep. 14, 2016).
[4] Debra Michals, Rachel Carson, National Women’s History Museum (2015), https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/rachel-carson.
[5] See NRDC, supra note 1.
[6] Michals, supra note 4; Carson, supra note 3.
[7] See Jack Lewis, The Birth of the EPA, US Environmental Protection Agency (Nov. 1985), https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/birth-epa.html (last updated Sep. 14, 2016).
[8] See Leila McNeill, The Woman Who Challenged the Idea that Black Communities Were Destined for Disease, Smithsonian Magazine (June 5, 2018), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/woman-challenged-idea-black-communities-destined-disease-180969218/.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] See Meg Vigil-Fowler, Dr. Rebecca Cole and racial health disparities in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, Hektoen International (2019), https://hekint.org/2019/06/21/dr-rebecca-cole-and-racial-health-disparities-in-nineteenth- century-philadelphia.
[14] See Leila McNeill, The Woman Who Challenged the Idea that Black Communities Were Destined for Disease, Smithsonian Magazine (June 5, 2018), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/woman-challenged-idea-black-communities-destined-disease-180969218.
[15] See Environmental Justice, American Public Health Association, https://www.apha.org/topics-and-issues/environmental-health/environmental-justice.
[16] Id.
[17] 42 U.S.C. §§ 9601-9675
[18] See What is Superfund?, United States Environmental Protection Agency (Oct. 8, 2024), https://www.epa.gov/superfund/what-superfund.
[19] See Love Canal Niagara Falls, NY Cleanup Activities, United States Environmental Protection Agency, https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction= second.cleanup&id=0201290.
[20] See Eckardt C. Beck, The Love Canal Tragedy, 5 EPA J. 17 (Jan. 1979), https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page? handle=hein.journals/epajrnl5&div=10&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals.
[21] Id.
[22] See Alicia Saunté Phillips et al., Love Canal Tragedy, 21 J. of Perform. of Constr. Facil. 255, 313 (Aug. 2007), https://ascelibrary.org/doi/full/10.1061/%28ASCE%290887-3828%282007%2921%3A4%28313%29.
[23] Beck, supra note 20.
[24] See John McNamara, Environmentalism, Love Canal, and Lois Gibbs, 1953-1997, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (2024), https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/GLI_LoveCanal_FINAL.pdf
[25] See Jennifer Robinson, American Experience: Poisoned Ground: The Tragedy at Love Canal, KPBS (April 17, 2024), https://www.kpbs.org/news/2024/04/17/american-experience-poisoned-ground-the-tragedy-at-love-canal.
[26] See Kevin Konrad, Lois Gibbs: Grassroots Organizer and Environmental Health Advocate, 101 Am. J. Pub. Health 1158, 1158 (Sep. 2011), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3154230.
[27] Id.
[28] See Ronnie Green, From Homemaker to Hell-Raiser in Love Canal, The Center for Public Integrity (April 16, 2013), https://publicintegrity.org/environment/from-homemaker-to-hell-raiser-in-love-canal/.
[29] See Kirstin Butler, How a Group of Housewives Changed History, PBS (April 18, 2024). https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/poisoned-ground-love-canal-mothers.
[30] Id.
[31] See McNamara, supra note 24.
[32] See Konrad, supra note 26, at 1158-59.
[33] See Kirstin Butler, How a Group of Housewives Changed History, PBS (April 18, 2024). https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/poisoned-ground-love-canal-mothers.
[34] See Thomas Fletcher, Neighborhood Change at Love Canal: Contamination, Evacuation, and Resettlement, 19 Land Use Policy 311, 381 (2002), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837702000455#BIB7.
[35] See Konrad, supra note 26, at 1159.
[36] See United States Environmental Protection Agency, supra note 19.
[37] Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corp., 482 F.Supp. 673 (S.D. Tex. 1979).
[38] See Environmental Justice Timeline, United States Environmental Protection Agency (June 6, 2024), https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/environmental-justice-timeline.
[39] See Yessenia Funes, The Father of Environmental Justice Exposes the Geography of Inequity, Nature (Sep. 20, 2023), https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02613-6.
[40] Id.
[41] Id.
[42] Bean, 482 F.Supp. at 675.
[43] See Funes, supra note 39.
[44] See Rebecca Bowe, Arctic Drilling Will Only Worsen Air Pollution for a Village That’s Fighting to Breathe, Earthjustice (April 18, 2018), https://earthjustice.org/article/arctic-drilling-will-only-worsen-air-pollution- for-a-village-that-s-fighting-to-breathe.
[45] Id.
[46] See Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, Shell’s Arctic Drilling Will Destroy Our Homeland and Culture, HuffPost (Nov. 23, 2010), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shells-arctic-drilling-wi_b_787482.
[47] Alaska’s Right to Produce Act of 2023: Hearing on H.R. 6285 Before the Subcomm. on Energy and Min. Res. and the H. Comm. on Nat. Res., 118th Cong. 29-30 (2023) (written statement of Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, Executive Director, Grandmothers Growing Goodness, Former Mayor, City of Nuiqsut).
[48] See Bowe, supra note 44.
[49] See Emilie Karrick Surrusco, These Women Environmental Leaders Are Fighting For Their Communities, Earthjustice (Feb. 28, 2024), https://earthjustice.org/article/these-women-environmental-leaders-are-fighting-for-their-communities.