Water is life! That is the cry that was repeated when Kandi Mossett finished her keynote address at the Local Environmental Action Conference last Sunday. Mossett, of Mandan, Hidsata and Arikara tribal heritage, is a leading voice in the fight to the impacts that environmental injustice are having on indigenous communities across our country.
We all know about the stand taken at Standing Rock in North Dakota to keep an oil pipeline from crossing sacred lands and the lake that supplies water to the tribe, threatening the safety of that water supply. The protest has gotten a lot of press over the past months, but Mossett filled us in on the terrifying context and damage done to land and water over past years.
Oil wells and fracking have been going on for years. One result is that contaminated fracking water has been trucked to manmade ponds that are not reliable and have leaks. These spills kill plants and soil. One farmer’s entire field was destroyed. The river where people fished turned blue, signifying a deoxygenating algae bloom that killed the fish. Mossett showed us a photo of an 18-inch “frack sox” filter. These are radioactive and not disposed of properly, and sometimes are picked up by children. Babies are affected by the hydrogen sulphide poisonous gas.
The idea that the Standing Rock protest is just about the building of a pipeline does not begin to tell the story of lands taken, soil and water already contaminated, and health consequences of fracking.
As we all know, the protest has not prevented the pipeline. Mossett, a cancer survivor, tells all who have ever fought for justice, “You’re not guaranteed change when you make your voice heard against injustice, but you are guaranteed to fail if you choose to remain silent.”
Mossett continues to fight for justice for indigenous people and you can find more information at the Indigenous Environmental Network at: indigenousrising.org
In the afternoon, Lois Gibbs was the keynote speaker. In 1978, she founded the Love Canal Homeowners Association. More than half of the audience understood instantly what that meant.
When Gibbs, who had a toddler son at the time, noticed that many children in the neighborhood were becoming ill, she investigated and found that the school and the neighborhood were built on a toxic landfill. She and other parents attended town committee meetings and asked them to do something, confident that this information would move them to action. But nothing happened she said — no action was taken.
She went to the town again, but their decision was based on a cost/benefit analysis of the neighborhood and the earnings of the 100 or so families living there. Earnings of men and their sons were calculated over the years, but women and daughters were not considered to have any earnings and were worth nothing.
“Can you imagine? The women were worth nothing?” Gibbs said to her audience.
Gibbs’ group then turned to science and created a survey that showed that 56 percent of the children had birth defects and counted the number of illnesses and miscarriages. Their study was dismissed as “useless housewife data by people who have a vested interest.”
The town finally did their own study and got the same information, but declared that this was simply a random cluster of genetically defective people.
Then, Gibbs said, the group misbehaved. They got town officials to come to a meeting at her house for more discussion and served cookies and coffee. Then we told them they could not leave until they promised to do something to remove all the families and give them new homes.
“We held them hostage,” she said.
The men made phone calls, one of which brought a sharp shooter to keep watch through the window. After five hours they said they would work something out, but Gibbs and her group told them that if they did not have a plan in place by Wednesday at noon, three days later, they would be very sorry.
The media was told of the deadline and there was great tension, but at exactly noon on Wednesday, an agreement was reached.
Within a month, many of the families had been evactuated, and the rest followed soon after.
Gibbs’ toddler daughter, who was conceived and born while they lived at Love Canal, had been extremely ill through all this, but she said her daughter and son had fully recovered after two years of living elsewhere. Her daughter has even given birth to her three healthy grandchildren.
Gibbs’ advice was that people who want to bring about change need science and the law. She said to fight politically, never violently, and always to stand together.
I did not to attend the workshop about Flint Water because we are fortunate in Greenfield to have good clean drinking water. Water testing results are posted on the town’s website.
I did attend “Dirty Water: Increasing Community Capacity in the Face of Drinking Water Contamination with Emerging Chemicals.” The emerging chemicals we focused on were polyflourinated water contaminants like PFCs, PFAS, PFOA and more. These are chemicals that can spread through the soil and get into water systems from factories.
Testing is difficult and expensive — they cannot be boiled away from drinking water like bacteria — and they can be absorbed through your skin from upholstery or carpeting materials, and by bathing or taking a hot shower, which allows you to inhale the chemical. The workshop did not solve any problems, but pointed out the problems that need solving.
Water is Life! We must guard and protect our nation’s water supply.
Pat Leuchtman has written and gardened since 1980. She lives in Greenfield. Readers can leave comments at her website: www.commonweeder.com