LOIS GIBBS, PIONEERING ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST,
TO SPEAK AT MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE ON OCTOBER 30

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. – Love Canal had yet to become a household name in 1978, the year that Lois Gibbs, a 27-year-old homemaker, discovered that her son’s elementary school had been built atop a 20,000 ton, toxic-chemical dump in Niagara Falls, New York. Gathering her courage, she knocked on doors throughout her neighborhood, sharing information and concerns with other residents. After a two-year struggle, the Love Canal Homeowners Association that Gibbs founded succeeded in persuading the federal government to relocate 833 families from the area, signaling the first major victory in a grassroots environmental movement that would launch the federal Superfund program for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites.

Gibbs, now the executive director of the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice, an organization she founded in 1981, will visit Mount Holyoke College on Wednesday, October 30 to speak on “The Love Canal Twenty-Five Years Later: What Have We Learned?” Her talk begins at 7 pm in Gamble Auditorium of the art building, and is free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible.

“We are thrilled and honored to have Lois Gibbs at Mount Holyoke,” says Stephanie Sorge, the campus organizer for the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, one of the sponsors of the talk. “Now, more than ever, we need more Lois Gibbses to organize to protect the public interest, and it is our hope that her presentation will inspire and motivate more people to get involved.” Other sponsors include the president’s office, the College’s Center for Environmental Literacy, and the Campus Conservation Coalition.

The Center for Health, Environment, and Justice has assisted more than 8,000 grassroots groups with organizing, technical, and general information nationwide. Most recently, the Center in March released a report finding that 1,185 public schools in Massachusetts and four other surveyed states are within a half-mile of a toxic waste site. The report, “Creating Safe Learning Zones,” claims that more than a half-million students are unnecessarily exposed to harmful toxins in their schools, putting them at higher risk of developing asthma, cancers, and other diseases linked to pollutants.

Gibbs has appeared on 60 Minutes, 20/20, Oprah, Good Morning America, the Today Show, Now with Bill Moyers, and the McNeill-Lehrer Report, among other programs. She is the author of Love Canal: The Story Continues … (New Society Publishers, 1998).