Action Coalition Just Won’t Quit

Finally, someone noticed and said thanks.

Lois Gibbs doesn’t even live in Shoshone County. But she’s grateful to Barbara Miller and the People’s Action Coalition for their tireless work to improve life around the Bunker Hill Superfund site.

“These people have gone the extra mile,” says Lois, whose protests over the toxic waste dump near her home in Love Canal, N.Y., 18 years ago led to the start of the federal Superfund cleanup program.

“They scored well beyond anyone else in the field in accomplishment, community building, caring, loving. They’re a model for other groups on mining issues.”

Lois was so impressed that she added the People’s Action Coalition to the Grassroots Hall of Fame last week.

Her nonprofit Center for Health, Environment and Justice in Falls Church, Va., works with 8,000 grass-roots groups nationwide. About 300 are in the Hall of Fame.

Many of those groups no longer exist. But the People’s Action Coalition just keeps going.

“Even after 12 years, they keep plugging away,” Lois says. “Barbara still calls us. It’s very hard for someone to stay involved for that long.”

Hard indeed.

“Just when I get tired, someone shows up at the door and says, ‘I’m tired of seeing my child sick,”’ says Barbara, who has four children. “And I’m not tired anymore.”

The coalition began as a chapter of the Idaho Citizens Network five years after the mines shut down and dropped the Silver Valley into a legendary depression.

Barbara was a valley girl, raised next door to the Cataldo Mission in a family committed to hard work and equal opportunity.

Life had taken her to Bonners Ferry for 10 years as an adult, but she returned to Cataldo in 1985 with two young boys to raise and no job.

The citizens’ network had a grant to help lift Shoshone County back onto its feet and Barbara was interested.

“I was raised to respect values and people. There wasn’t a lot of money in the job, but I liked where it was going,” she says.

She was hired and interviewed ministers, union leaders and senior citizens to find out what they thought would most improve quality of life in the valley.

Foremost, they wanted the 21-mile Superfund site at Kellogg cleaned up.

“But they thought it would be timely,” she says.

Some of the people she interviewed volunteered to work for the coalition - seniors Ruth Hussa and Enid Kerner, pastor Terry Downs and Ray White, Barbara’s father.

Work was slow and methodical. They learned from grass-roots groups in other states, held community meetings, went door-to-door with information about lead contamination and waded through multiple levels of bureaucrats by telephone.

Some locals mistook them for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials.

“That hurt,” Barbara says. “There was a lot of mistrust, but we just kept going.”

The town wasn’t united behind the effort. The mines had supported families for decades and many people refused to blame them for their health problems.

Kellogg was desperately trying to remake itself into a ski town and woo tourists, hotels and restaurants. The coalition’s message of lead contamination wasn’t exactly enticing.

Barbara and her group resisted fighting with the community. Instead, they brought in experts who helped blow the dust from the locals’ eyes. People began supporting the coalition’s cry for an end to studies and a start to the cleanup.

They backed Barbara’s request that federal officials hire local contractors instead of outsiders for the cleanup.

“They were the first group to bring that up,” Lois says. “Who cares more about the cleanup than the people who live there?”

The local hiring idea spread to other federal cleanups and even resulted in a job training program in one Washington, D.C., neighborhood.

Getting specialized health care for lead contamination was one of the coalition’s longest battles. Once Silver Valley people understood the tie between their health problems and lead, they backed the coalition’s constant pressure on federal officials to open a clinic in Kellogg.

As the noise level over the problem grew, doctors noticed. They arranged to learn from experts about treatment for lead-related maladies. Physicians for Social Responsibility in Spokane took up the cause and recently announced plans to open a clinic in Kellogg.

Barbara smiles at the coalition’s list of accomplishments, almost as if it’s a surprise to her.

“If you believe in something strong enough and find a lot of people to help, it’s easy to be committed,” she says. “We’re brought up to be our brother’s keeper and to care for others. That’s all we’re trying to do.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo