Lois Gibbs

Lois Gibbs has been shot at, insulted, threatened and harassed in her twenty one years as an environmental activist. But the woman who seeks to clean up hazardous waste sites around the nation isn’t easily intimidated.
It all started in 1978 when she discovered that her neighbourhood in Love Canal, NY was located on a 20,000 ton chemical waste dump. When she learnt that her children’s elementary school was located directly under large amounts of toxic waste, she begged the School Board to move her children to another school. The School Board denied her request because it felt that every student would want to move if one was granted privilege.

Lois began to ask the government to clean up or relocate residents in 1978.
When they refused to listen, she organized her neighbours into the Love Canal Homeowners Association. Gibbs fought for two more years until the then president Jimmy Carter delivered an emergency declaration moving nine hundred families out of the area in 1980. Congress also stepped in, in December of 1980 to help clean up other toxic waste sites around the US.