It all started with a mother wanting to protect her child.
Mary Lou Sharon noticed late one night as she rocked her baby girl to sleep, that dump trucks were going up and down her road on Lewis Street towards the Laurel Park landfill. The year was 1967.
Having recently heard a news report on illegal dumping in another town, she wondered if this could be the case right here in Naugatuck.
Sharon reached out to her neighbors who told stories of fires, strong chemical odors and water contamination.
Sharon’s efforts in Naugatuck were recognized Thursday when she was honored as Earth Day Mayor for the Day. A ceremony was held at Town Hall, commemorating all she has done environmentally throughout the borough.
In the Superfund 25th Anniversary Report — a federal program focused on cleaning up the nation’s hazardous waste sites — she stated: “While I was surveying the neighbors, I found many women experienced miscarriages, and cancer in many families. Young women died early in life because they used to play in the stream that was polluted. A woman bathed in benzene-contaminated water and ended up with eye tumors. Farmers’ chickens and ducks also died from the stream.”
Shocked to find the administration at the time was unresponsive to her fears and those of her neighbors, this soft-spoken, non-confrontational woman decided she would lead the charge to find the truth and most importantly, the solution.
“I started to investigate, ask questions, talk to neighbors, ask my husband questions, ask residents who worked in town,” Sharon said. “And when I heard about the trucks carrying barrels escorted and transported to the landfill and the stories about those barrels being pushed into pits and the kids watching them disintegrate, then I saw pictures of homes at the top, enveloped in smoke from the Laurel Park landfill.”
What she uncovered was that not only were chemicals being dumped in the landfill but also that they had contaminated the aquifers that feed the groundwater supply.
The neighborhood near the landfill was experiencing noxious odors from the chemicals and the resulting fires. Orange leachate oozed into backyards. A nearby brook, which flowed beneath the landfill, was heavily polluted with high levels of toxic chemicals and landfill leachate, which traveled downhill through the area of Andrew Avenue School.
When Mayor Terry Buckmiller was elected, he promptly met with the neighbors and for the first time, they had an advocate in the mayor’s office.
“This began my journey, which took 16 years from the bottom of the hill to reach the top,” she said.
In 1981, Sharon formed The Pollution Extermination Group (PEG) and by 1983 PEG was incorporated with three other members. With Sharon at the helm, PEG secured legal representation and lobbied in Washington for the re-authorization of Superfund.
They achieved their objectives, to close Laurel Park Landfill and to secure potable water for the approximately 50 residents within the ¼-mile radius of the site.
“The Connecticut Fund for the Environment playes a big part in helping us organize and become an intervening party in the state procedures,” Sharon said.
On a global level, in 1991, Sharon was one of 14 women in North America invited to speak at the Global Assembly of Women and the Environment located in Miami, Fla. Her efforts to contain contaminates at Laurel Park landfill are published in the French daily publication L’Express International.
In this region and statewide, she has been involved with a long list of conferences and task forces as well as the Northeast Earth Day Regional Organizer Network (NEDRON) and The Center for Health, Environment and Justice headed by Lois Gibbs who exposed the fact that a company in Niagra Falls, N.Y., buried 21,000 tons of toxic waste under the Love Canal neighborhood.
Laurel Park Landfill together with Sharon’s efforts has been the subject of several television documentaries and publications, including Northwest Hills, Amicus Journal and Connecticut Magazine.
In Naugatuck, she has been co-chair of Earth Day Activities, President of Pollution Extermination Group, Inc (PEG) and President of Church Woman United Community advisory panel.
For many, Sharon has been a guidepost by which they (the members of those groups) aspire to.
Len Yannelli, outreach director of the Committee for a Cultural/Environmental Center – Gunntown Road, recalls the first Naugatuck Town Meeting he attended in 1981. He stated that Sharon was constantly interrupted and her every word jeered at by an organized group in the audience.
“I was amazed at her steadfastness, calm, informed presentation and courage,” Yanelli said.
Kevin Zak, of the Naugatuck River Revival Group, said the following: “Every thing needs to start somewhere. Mary Lou started it here in our hometown. She stirred the pot and opened the door not unlike Rosa Parks. I stepped through the door she and others left open. Her story and persistence is inspirational. When we are long past, she will be remembered. I hope the youth of this town understand and are inspired by her past actions.”
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Mary Lou Sharon noticed late one night as she rocked her baby girl to sleep, that dump trucks were going up and down her road on Lewis Street towards the Laurel Park landfill. The year was 1967.
Having recently heard a news report on illegal dumping in another town, she wondered if this could be the case right here in Naugatuck.
Sharon reached out to her neighbors who told stories of fires, strong chemical odors and water contamination.
Sharon’s efforts in Naugatuck were recognized Thursday when she was honored as Earth Day Mayor for the Day. A ceremony was held at Town Hall, commemorating all she has done environmentally throughout the borough.
In the Superfund 25th Anniversary Report — a federal program focused on cleaning up the nation’s hazardous waste sites — she stated: “While I was surveying the neighbors, I found many women experienced miscarriages, and cancer in many families. Young women died early in life because they used to play in the stream that was polluted. A woman bathed in benzene-contaminated water and ended up with eye tumors. Farmers’ chickens and ducks also died from the stream.”
Shocked to find the administration at the time was unresponsive to her fears and those of her neighbors, this soft-spoken, non-confrontational woman decided she would lead the charge to find the truth and most importantly, the solution.
“I started to investigate, ask questions, talk to neighbors, ask my husband questions, ask residents who worked in town,” Sharon said. “And when I heard about the trucks carrying barrels escorted and transported to the landfill and the stories about those barrels being pushed into pits and the kids watching them disintegrate, then I saw pictures of homes at the top, enveloped in smoke from the Laurel Park landfill.”
What she uncovered was that not only were chemicals being dumped in the landfill but also that they had contaminated the aquifers that feed the groundwater supply.
The neighborhood near the landfill was experiencing noxious odors from the chemicals and the resulting fires. Orange leachate oozed into backyards. A nearby brook, which flowed beneath the landfill, was heavily polluted with high levels of toxic chemicals and landfill leachate, which traveled downhill through the area of Andrew Avenue School.
When Mayor Terry Buckmiller was elected, he promptly met with the neighbors and for the first time, they had an advocate in the mayor’s office.
“This began my journey, which took 16 years from the bottom of the hill to reach the top,” she said.
In 1981, Sharon formed The Pollution Extermination Group (PEG) and by 1983 PEG was incorporated with three other members. With Sharon at the helm, PEG secured legal representation and lobbied in Washington for the re-authorization of Superfund.
They achieved their objectives, to close Laurel Park Landfill and to secure potable water for the approximately 50 residents within the ¼-mile radius of the site.
“The Connecticut Fund for the Environment playes a big part in helping us organize and become an intervening party in the state procedures,” Sharon said.
On a global level, in 1991, Sharon was one of 14 women in North America invited to speak at the Global Assembly of Women and the Environment located in Miami, Fla. Her efforts to contain contaminates at Laurel Park landfill are published in the French daily publication L’Express International.
In this region and statewide, she has been involved with a long list of conferences and task forces as well as the Northeast Earth Day Regional Organizer Network (NEDRON) and The Center for Health, Environment and Justice headed by Lois Gibbs who exposed the fact that a company in Niagra Falls, N.Y., buried 21,000 tons of toxic waste under the Love Canal neighborhood.
Laurel Park Landfill together with Sharon’s efforts has been the subject of several television documentaries and publications, including Northwest Hills, Amicus Journal and Connecticut Magazine.
In Naugatuck, she has been co-chair of Earth Day Activities, President of Pollution Extermination Group, Inc (PEG) and President of Church Woman United Community advisory panel.
For many, Sharon has been a guidepost by which they (the members of those groups) aspire to.
Len Yannelli, outreach director of the Committee for a Cultural/Environmental Center – Gunntown Road, recalls the first Naugatuck Town Meeting he attended in 1981. He stated that Sharon was constantly interrupted and her every word jeered at by an organized group in the audience.
“I was amazed at her steadfastness, calm, informed presentation and courage,” Yanelli said.
Kevin Zak, of the Naugatuck River Revival Group, said the following: “Every thing needs to start somewhere. Mary Lou started it here in our hometown. She stirred the pot and opened the door not unlike Rosa Parks. I stepped through the door she and others left open. Her story and persistence is inspirational. When we are long past, she will be remembered. I hope the youth of this town understand and are inspired by her past actions.”
View the original article here
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