[CPEO-MEF] VOCs, COMMUNITIES: Tucson south side's environmental justice movement passes the torch

[Lenny Siegel <Lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Tucson’s south side residents built an environmental justice movemen after TCE — now they’re passing the torch
After decades of organizing for clean water, south side residents are making sure the story isn’t forgotten
    
By Stephanie Casanova
Arizona Luminaria
January 24, 2036

Tucson - Yolanda Herrera dabs the corner of her eye with a tissue, wiping away tears as she talks about the people in her family who have died of cancer. This is the legacy she connects to decades of drinking water contaminated with trichloroethylene, also known as TCE, on Tucson’s south side. 

Sitting at a concrete picnic table outside the Pueblo Neighborhood Center, Herrera, 73, remembers how water contaminated with TCE — from about the 1940s to the 1980s — impacted her family, and how it led to her involvement in advocating for clean water for more than 30 years. 

For decades, families on Tucson’s south side have lived with the consequences of water contamination: burying loved ones, organizing for accountability and forcing federal and local agencies to reckon with the damage. Many of these families helped build Southern Arizona’s environmental justice movement. Now, as they age, longtime advocates like Herrera are focused on something else: ensuring that the history and unfinished fight for clean water are passed to a new generation.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.calonews.com/arizona/tucson-s-south-side-residents-built-an-environmental-justice-movement-after-tce-now-they-re/article_e87b0f68-753e-414c-b0e4-85aeb26b9f91.html

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)




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