Hope Beneath Our Feet_ Restoring Our Place in the Natural World - Martin Keogh [58]
Fort Bragg numbers just over six thousand residents and sits directly east of the mill site with coastal Highway 1 in between. Under the name of North Coast Action, we organized and led community gatherings to brainstorm the future of the mill site.
We upheld the values of transparency and participatory democracy, offering a place at the table for everyone. People from all walks of life, including fishermen, timber harvesters, and real estate agents, attended the meetings. Everything was proposed, from a marine research center to a performing arts center to a sustainable mill. Many coastal residents wanted to see a museum dedicated to a small group of Pomo Indians still residing on the land. One night, after a particularly energized gathering, a man approached me wearing a worn jacket and faded workman’s cap. He pulled me aside and in a hushed voice told me that he had worked as a millwright and was aware that the mill property was badly polluted with highly toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and other chemicals. He didn’t want to reveal his name for fear of retribution by his past employer. The next week, it seemed that everywhere I went, I was hearing story after story about toxins on the mill site. Loie was also hearing stories about PCB spills, burying of toxic waste, and burning of toxic materials in the mill’s powerhouse.
With guidance from a friend who is a veteran toxicologist, we placed an ad in our local newspaper asking anyone aware of any toxins buried, burned, or dumped on the mill site to contact us. By telephone and personal interviews, people anonymously recounted stories of dumping PCB transformers into the ocean and mill ponds, throwing buckets of PCB oil onto the soil, burning toxic waste in the incinerator, and burning open-air piles of toxic materials on the rim of the headlands. Ditches and pipes leading from mill buildings carried waste products and solvents directly out to the beaches and into the ocean.
The information was overwhelming and disheartening. If all the things mentioned had happened, and more that we hadn’t been told about, then we had a deadly situation on our hands and a fight that would demand a tremendous commitment if we were to heal the land and restore health in our community. I became more determined than ever to uncover the truth.
My connection with the land, my family, and the community is the foundation for my life, my love, and my work in the world, both as an artist and activist. This love can fill my heart with joy and make me fierce when something I love is threatened. I attempt to teach my daughter the power of this fierceness by taking action. The year I was pregnant several of my women friends died of cancer. Each death heightened my awareness of the toxic state of our environment. I feared for my daughter’s health in the future. Now, here I was, living downwind from a defunct lumber mill with a century-old toxic legacy!
Loie, my husband, and I began attending city council meetings, expressing our concern about the toxins on the mill site. We were assured again and again by corporate spokespeople that the land was “no more polluted than a gas station.”
However, the more we delved into the issue, the more we realized that this statement was simply a lie. The land was vastly poisoned, and we felt strongly that the corporation that poisoned it should clean it up—not cover it up. We began to meet once a week to plan our strategy, and those meetings quickly grew to three or four times a week. We worked long, hard, furious hours, learning about toxins, reading eight-inch-thick reports, and talking to scientists. I had worked as an investigative journalist for more than a decade and was adept at digesting vast amounts of information. Even still, the learning curve was steep. We continued voicing our concerns to the city council and asking that the city staff take