By MAGGIE JARUZEL-POTTER When Marylee Orr was given the
2009 Environmental Leadership Award from the
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ), she was the first recipient chosen from outside the corporate or government sector.
“I feel a bit like a trailblazer,” said Orr, who is executive director of the
Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), a Baton Rouge-based nonprofit organization she founded 22 years ago.
“Getting this award shows that government, industry and nonprofits are really seen by the state as partners,” she continued. “The environmental community has now been publicly recognized as an integral part of the whole.”
Marylee Orr was given LDEQ’s Environmental Leadership Award. |
The award, given annually by LDEQ’s Environmental Leadership Program, takes into consideration a person’s record of successes in raising public awareness about environmental and health issues through education, advocacy, research and program development.
Since 2000, LEAN has been a Mott grantee through the
Foundation’s Environment program. To date, the organization has received five grants totaling
$705,000 under Mott’s Conservation of
Freshwater Ecosystems focus area. With Mott’s support, LEAN has worked to improve Louisiana’s water quality protection programs, monitor the state’s implementation of the federal
Clean Water Act (CWA), provide technical assistance to community groups with specific water quality concerns, and educate the public about water quality challenges and potential solutions.
For more than two decades, Orr has been the public face of LEAN, gradually pulling together about 100 grassroots community organizations from throughout the state to speak with one voice on environmental issues.
Among other things, the groups -– under LEAN’s leadership -– have used their collective power to monitor the amounts of toxic chemicals released from the state’s petrochemical companies into rivers, streams, bayous and wetlands -– and held polluters responsible for clean up.
When necessary, Orr says, they also have successfully used legal channels to address toxic contamination. That was the case for mercury meters, or manometers, that were installed decades ago to monitor natural gas wells and pipelines.
In July 2009, the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic settled a lawsuit on behalf of several groups, including LEAN, that addressed manometers owned by a large natural gas company. Although the company did not admit liability, it did agree to clean up soil that had been contaminated with mercury by leaks or spills from its meters. The company also agreed to replace more than 400 mercury manometers with another kind of meter to reduce further soil and freshwater contamination.
“This is life-changing work that affects our natural resources, but it is also about quality of life” said Orr, who was drawn into environmental work after her son was born with a lung disease related to chemical pollution.
“We make it about people. It’s not just numbers on a piece of paper. It affects people’s health and their future. This is very long-term work.”
Although LEAN has statewide -– and even national –- recognition and credibility today, it wasn’t always that way, Orr says. She remembers the day, about 10 years ago, when the organization crossed that imaginary line -– changing from being perceived as another grassroots group to being recognized as a state leader on environmental issues.
LEAN’s moment of “arrival” came with delivery of the daily newspaper.
“When there was a story about LEAN on the front page of the business section, using our acronym, that’s when we knew that we were being taken seriously,” she said.
“That’s when the press and the public began making the connection between the environment and the economy.”
Orr pauses. Then, true to her Louisiana roots, she waxes poetic.
“Down here, we see that people -- along with the birds, animals, wetlands, and cypress forests -- are all interconnected. The bayous and creeks, with their many migratory birds, are magical.
“If we destroy the environment, we destroy a part of ourselves.”