THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605190057
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 123 lines
Linda Price King founded the activist group Environmental Health Network seven years ago with $5,000 from friends and neighbors and a fervent desire to help the little guy.
She built her coffee-klatch group into a $350,000-a-year organization, distributed a national newsletter, lobbied Congress and traveled to Russia, Japan and Canada to advise communities exposed to hazardous chemicals and toxic waste.
But that was before the rejection letters started arriving. One by one, beginning last fall, private foundations that had funded her work for years wrote to say, sorry, but money was tight and a check would not be coming.
Last month, the bubble burst. King could not pay the rent for her office in Chesapeake nor could she cover expenses for her two staffers.
She has since hauled her mountain of case files, reports, phone lists, computers and a well-worn copy machine to her home in Great Bridge. The fight, she maintains, is not over.
``We're still alive,'' King said from her paper-crammed living room Thursday, ``but just barely.''
Her plight is not unlike that of many other nonprofit groups, which find themselves scrambling for survival in an era of shrinking government aid and overburdened philanthropies.
Consider the recent ``Dear Linda'' letter from the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, the social-consciousness arm of the famous ice-cream maker, which had given King $15,000 a year since 1993.
``This decision does not reflect dissatisfaction with your previous work, but rather is an indication of an excessive number of applicants and a desire to fund new organizations on our part,'' wrote foundation director Rebecca Golden.
Leafing through a folder of such correspondence last week, King shook her head and wondered if life as a professional activist is worth it any more.
``My heart tells me that if I can get back on my feet, I'll be OK,'' said King, 43. ``But my head says, if you keep this up, you're going to end up a bag lady. And then what do I do? Organize other bag ladies to fight the system?''
The Environmental Health Network is essentially a support group for sick or scared people. Most are poor. Many need information about a peculiar smell drifting their way from a neighborhood plant, or about a persistent headache, or about a rash on their child.
Some ask for a good lawyer. Others just want a phone number for an appropriate government agency. Many want suggestions for fighting a proposed new waste dump, incinerator or chemical storehouse in their backyard.
``We're like an octopus,'' King said. ``We had long tentacles that could hook people up to get the answers they needed.''
Tony Gammage, a Chesapeake resident, ran a similar support group after he got sick from exposure to a mishmash of chemicals in his workplace. He was a design engineer for a defense contractor, but has spent the past 10 years and $50,000 in medical bills trying to get well.
A victim of ``multiple chemical sensitivity,'' a debilitating condition linked to indoor air pollution and poor ventilation, Gammage said the Environmental Health Network filled a void when his group ran thin of money and resources.
``Linda brought a source of information and help that just was nonexistent in this area and in Virginia,'' Gammage said. ``I certainly tried, but I didn't have the funding, either. I'm not sure where we go from here.''
King often criticizes government, industry and the medical establishment. She uses heavy words like ``conspiracy,'' ``deception'' and ``corruption'' to explain why chemical-exposure illnesses have not attracted wider attention.
It's easy to understand why King has not made many friends among the influential and powerful.
``I don't think she'll be missed by anyone other than those who desperately need her and are sick,'' Gammage said. ``A lot of people probably wish she'd just go away.''
King was not always a firebrand. As she herself describes, ``I was Betty Crocker - until I got to West Virginia.''
A young mother and wife 16 years ago, King moved into a house overlooking a valley of chemical and manufacturing plants in Nitro, W.Va. She soon became sick, her eyes swelling, her skin flaking, her head thumping.
King started asking questions of her neighbors, who also complained of illnesses and odors. She eventually confronted chemical company officials, but got few answers. King kept pressing anyway. Her career path was set.
``I couldn't believe people would just accept what they were being exposed to,'' she said. ``We started pushing them not to - to fight back.''
After moving to Ohio then Louisiana, King took a job with Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste as its regional director in the Deep South. She organized communities to survey their wastes in Mississippi, and fought a toxic-dump site in Texas.
But she wanted to focus more attention on the health effects of exposure to such conditions. So King started the Environmental Health Network out of her home in New Orleans seven years ago, with a mailing list of about 300 people and organizations and just $5,000 in the bank.
It soon grew, as did her reputation as an activist and organizer. She got threatening phone calls and her eldest son wondered if she was going too far.
King returned to her native Virginia after a divorce nearly four years ago, and brought her EHN headquarters with her. She settled in a small rented office in Chesapeake off Greenbrier Parkway. Her mailing list continue to expand, to nearly 10,000, and her budget reached $350,000.
There were speaking engagements in Canada. Testimony on environmental reform bills before House committees in Washington. A trip to the former Soviet Union to persuade activists to demand more from their government.
She traces the beginning of the end, however, to the 1994 congressional elections. The Republican Party swept into power on a campaign of less government and deregulation. Government grants were held up or cut, and nonprofit groups started wrestling for money from already-stretched private foundations.
Like many other groups, EHN was left out in the cold.
``I've been running around like Abbie Hoffman the last few years saying, let's clean this up, let's do it now,' '' she said last week at her home. ``I don't think you can do that any more. People want to fund safe projects, safe groups. I'll need to do it differently.'' MEMO: THE ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH NETWORK
The nonprofit support group typically helps people who want
suggestions for fighting companies that deposit hazardous chemicals and
toxic wastes near their homes.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by HUY NGUYEN, The Virginian-Pilot
Linda Price King can no longer afford an office, so she has moved a
mountain of gear to her Chesapeake home.
KEYWORDS: ACTIVIST ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION by CNB