Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 18, 1991 TAG: 9104180351
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BETH MACY/ Staff WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Which is no easy challenge at a time when post-war worries and the recession make the environment seem like a luxury issue.
There are signs that the movement is springing back to life, though, just as the landscape returns to green.
New environmental groups have formed in the past year, and their members will be among the volunteers working at Earth Day festivities throughout Southwest Virginia this weekend.
Long-established civic organizations have adopted environmental programs this year, too. For instance, the Junior League of Roanoke, which has long tried to shed an image of white gloves, may be trading them in for rubber gloves. The group has plans to take on, of all projects, household hazardous-waste disposal.
"It just illustrates how people who've never been concerned about these things now are," says Ellen Aiken, executive director of the Clean Valley Council. "For Junior Leaguers to get enthusiastic about garbage is a pretty dramatic turn-around."
But before a group can make that commitment, leaders must emerge. Meet some of the people who are making an impact on Southwest Virginia's environmental scene.
Cary Wright
Apathetic Roanoke College students beware:
Gripe about politics all you want, but not in front of sophomore English major Cary Wright.
At 20, the Danville native is founder and president of the uni-versity's most active student group, Earthbound.
He writes letters to his elected officials, anywhere from five to 20 a month. He's been known to drive to Richmond to lobby the General Assembly for the passage of bottle bills. He was instrumental in organizing a campus recycling program.
His group organized weeklong Earth Day activities at the college this year and last, including a national debate on Styrofoam vs. alternative packaging. The debate drew only 50 or 60 students, some of whom came only because it was a class requirement.
Wright shakes his head. "We have excellent turn-outs at lacrosse games, but we sponsor a national event here and don't get nearly the turn-out."
Wright and his Earthbound cohorts are hoping to do something about student apathy. They encourage friends to call or write politicians rather than just complain among themselves. They sponsor monthly programs on topics such as acid rain and recycling.
"Right now, business is the most popular major here, and if we can get these future executives to be more environmentally aware, it'll trickle down," says Wright, an honors student who wants to become an environmental lawyer.
After Earth Day '91, Wright plans to focus on the environmental conference he and the college plans to sponsor next March. Held in conjunction with the school's 150th anniversary, the conference, called "Earthvisions," will feature nationally known speakers from groups such as the National Wildlife Federation.
And if the turn-out's not better than last time, beware of the guy in the Birkenstocks.
Ellen Aiken
Nobody can accuse the Clean Valley Council of being the fussy anti-litter organization it started out as in 1978. The educational organization has become the valley-wide leader in recycling.
In 1984, it was instrumental in setting up the Community Recycling Station, the Roanoke Valley's first drop-off station. Then in 1986, under the direction of Kelly Whitney, the group asked Roanoke County officials to start the first curbside pick-up program in the state. When the county said no because of lack of funds, Whitney surprised them all by garnering funding from the state, and another first was born.
As current director Aiken likes to say, "Whereas before we were leading the bandwagon, now it's zooming off on its own, and we're trying to hang on."
Not that Clean Valley has taken a back seat. Aiken and her two employees are still out there, answering the public's questions on recycling, talking to schools and helping businesses set up recycling programs.
Aiken spends a lot of time talking to company executives, trying to convince them that they won't get rich off recycling but that it does save money in the long run.
"You've gotta approach business with the bottom line," she explains. "They're willing to be good environmental citizens as long as it isn't too expensive."
For the former Roanoke Memorial Hospital psychologist, the message is accountability, but the technique is pure persuasion.
"People think it's odd I'm doing this," says Aiken, 40. "I never expected to make trash a career.
"But I've always been into environmental issues, and the central tenet of psychology is getting people to change their behavior, so that's not that tenuous a connection."
John Cone, Jim Loesel
The oldest of valley environmental groups, the Citizens Environmental Council has been around since 1973, almost as long as Earth Day itself.
"We're not attempting to build an organization that's highly emotional or rabble-rousing," says John Cone, a Roanoke architect who has been with the group since its inception. "We're looking for effective changes."
Known primarily as an environmental-watchdog group, the council has concentrated on projects such as mountainside development and the Roanoke River flood-control plan. It is perhaps best known for its opposition to the Jefferson National Forest management plan - lobbying work that earned its president, Jim Loesel, the Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Educator of the Year award in 1989.
Loesel, one of the most skillful of the statewide environment lobby, also earned the Virginia Wildlife Federation's Clean Air Conservationist of the Year award in 1989 for his efforts to get new state regulations governing foul-smelling sulphur emissions from paper mills.
A landscape architect by profession, Loesel knows how to work the media as well as the state legislature; he is every environmental reporter's unannounced weekly visitor, every statehouse politician's regular caller.
And when he shows up, his homework is in hand. Loesel, 49, knows the law and uses it well, at times even going up against other environmental groups if he thinks they're off-base.
Dubbed the "Ralph Nader of the forest conservation movement," Loesel personally filed 18 appeals on the George Washington National Forest management plan. He's also the author of a 528-page manual on forest management - a kind of activists' guide to the U.S. Forest Service. The Roanoker says he works on conservation issues seven hours a day, seven days a week - all volunteer, with the exception of one small grant.
Talk to his associates, and the word that pops up again and again is persistent.
And in the environmental movement, persistence is everything. "In this kind of activity, if you're not persistent, you loose," Loesel says.
Jim Kinder
This time last year, Jim Kinder was getting ready to attend the first meeting of the Roanoke River Sierra Club.
Now he's the chairman of one of the area's most accessible Earth-conscious groups, a chapter of the national organization that claims 500,000 members.
While the area club is still in the toddler stage, it has 100 people on its membership rolls. Some join for recreational purposes; the Sierra Club sponsors outdoor events such as nature hikes, canoe trips and picnics.
Others join to get involved in the political side, though the Sierra Club is not particularly known as an activist-oriented group.
"The Sierra Club doesn't have very controversial stands," says Kinder, a 29-year-old graphic artist from Blue Ridge. "You're not gonna see us out protesting Explore; we tend to be middle-of-the-road."
For now anyway.
Kinder says the club plans to take a wait-and-see approach to the region's environmental issues, thoroughly studying questions concerning national forest logging and industrial-site pollution before actively lobbying a position.
"People are starting to realize this isn't gonna happen by itself," Kinder says of environmental political action.
"So many times now, things happen that you don't like, but when you ask your legislators why they vote a certain way, they say, `We didn't get any response to not vote that way.' "
by CNB