EARTHDAY 2016

Nearly fifty years ago, a small group of people sat around a dining room table in a seaside
community. They were for the most part strangers who shared a single purpose, to understand how wetlands affected their lives.

Among them were men and women, influential and plain, credentialed and self-taught, merchant,
fisherman, sportsman, teacher, engineer, chemist and clergy.

They lived within 30 miles of each other. Even though they held different political views, they
were unskilled in the ways of political organizations.  And so this small group became a part of
the national ecological movement.

They developed an outreach plan to recruit other people.  They investigated the appropriateness
of regional land use plans.  They toured sewerage plants and measured air and water
stream pollution.  They spoke at schools, to the press, and testified before local and state
commissions and elected officials, and with Chambers of Commerce.

They worked in an office space contributed to them along with typewriters, ditto
machines and old metal filling cabinets. Other people anxious for information volunteered
to do "something" and formed a telephone squad to contact local and state elected officials.

As public interest grew for this small band of citizens, the group soon learned they
were up against powerful self-interests and so they learned to ask "tough"questions.

In retrospect, today this story seems innocently quixotic compared with
the global concerns we wrestle with today and the scientific and
technological tools we use to monitor information about our planet its atmosphere and the impact we have on it.

But it is worth noting that nearly 50 years ago a small band of citizens did in fact
helped gain passage of New Jersey's  Wetlands Act  of 1970, one of the first such
laws in the nation at a time few believed it could be done.

SEE YOU AT THE POLLS!

This blog was written before I learned of the death of Ruth Fisher Hamilton of
Cape May County, New Jersey.  Ruth was an inspiration for me and all those with whom she had
contact. She worked tirelessly to alert all who knew her of the consequences of our actions toward
each other and to the species with whom we share our environment. I shall miss her and most
importantly so will the causes to which she dedicated her life.