Tuesday, 14 May 2002

ST. PAUL, Minn.

It’s quiet around here. Makes me edgy. A few of weeks ago, we settled our lawsuit against Gopher State Ethanol, requiring the plant to cut back on noise and odor problems.

Lately, I’ve been swamped with my “real” work (writing, graphic design, and consulting to nonprofits and small business), which I conduct in my home office perched within view of the ethanol pant that shut my windows from the stifling summer air a couple of years ago. Emphysema and asthma can spawn activism. (Breathing is essential to life, it seems.)

But I’m unsettled because this fight is far from over. The human tendency to see settlements as closure has left most of us activists in a twitchy, cynical limbo — and the story has essentially vanished from the consciousness of St. Paul residents. Interest started receding when what we thought would be a technological savior — a thermal oxidizer — stopped broadcasting the rancid smell of fermented corn citywide and kept the plume at the local level. The fix wasn’t adequate, but it helped the company and politicians to marginalize us.

We sit now, catching up on other aspects of our lives, awaiting a judge’s ruling on a motion finally filed by the St. Paul City Attorney to find GSE in contempt for its failure to get noise levels within legal limits. It took city too long to act. Last December, it settled a nuisance suit against the company. That led to court reprimand, memorializing the settlement’s weak requirements. Despite official readings of high noise levels as proof of violations, city litigators still refused to cite the company for continued violations. This went on for four months — until a major push from the City Council forced the litigators to start paying attention to their jobs.

The company’s a shrewd one. They know when the bureaucrats go home for the weekend, most to their suburban air. At 5:00 p.m. on Friday afternoons, the refinery kicks into high gear and the neighborhood is again choking on the sour smell, staying up nights with the roar of fans and coolers. No one from the city government is around to smell or listen — or measure anything until early Monday morning. Suddenly all the activity stops.

Before our group decided to pursue legal action, about 10 people met for months, discouraged over the GSE’s public relations attempt to involve citizens in solving its problems. I wasn’t a part of that group. I empathized with those who were — who demanded action from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, the City of St. Paul, and Minnesota Brewing, owner of the ethanol refinery and its sister carbon dioxide producer, MGCO2, to reverse this foul plume of noise and chemical blanketing the city.

Many women, and a few men, rose up in fury in the late summer of 2000 over the negligence of company officers, public power brokers, and regulators in stopping this invasion of sickness on the community. One, a nearby resident steeped in holistic health and the arts, Therese Goddard, wound up her energy and, with her artist-musician husband, Bob, began a crusade to organize their neighbors and the community newspaper to fight the adverse changes in their living environment.

After another outspoken resident activist (a lawyer whose firm actually represents the company’s board and who serves as vice president of the West 7th/Fort Road Federation), the respected Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy decided to enter the fray publicly. MCEA lawyer/advocate, Janette Brimmer, had already been on the case behind the scenes. More neighborhood people, including another woman who had been organizing community meetings against the plant, Mary Madden, herself a lawyer, joined this enlarging group. Betty Moran, the community organizer for the federation, and Carol Mollner, who was raised in the area and whose family still lives there, sat in — as did Sharon Pfeifer, a state employee who choked on fumes a mile up the hill. Because I was president of the board of the West 7th Community Center, a long-standing multi-service center of human services and socializing, I was asked to join the strategy sessions for the group.

We thought we could move the MPCA and the city into an enforcement mode. To buttress our case, Janette tried valiantly to coax the MPCA and the city’s Department of Licensing, Inspection and Environmental Protection into using appropriate experts and data she had at her fingertips. Fat chance. By spring, the group had grown and included fed-up neighbors — independent carpenter/woodworker, Darren Wolfson; a young couple, Terry and Shelley Markley, who work respectively for St. Paul’s Public Works Department and a major catalogue marketing company; and Lisa Shaffer, a Blue Cross-Blue Shield systems analyst. Another young couple, Ross and Armaiti Winberg, joined the group a bit later.

Most of this band would become the plaintiffs in our little legal enterprise. Now, to find a lawyer willing to step in this breach — pro bono.