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| Nesting Wood Storks in New Port Richey. Photo by Anita Stewart. |
We will be broadcasting a pre-recorded interview with Joy Towles Ezell on Friday, 3/21/14 at 10PM EDT.
For tonight's show we welcome SPECIAL GUEST, Joy Towles Ezell an expert on all sorts of environmental concerns here in Florida to include our ongoing water crisis.
Corresponding with WORLD WATER DAY on March 22nd, Joy and I will be discussing some of Florida's water issues that you may have heard about in the mainstream media and probably a few more that few of us have heard about and that never made it into the news. Don't miss this show!
***If you have questions for my guest (since this is not a live broadcast), email them to me at anitastewart@gmail.com with QUESTION in caps on the subject line. I will ask the questions during the interview.
LINK TO THE SHOW and the ARCHIVED SHOW (after the broadcast):
JOY’S BIO: Joy Towles Ezell is an active environmentalist, environmental activist, community organizer, and pollution fighter. She is the founder and leader of local environmental groups: HOPE (Help Our Polluted Environment) In Taylor County, FL and Friends of the Fenholloway River, and is one of the founders of TRUE – Taylor Residents United for the Environment, now serving as Vice-Chair. She is also one of the founders of the Environmental Alliance of North Florida – EANoF, and now serves as Vice-chair. She is the President of the Florida League of Conservation Voters and is co-chair of Floridians Against Incinerators In Disguise.
Her son, Trey, encouraged her to try to get the badly polluted Fenholloway River cleaned up. Trey would say every time they crossed the river, "Mom, make them clean that nasty river up." He was killed in a tragic automobile accident in 1991, so thereafter Joy has dedicated her life to working towards cleaning up the pulp mill pollution of the only industrial-classified river in Florida. With the help of supporters, friends, and allies, Joy has challenged Proctor & Gamble/Buckeye to improve their environmental practices in order to one day restore the once-beautiful Fenholloway River, the Floridan Aquifer, and the Gulf of Mexico. The local newspaper referred to Joy and HOPE as "armed radical environmental terrorists"; her quick response was "Yes, armed with the truth, radical...maybe a little for here, environmentalist, YES, and terrorist, well...the only one we’ve ever terrorized is the PR guy from the mill – and he deserves it!
She has appeared on CBS’ 60 Minutes, in CNN’s award-winning features on pulp mill pollution: The Smell of Money, and What Price White Paper? and in the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Clean Up The World feature stories. The community’s story was told in the book Soap Opera, written by Alecia Swazy, and in The War Against the Greens and in Blue Frontier by David Helvarg.
She has spoken at Earth Day in Washington, D.C., has testified before Congress on the Clean Water Act, has testified and entered written comments and testimony at many state and EPA hearings on environmental health, dioxin, chlorine use, pollution, and water issues, and has participated in national, regional, and state dioxin and health-related meetings since 1988. In July, 2006, she spoke at the National Academy of Sciences’ Dioxin Briefing, and spoke on the briefing on an NPR report.
The Proctor & Gamble/Buckeye pulp mill issue was featured in CNN’s environmental award-winning feature story What Price White Paper, and in National Geographic magazine. Joy has helped to interest the public in the issue by being in several public television feature stories, on local and state television and radio feature and news programs, and in many newspaper articles in Florida, the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
She has maintained web sites and listserves to enlighten the public and as a resource for others to use regarding chlorine use in pulp and paper mills, the latest of which is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HopeForCleanWater/ As additional issues have arisen in her home community, she has worked with the Citizens Against the Bombing Range, and has created and maintained list serves such as http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SaveTaylorCountyFloridaResidents/ which is concerned with the proposed siting of the military missile test site/bombing range and a coal-fired power plant in her home community of Perry, Florida.
Joy serves on the Advisory Board for the Chlorine Free Products Association/IMPACT Environmental Education Foundation and on the Florida Clean Water Action Vote Environment PAC Committee. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation and of the Gulf Restoration Network. She was elected in 2007 to the Taylor County Soil & Water Conservation Board for a four-year term.
Joy has collaborated with groups and organizations as diverse as the:
Southeast Clean Water Network
National Clean Water Network
Natural Resources Defense Council
Environmental Health Network
National Dioxin Action Group
Citizens Clearinghouse on Hazardous Waste
Health Care Without Harm
Greenpeace
Friends of the Earth
Center for Marine Conservation
EarthJustice
Union of Concerned Scientists
GreenWave
Sierra Club
EarthShare, Inc.
Center for Investigative Reporting, Inc.
Association for Birth Defect Children, Inc.
Center for Information on Toxicology
& the Environment
Gulf Coast Environmental Defense
Clean Harbors
Gulf Restoration Network
Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation
Citizens Health & Environmental Justice
Conservatree
Chlorine-Free Products Association
Dioxin Litigation Group
Tulane Environmental Law Center
BassMaster Bass Anglers Sportsman Society
Trout Unlimited
Florida & National Wildlife Federations
Big Bend Climate Action Team
National Academy of Sciences
Mendocino Environmental Center
OMB Watch
Organized Fishermen of Florida
RiverKeepers
The Dogwood Alliance
Southern Organizing Committee
for Economic & Social Justice
Save Our Suwannee
Florida NOW
Florida Panhandle Citizens Coalition
Gulf of Mexico Program
South Peace Environmental Association
Edmonton Friends of the North
The International Joint Commission
on the Great Lakes
Women’s Environment Education
Development Foundation (Toronto)
Women’s Environmental Network (London)
Florida Consumer Action Program
Tall Timbers Research Station
U.S. and Florida Public Interest
Research Groups
WorldWatch Institute
World Wildlife Fund
Florida Organic Grower& Consumers, Inc.
Clean Water Action
Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice.
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Tallahassee Clean Energy
No Coal Coalition
She has served on the Board of Trustees of North Florida Community College, the Taylor Soil & Water Conservation Board, the Taylor Agricultural Advisory Committee. Joy was the President of the Florida
CattleWomen, Inc., is a Lifetime member of the American Quarter Horse Association, and is a member of the Florida Cracker Cattle Breeders’Association. She has been honored with the Century Pioneer Farm Family Award and a Florida Forest Stewardship Award.
In her professional life in the 1970’s and early 1980’s FMC Agricultural Chemicals and Ciba-Geigy Ag Chemicals employed her (before her realization and transformation into an active environmentalist). Ever since then she has campaigned against the use and misuse of toxic pesticides. She worked as a fund-raiser and Florida Director for EarthShare, Inc.
Joy is as an organic farmer and rancher; was employed in the Marketing Division of the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services, worked as the Wholesale Southern Sales Territory Manager for Smith & Hawken, and was named the "Employee of the Quarter" by Smith & Hawken for the 4th quarter of 2004. She now works as the Eastern sales manager for Sandvik/Bahco/Snap-On Tools.
