The Ayer Public Spirit (MA) reports:
Ayer resident Marilyn McMillan was honored with an Outstanding Activism award for fighting to clean up a toxic waste site located at her former video store business.
After becoming seriously ill from exposure to dangerously high levels of cancer-causing chemicals, McMillan is now leading an effort to hold McNiff Realty responsible for leasing her family the building without disclosing information about the contamination.
McMillan received the award at New England’s largest conference on toxic pollution, Toxics Action 2005. She was applauded by over 300 citizen activists from across the region.
The environmental group People of Ayer Concerned about the Environment was also honored for supporting McMillan.
“We are honoring Marilyn today not only for her work to expose McNiff Realty’s deviance and deception, but for her dedication to see that this never happens to anyone again,” said Jay Rasku, Massachusetts field director for Toxics Action Center.
For almost two years, McNiff Realty hid information about trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE) contamination at the McMillans’ leased video store. McNiff representatives told the McMillans that engineers digging test wells in the store parking lot were simply monitoring an oil spill from a nearby gas station. Eventually Marilyn forced a visiting licensed site professional to share testing results, which revealed high levels of TCE and PCE in the video store building.
McMillan is now working with the Department of Environmental Protection to clean up the site, and she is running for the Board of Health.
Read the full story here.
Congratulations to Marilyn and PACE (we’ve added the PACE website as a permanent community link over to the right).
No related posts.