Catherine Coleman Flowers: Warrior for Environmental Justice

On this episode of Living Downstream, we meet Catherine Coleman
Flowers. In 2020, she released her first book, Waste: One Woman's
Fight Against America's Dirtiest Secret. The book documents her
two-decade crusade to expose the shameful conditions that many of
her Alabama neighbors endure. Some Americans take for granted
that when they flush the toilet their waste will travel to a
place where it can be safely and effectively treated. But for
others, the sewage may go only as far as their back yards, to
become breeding grounds for insects and disease.  


 


In 2020, Flowers became a MacArthur Foundation Fellow - an award
colloquially known as the "genius" grant for her work in Alabama
and around the world. She also is the founder of CREEJ, the
Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, and a
current vice chair of the White House Environmental Justice
Advisory Council. 


 


Flowers talked in January, and again in April, with Living
Downstream host Steve Mencher. In this episode we'll also hear
selections from the documentary about Flowers, called The
Accidental Environmentalist, and a story about a distant cousin
and friend of Flowers, Pamela Rush, used by permission of NPR's
All Things Considered.


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