MOTHERS FOR CLEAN AIR STARTS CHAPTER IN FIFTH WARD

For more information contact:
Jane Laping
Mothers for Clean Air
Tel: 713/526-0110
Fax: 713/526-0550

Mothers for Clean Air (MFCA), a non-profit environmental organization in Houston, has received a one year environmental justice grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to establish an MFCA chapter in the Fifth Ward. The Fifth Ward was selected because of the numerous hazardous waste sites located there and its proximity to three heavily traveled freeways.

The first organizational meeting of the Fifth Ward Chapter was held on January 13, 2000 at the Lyons Health Clinic. Several stakeholders in the community attended. Jane Laping, community organizer for Mothers for Clean Air emphasized that "this will be a community driven effort." Ms. Laping described and received the group's approval on several projects: Internet training, environmental justice workshop, bus tour, ozone education in schools, and a children's photography project. Colette Windom and Carrie Nicholson were nominated president and vice-president of the chapter.

Organizations within the community have been very supportive of the objectives of the Fifth Ward Chapter. In addition to the Lyons Health Clinic which has provided space for meetings, The Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation, Partners/5 West, Pleasant Hill Community Development Corporation, and 5th Ward Enrichment Program have also contributed in some way.

Mothers for Clean Air will empower the residents of the Fifth Ward to identify, address, and begin to solve the environmental justice issues in the community. MFCA will assist members of the chapter in learning about environmental pollution in the Fifth Ward by teaching them to access environmental databases on the Internet. Computer resources in the community will be used to look at several websites that contain information on pollution releases to the ground, air and water affecting the Fifth Ward.

Fifth Ward residents will learn about environmental problems and ways of solving them through an Environmental Justice Workshop and Toxic Tour in March. Activists who have worked through similar problems in their communities will be invited to talk with Fifth Ward residents and share what they have done. A bus tour will take residents to hazardous waste sites in the Fifth Ward and to see sources of industrial air pollution on the Houston Ship Channel.

MFCA will conduct its No Ozone program in schools and day care centers in the Fifth Ward to educate parents and teachers about the health effects of ozone pollution. MFCA will work with the principals and directors to establish a plan of communicating ozone notices to teachers and actions to take to protect children's health.

Children in the Fifth Ward will be invited to participate in a photography workshop in April where they will identify and photograph sources of pollution in their community. Selected photos will be compiled into a twelve-month calendar and distributed within the community and to elected officials and policy makers.
MFCA has previously set up chapters in Woodland Acres on the Houston Ship Channel and Barrett Station, near Crosby. Similar programs were conducted in those communities. Lupe Cordova, president of the Woodland Acres Chapter, said that using the Mothers for Clean Air name gave their chapter a better response from public agencies.