Janet Marsh An Amazing, Accidental Activist
Photos Submitted
Janet takes time out of her busy summer to pick peas from the garden. Janet Marsh delivers one of many speeches for the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.
Janet Marsh has always had the heart of an activist. As an eighth-grader in 4-H when the girls were being taught how to make a bed in only one trip around the bed, Janet said, “Wait, do the boys learn this, too?” Little did she know that years later, in 1984, volunteering for a monthlong study project would reawaken her inner activist and turn into her life’s work. Raising her young children and operating a small farm in Glendale Springs at the time, Janet learned that Ashe County was being considered as a location for a radioactive waste dump, due to a mapping
16
MAY 2014 | AAWMAG.COM
error the U.S. Department of Energy had made. “I thought that if the federal government was making errors already, somebody ought to look into this proposal,” Janet says. She wasn’t the only person who disliked the idea of vast amounts of nuclear waste being buried beneath her community, and when 50 area homemakers, farmers, teachers, and merchants organized to warn people of the danger of nuclear waste repositories to the soil, air, and water, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League was born.
That was 30 years ago. For the past three decades, starting with that Crystalline Repository Project, BREDL has tirelessly protected public health by protecting the environment, educating the community, and even encouraging environmentally responsible practices by industries. You could say that BREDL — now active in NC, SC, Va., Tenn., Ga., and Ala., — not only protects public health, but also fights for the poorest and most vulnerable communities, since those are the sites most often eyed for repositories. As the organization’s executive direc-