This story was published by the Border Belt Independent in collaboration with Inside Climate News.
Viv Tolson Wayne rang the large dinner bell on her front porch along Britt Road in St. Pauls, North Carolina. The crowd on her front lawn hushed their conversations and turned toward the 75-year-old, who wore a red T-shirt and white cowboy hat.
On that April day, Tolson Wayne gathered dozens of her sorority sisters to protest pollutants in the Robeson County Landfill, whose entrance is about a half-mile from Tolson Wayne’s front door.
“We are here to let people know that they have a voice,” Tolson Wayne said from her porch, “so environmental injustice turns to environmental justice.”
Tolson Wayne is a member of the St. Pauls Community Association for Progress. The group, along with the Southern Environmental Law Center, is suing Robeson County over what it describes as contamination that seeps into drinking water.
