
Agnes Garino and Jean Dugan thank suffragists for the women’s
right to vote on the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment.
By Don Corrigan
Missouri has many organizations with a mission to protect the environment. One group that has been around for 100 years, but isn’t often cited for its environmental chops, is the League of Women Voters of Metro St. Louis.
The St. Louis League was founded on Nov. 13, 1919, almost a year before passage of the 19th Amendment providing women the right to vote. The group’s goal was to protect the right to vote and to educate voters.
A new history of the League, Raising Our Voices, covers the past six decades of local and national upheaval, but it also chronicles decade-by-decade the everyday work of the League to protect the outdoors and environment.
Beginning with the decade of the 1960s, author Nicole Evelina zeroes in on the League’s concerns over air pollution. A familiar term at the time was “St. Louis throat,” coined to describe damage done to membranes of the nose, sinus and lungs.
St. Louis suffered from dense black and gray smoke primarily from the burning of coal. The city was put on notice with the 1964 Cleaner Air Act passed by the U.S. Congress. This led to the passage of the Missouri Air Conservation Act.
The League got behind recommendations to restrict the amount of coal burned, to outlaw open burning of refuse and to require anti-pollution devices on automobiles. The legislature passed a new set of air standards for the state.
In the 1970s, the League continued its efforts on air pollution issues, but also worked on improved management of parks. Proper land use also put the spotlight on landfills, which became more than just places to dump trash and forget about it.
Missouri was drowning in its own trash with 4.2 million tons of waste per year, or an average of 5 pounds per person per day. Roadsides, watersheds and floodplains were becoming dumps. The League advocated for responsible land use policy.