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Marion Stoddart (born May 26, 1928) is an activist and community leader best known for her work leading up to the rescue and recovery of the Nashua River in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Marion Stoddart was born in Reno, Nevada. [1] In 1928, her family moved to a small town called Fernley, where her father owned a General Store. The family also had an alfalfa farm. [1] As a teenager Stoddart helped her father run his store, and she worked in a post office. [1] After attending high school for only three years, Marion graduated, and attended Occidental College in Los Angeles where she studied anthropology and sociology. [1] She obtained a teaching credential from the University of California at Berkeley. [1] Stoddart met her future husband, Hugh, soon after leaving home. Hugh was a student at Caltech and later did graduate work at MIT. While at MIT Hugh invited Marion to visit him there, and they decided to marry. [2]
In the early 1960s there were no laws regulating the way waste from industry was disposed of on either the state or federal level in the United States. By the mid-1960s there was some preliminary legislation to regulate the pollution of waterways, but as yet no laws on the state level. In the 1960s, when Stoddart began to organize to save the Nashua River, it was one of the ten most polluted rivers in the US. [3]
In 1962 the Stoddarts moved from Nevada to the small community of Groton Massachusetts with their three children. [4] Their home in Groton was only three quarters of a mile from the Nashua River, which by then was already known to be highly polluted, and even dangerous. To address the problem, Stoddart enlisted the help of thousands of ordinary citizens to form a Nashua River Clean Up Committee. She also met with Massachusetts Governor John Volpe, Fitchburg Mayor William Flynn, and executives of the paper mills that were polluting the river. Through her tireless efforts Stoddart was able to get the first anti-water pollution bill enacted by any state in the US: the 1965 Massachusetts Clean Water Act. [3]
Stoddart’s work did not stop with the passage of the 1965 legislation. She also founded the Nashua River Watershed Association. This organization helped to further protect 174 miles of the river and its major tributaries. [3]
Stoddart was profiled on the “Today Show,” for her work. [5] In 1987 the United Nations honored her with their Environment Program’s Global 500 Award. [3] In 1993 the National Geographic Society profiled her life and work. Also in 1993 her work was chronicled in a children’s book “A River Ran Wild” by Lynne Cherry, [3] which is today standard curriculum for most fourth graders in the US. [5]
In 2010 Susan Edwards and Dorie Clark directed an award-winning, 30 minute documentary, “The Work of 1000,” about the life and work of Stoddart. [6] [ better source needed ]
Stoddart is the focus of a civic engagement program called “The Work of 1000,” which is also the name of the short documentary film made about her work. [7]
On May 2, 2012 US Representative Niki Tsongas, with Marion Stoddart standing beside her, announced legislation to designate the Nashua River as a Scenic and Wild River. That designation will continue to protect and preserve the river and allow it to receive federal monies to continue conservation efforts into the future. [4]
In honor of her 85th birthday the Nashua River Watershed Association, the organization that Stoddart founded, held a fundraising drive to support programs and activities that will expand, promote, and permanently protect the greenways along the rivers, streams, and wetlands in the Nashua River watershed. [8]
In July 2014 a pair of artists, Jon S. Allen and Sophy A. Tuttle began work on a mural in honor of Stoddart along the Nashua River in Fitchburg's Riverfront Park. [9]
Stoddart is married to Hugh, a physicist. They have three children [10] and five grandchildren. [1]
Fitchburg is a city in northern Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The third-largest city in the county, its population was 41,946 at the 2020 census. Fitchburg State University is located here.
The Merrimack River is a 117-mile-long (188 km) river in the northeastern United States. It rises at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire, flows southward into Massachusetts, and then flows northeast until it empties into the Gulf of Maine at Newburyport. From Pawtucket Falls in Lowell, Massachusetts, onward, the Massachusetts–New Hampshire border is roughly calculated as the line three miles north of the river.
Ayer is a census-designated place (CDP) and the primary settlement in the town of Ayer in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population of the CDP was 2,986 at the 2020 census, out of 8,479 in the entire town.
Groton is a town in northwestern Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, within the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The population was 11,315 at the 2020 census. An affluent bedroom community roughly 45 miles from Boston, Groton has a large population of professional workers, many of whom work in Boston's tech industry. It is loosely connected to Boston by highways and commuter rail.
The Housatonic River is a river, approximately 149 miles (240 km) long, in western Massachusetts and western Connecticut in the United States. It flows south to southeast, and drains about 1,950 square miles (5,100 km2) of southwestern Connecticut into Long Island Sound.
The Olentangy River is a 97-mile-long (156 km) tributary of the Scioto River in Ohio, United States.
The Nashua River, 37.5 miles (60.4 km) long, is a tributary of the Merrimack River in Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the United States. It is formed in eastern Worcester County, Massachusetts, at the confluence of the North Nashua River and South Nashua River, and flows generally north-northeast past Groton to join the Merrimack at Nashua, New Hampshire. The Nashua River watershed occupies a major portion of north-central Massachusetts and a much smaller portion of southern New Hampshire.
The Quinapoxet River is part of the Nashua River watershed in northern Massachusetts in the United States. It is part of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority water system supplying drinking water to the greater Boston area.
Barzillai Lew was an African-American soldier who served with distinction during the American Revolutionary War.
Ayer station is an MBTA Commuter Rail station located off Main Street in the Ayer Main Street Historic District of Ayer, Massachusetts. It serves the Fitchburg Line. There are three tracks through the station, two of which are served by a pair of low-level side platforms, which are not accessible. There is a shelter on the inbound platform.
North Leominster station is an MBTA Commuter Rail station in Leominster, Massachusetts. It serves the Fitchburg Line. It is located at 34 Nashua Street, east of Main Street. The station, which is accessible, has two side platforms to serve the line's two tracks. There is a small freight yard adjacent to the parking lot and mainline tracks on the south end of the inbound platform. A garage opened in 2014 to nearly triple parking capacity at the station, which serves as a park-and-ride stop for Route 2 and I-190, to a total of 436 spaces.
Wekepeke is the name of an aquifer and brook in Sterling, Massachusetts, United States. The aquifer has a land surface area of 11.5 square miles (30 km2).
Ayer is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. Originally part of Groton, it was incorporated February 14, 1871, and became a major commercial railroad junction. The town was home to Camp Stevens, a training camp for Massachusetts volunteers during the American Civil War. Later, Fort Devens was established by the federal government to train New England soldiers for World War I. Fort Devens is a major influence on the area, although it is considerably smaller than when it was first closed in the mid-1990s. The town's population was 8,479 at the 2020 census.
Groton is a census-designated place (CDP) comprising the main village in the town of Groton in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population of the CDP was 1,353 at the 2020 census, out of 11,315 in the entire town of Groton.
Pepperell is a census-designated place (CDP) comprising the main village in the town of Pepperell in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 2,390 at the 2020 census, out of 11,604 in the entire town of Pepperell.
Pepperell is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 11,604 at the 2020 census. It includes the village of East Pepperell. Pepperell is home to the Pepperell Center Historic District, a covered bridge, and the 1901 Lawrence Library. The library has a collection of Sidney M. Shattuck's (1876–1917) stuffed birds.
Ella Augusta "Eleanor" Norcross was an American painter who studied under William Merritt Chase and Alfred Stevens. She lived the majority of her adult life in Paris, France, as an artist and collector and spent the summers in her hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Norcross painted Impressionist portraits and still lifes, and is better known for her paintings of genteel interiors.
Lynn Henning is a farmer and environmentalist from Michigan, United States. She was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2010 for her focus on water quality and for fighting pollution from concentrated animal feeding facilities. She exposed the polluting practices of livestock factory farms in rural Michigan, gaining the attention of the federal EPA and prompting state regulators to issue hundreds of citations for water quality violations. Henning currently works for the Socially Responsible Agricultural Project (SRAP). She also won the Planet Defender Award 2012 for her advocacy and her work.
Friends of the Everglades is a conservationist and activist organization in the United States whose mission is to "preserve, protect, and restore the only Everglades in the world." The book Biosphere 2000: Protecting Our Global Environment refers to Friends of the Everglades as an organization that has fought to preserve North America's only subtropical wetland.
Mrs. David Wright's Guard was an all-woman militia raised by the Patriots in Massachusetts during the American Revolutionary War. The Guard were an armed force of 30 to 40 women who guarded the Nashua River crossings to prevent the movement of Loyalist couriers.
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