Marion Stoddart
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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. She has received recognition from the media, politicians, and nonprofit organizations for her activism.
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]
Saving the Nashua River
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]
