Bulldozer Revolutions by Andrew C. Baker James Giesen

Author:Andrew C. Baker, James Giesen [Andrew C. Baker, James Giesen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780820354149
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2018-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

In their works on suburban environmentalism, Adam Rome and Christopher Sellers find the beginnings of the national environmental movement in septic tank failures, flooding, and developer abuses. These failures, each argues, fomented grassroots activism (Sellers) and top-down policy changes (Rome) that shifted the focus from the logic of public health to wider concerns over chemical contamination and the rape of the natural world. In Montgomery County, regulation did come at least in part through grassroots pressure. The arguments for regulation, however, rarely moved beyond the rationale and rhetoric of preserving public health and consumer protections. This was symptomatic of a broader failure of environmentalism to take root in Montgomery County’s suburban landscapes. In Houston, Earth Day, April 22, 1970, brought thousands to attend teach-ins, protests, public lectures, and other forms of grassroots empowerment. The event registered barely a ripple in Montgomery County. The only event recorded in the local newspaper was a group of Conroe High School students who took a field trip to Jefferson Chemical Company to be reassured that the factory was a good environmental citizen and that no new regulation was needed. County subdivisions produced a handful of garden clubs and civic groups concerned with beautifying area roads and a small ecology club. When students at the Montgomery Elementary School created a nature trail, they were faced with piles of litter and trash. The students devoted hours of class time from two landscaping classes to collect some thirty truckloads of trash from the area before marking out the trail. In Montgomery County, creating suburban nature was a process of landscaping or even excavation—a labor-intensive process that few were willing to take on at the county level. Most newcomers rarely did more than complain. When it came to opposing sprawl and development, most did not even go that far.31

This is not to say that the national environmental movement had no resonance in the county. The commissioners court passed a resolution in January 1970 committing itself to defend its “naturally beautiful land area” from the problems of “air pollution, water pollution, garbage disposal, [and] sewage disposal.” Even the local chamber of commerce got on board with this, warning in the lead-up to Earth Day that the county must “control those industries and individuals which would fill our air and water with filth and create a veritable cesspool of our beautiful county.” Such noble sentiments reflected fears that the county’s reputation as a natural haven from Houston might suffer if it did not appear to be addressing environmental problems. In terms of activism, however, the environmental decade in Montgomery County was anything but.32

Why didn’t suburban newcomers mobilize for the environmental cause? At least part of the answer lies in the more general political apathy among suburbanites. After reapportionment in 1970, south-county residents used their newfound political power to replace their precinct 3 commissioner and rural establishment candidate Bo Damuth with businessman George Wood in 1972. Wood ran on a platform that spoke to the concerns of south-county suburbanites. He called

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