FUSE turns 30

Friends United for a Safe Environment will commemorate its 30th anniversary today at 6 p.m. with a program focusing on the group's accomplishments and recognition of members who have passed on.

Since May 1988, the nonprofit group has worked to educate the public in environmental issues and serve as a watchdog for the community.

Dr. Jim Presley, FUSE president, said the journey hasn't always been an easy one.

"At times it's been topsy turvy," he said. "There are times some of us in FUSE have spent more time in some of these areas on the issues than with our own family. Very often, it required travel virtually over Texas and Arkansas." He said they even traveled to Baton Rouge, La. and St. Louis, Mo. for conferences.

"It's been rewarding in that there is some satisfaction in seeing that what you've done or tried to do has been helpful to other people," Presley said.

The group worked to have Texarkana's Carver Terrace neighborhood, which consisted of 78 black families, declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency. The neighborhood had been built on the site of a former creosote plant. Families had long been getting strange illnesses, cancers and suffering headaches and miscarriages and knew something was wrong.

FUSE was instrumental in working with Texas Rep. Jim Chapman, who was chairman of the EPA committee at that time, to have it declared a Superfund site so residents could be bought out and not live in toxicity.

"Even when you succeed at one of these, you can't call it a great victory," he said. "Like at Carver Terrace, so many were already poisoned."

FUSE has worked collaboratively with people on environmental problems and has helped a lot of change over the past 30 years, he added.

"Our main mission is education of the public on environmental safety and environmental protection and to let them know that can be done in many different ways, through programs and actual work on the ground," he said.

The program will focus on Carver Terrace, the former Western Waste landfill in Miller County, the Texarkana Wood Superfund site and the proposed construction of the Marvin Nichols Reservoir.

Cake and coffee will be served and the public is invited to attend.

The meeting will be held at the Texarkana Public Library, 600 W. 3rd Street, Texarkana, Texas.

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