Remembering Marvin Wheeler

- by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network 

When we formed Allen­town Res­i­dents for Clean Air (ARCA) in 2012, we could­n’t have kicked it off with­out Mar­vin Wheel­er, who found us as an active mem­ber of the West Park Civic Asso­ci­a­tion. As a retired school nurse, Mar­vin under­stood the health threat posed by the plan to burn 150 tons a day of trash and sewage sludge in the heart of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s third largest city.

Sur­round­ed by schools, parks, play­grounds, pub­lic hous­ing, a hos­pi­tal, and a prison, this exper­i­men­tal incin­er­a­tor was a threat to all that Mar­vin held dear. 

“Keep in mind, this is a brown and black low-income neigh­bor­hood,” he remind­ed us. “I think they picked this site because of the coun­ty prison that’s over there… it’s like ‘kill the pris­on­ers a lit­tler ear­li­er, before they fin­ish their sentences.’ ”

It sad­dens us that he is no longer with us to see the fruits of the vic­to­ry he helped make pos­si­ble. When oth­ers weren’t avail­able to help, Mar­vin orga­nized a peti­tion­ers com­mit­tee and kicked off the effort to bring the issue to the vot­ers. He helped us col­lect the thou­sands of sig­na­tures we need­ed to get the Allen­town Clean Air Ordi­nance we draft­ed onto the city bal­lot so that the peo­ple could choose to adopt pro­tec­tions from incin­er­a­tor pol­lu­tion. In freez­ing win­ter weath­er, Mar­vin worked hard on col­lect­ing sig­na­tures, slog­ging from door to door with us, wel­com­ing us into his home, and intro­duc­ing us to oth­er key peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty. His warm and humor­ous per­son­al­i­ty kept us going in the fran­tic dri­ve to col­lect enough sig­na­tures in the city’s ini­tia­tive process.

While we did­n’t win the way we had planned (at the polls), the incin­er­a­tor deal has fall­en apart in the past sev­er­al months. As one of the orig­i­nal peti­tion­ers, Mar­vin is named in our law­suit over the ordi­nance ini­tia­tive (which is still in the courts, as we fight over the right for peo­ple to vote on such mat­ters). The delays killed the project as per­mits and investors were also tied up. The 35-year waste sup­ply con­tract with the city was can­celed by the city late last year. The com­pa­ny’s air per­mit was rescind­ed a few months ago, and their waste per­mit (which we also legal­ly chal­lenged) was just revoked as well.

As a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al, Mar­vin was teach­ing kids about asth­ma trig­gers and under­stood that incin­er­a­tor would be a large one. He spoke about how asth­ma inhalers and med­i­cines just treat the symp­tom after the dis­ease, and spoke of the need to be proac­tive, not reactive. 

“The issue here is air qual­i­ty… and when you think about that and the num­ber of chil­dren in this area and the school less than a half a mile from here… what impact does it have on those mid­dle school children?”

Here is a fan­tas­tic video of Mar­vin speak­ing about the strug­gle, and how “we have to do some­thing dif­fer­ent” with green jobs and recy­cling, not incineration.