Regional advocacy group enjoys Catholic
backing for justice agenda
Save Our Cumberland Mountains, which observed its 25th anniversary
in 1997, boasts 2,500 members, most of whom live on Tennessees rugged
Cumberland Plateau. The advocacy group is organized into eight chapters along
geographic lines.
Operating on an annual budget of about $325,000, the groups
income in 1997-98 included a grant of $40,000 from the Catholic Campaign for
Human Development.
Save Our Cumberland Mountains tackles a variety of environmental,
economic and social justice issues affecting its constituency. In addition to
the coal-mining controversy at Fall Creek Falls, it is lobbying the Tennessee
Legislature for passage of a forest practices act that was drafted by the
advocacy groups forestry committee.
The state has no enforceable forestry laws and depends on
voluntary best management practices. Members of the advocacy group
and other environmentalists are especially concerned about the problem because
of widespread clearcutting and a recent proliferation of chip mills on the
heavily wooded Cumberland Plateau and elsewhere in Tennessee.
Another of the groups committees is studying toxic and
radioactive waste in the state, looking at how much and what kinds of toxic
wastes are being shipped in and what inspection and licensing procedures are in
place for waste treatment facilities.
The organization did a similar study of landfill enforcement in
Tennessee in 1995.
Save Our Cumberland Mountains is truly a grassroots social
justice organization, run by its members for the good of the community,
said Sr. Anne Hablas, a Sister of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
from Fargo, N.D. In August she completed a three-year stint as a VISTA
volunteer assigned to the advocacy groups office in Lake City, Tenn.
Hablas, a member of Save Our Cumberland Mountains since 1984, plans to stay in
Tennessee and continue her work. She recently was elected as an at-large
delegate to the groups board of directors.
National Catholic Reporter, October 16,
1998
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