The City of Muscatine continues its environmental efforts

Initially, Wilson seemed to find more allies internationally than in her small town of 1,390 residents, but the wind slowly shifted. A 2005 explosion at the Formosa factory injured eleven workers. Whistleblowers continued to push her documents showing safety and environmental violations, including historic spills of as much as 200,000 pounds of vinyl chloride monomer in a single day.

Wilson found that risking her own health through hunger strikes attracted attention. “Putting your life at risk is where change happens,” she says. Thirteen hunger strikes later, some of which lasted more than thirty days, the local shrimp fisherman has become internationally known as an activist. At the invitation of international environmental groups, she has traveled to Bhopal, Syria and Iran, as well as to Congressional hearings in Washington DC

In 2002, she was sentenced to 180 days in prison after climbing a tower at the Dow plant near Seadrift and dropping a yellow banner that read: “Dow – Responsible for Bhopal.” Dow had bought the chemical company Union Carbide, which operated the pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, where a 1984 catastrophe killed more than 15,000 people and injured more than 200,000 residents.

Her stint in the crowded, cold jail led her to co-found the Texas Jail Project, a nonprofit organization that oversees 254 county jails and helps inmates learn and enforce their rights.

With the help of Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, Wilson sued Formosa in federal court in 2017 for violating the U.S. Clean Water Act. After a week-long trial in December 2019, the judge ruled that Formosa was a serial offender with “massive” violations of the Clean Water Act.

Crucially, this time the agreement included the power to enforce it: among other things, a scientist installed a wastewater sampling device at the Formosa plant in June 2021 that regularly checks for pollution. “To date, we have identified almost 500 violations,” Wilson said, forcing Formosa to put additional dollars into the fund that finances cleanup and investigation. “The fine started at $25,000 per day and will increase to $65,000 per day next year,” she said.

In addition to the settlement, Formosa has spent about $40 million removing stuck pellets from Cox Creek, where the company’s storm drains flow, and restoring damaged wetlands. (Formosa did not respond to a request for comment on this story.)

Even more importantly for Wilson, $20 million of the settlement will be invested in the cooperative of local fishermen, whose businesses have all but collapsed. The shrimp houses have long since been bulldozed, and where once a hundred boats left in the morning, now there are perhaps three or four. “The fishermen are my people,” says Wilson. She says she hasn’t taken a cent from the settlement for herself, “because the workers think everyone is being bribed. They need to see my integrity to trust me.”

There are other new dangers near her hometown that are keeping her from retiring: “Formosa wants to expand and Union Carbide is installing four modular nuclear reactors,” she says. “People have lost hope that you can change things. I believe it’s best to show them that things are changing.”

The hunger strike launched outside the Formosa factory on October 31 could be her last.

Or not. There is still so much to do.

This story was produced by Reasons to be cheerful and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.