Ecology Center — Newsletter

Ecology Center Honors Longtime Activisit Harold Stokes with First-Ever Munzel Award

About 100 people joined the Ecology Center’s Board of Directors and staff in celebrating Michigan’s environment at the Center’s annual meeting on March 28. Saugatuck-based writer Alison Swan keynoted the meeting by reading from her collection of works about Michigan and the Great Lakes.

The event was highlighted by the newly created Herbert L. Munzel Award for Environmental Activism, which was presented to longtime Michigan environmental and social- justice activist Harold Stokes. The Munzel Award is designed to honor inspirational, courageous, and effective community-based advocacy by a Michigan resident for clean air, safe water, and healthy communities over many years.

Harold Stokes (above) has worked on countless campaigns for social and environmental justice since the mid-1930s. He has been an ever-present fixture at campaign rallies and public meetings on all of Michigan’s most important environmental issues of the past 40 years, including controversies associated with nuclear power, incineration, air pollution, water quality, landfills, and the impact of globalization on local environmental protection. He has served in leadership roles with Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Michigan Environmental Council, Detroit Audubon Society, Sierra Club, and Ecology Center.

In her presentation of the award, Ecology Center Environmental Health Director Tracey Easthope noted that “Harold has an amazingly generous spirit, encouraging every fledging effort, any person with a spark, any righteous cause, no matter the particulars. He always sees the hidden light in us, in our circumstance, and then demands more, reaches in and prods the effort, urges it on. Harold was also a student of our collective work as environmentalists and people engaged in social change. His understanding of our place in the world, and our most effective strategies to address the root causes of our predicament evolved over time – as does any good student. He became increasingly convinced that the corporate structure, and the laws that have evolved to support it, are fundamentally at odds with the lives we all want to live, and the world we want to live in. Harold understood the threats of globalism before there was a global grassroots movement to challenge it.”

The Munzel award is named after a longtime southeast Michigan resident who fought for clean air and water for over 40 years. Herbert L. Munzel worked tirelessly in pursuit of clean air and water in southeast Michigan, particularly in Livingston County and within the Huron River watershed. He was responsible for drafting the first zoning map in Green Oak Township in the 1950s, and his later efforts exposed toxic contamination problems, preserved land near the Huron River, cut air pollution from a Brighton asphalt plant, and solved dozens of other community environmental problems. He was universally recognized for his thorough research, respectful manner, and effective advocacy. On issue after issue, from the 1950s until his death in 2001, Herbert Munzel was a community leader who inspired others and made his neighborhood a far better place.

Four Other Environmental Heroes

Ann Arbor Township Committee for Land Preservation

The Ann Arbor Township Committee for Land Preservation led the successful campaign to enact a farmland preservation millage in Ann Arbor Township -- only the second such program in Michigan. The Committee was chaired by Raymond Grew.

Students for PIRGIM

Students for PIRGIM is a University of Michigan campus organization which mobilized hundreds of students and campus area residents to support the Ann Arbor Parks and Greenbelt proposal, a plan to save 7,000 acres of open space near Ann Arbor. The proposal was approved in a landslide vote. The group was led by U-M student Carolyn Hwang.

Pierre Gonyon

Mr. Gonyon has implemented precedent-setting environmental health and safety programs at the St. Joseph Mercy Health System. He has also been a leader in instituting environmentally preferable practices within the Michigan Hospital Association.

Pier-George Zanoni

Mr. Zanoni was instrumental in establishing the Michigan Hospital Association’s nationally prominent environmental committee. He has also been a leader in the creation of national green building standards for U.S. hospitals.