The Gloucester County Nature Club will meet Thursday, Oct. 10 at 7 p.m. at the Holy Nativity Lutheran Church at the corner of Woodbury-Glassboro Road and Mantua Avenue, Wenonah.
It is a joint meeting with the South Jersey Land and Water Trust.
The October program will be “The Green Amendment, Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment,” presented by Maya van Rossum of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.
For decades, communities have relied on Federal and State laws to ensure protection of a clean environment. And for decades, while achieving some important successes in environmental protection, overall the health of our environment for present and future generations has continued to degrade from a growing number of sources.
The truth is, the laws are designed to accommodate pollution as much as, perhaps even more than, to prevent it. As a result people feel powerless when it comes to preserving the quality of their water, air, public parks and natural spaces.
But there is a solution for achieving better, and much needed, protection of the environment: bypass the laws and turn to the ultimate authority — our state and federal constitutions.
The talk will seek to discuss and inspire a new tool for environmental preservation, one that will provide a new way of thinking about, and pursuing, environmental protection from a policy as well as a legal perspective.
We all have the right to pure water, clean air and a healthy environment. The talk will focus on how to truly secure that right for our own sake and that of future generations.
Maya K. van Rossum has served as the leader for the Delaware Riverkeeper Network since 1994. The role of the Delaware Riverkeeper is to give the Delaware River, and the communities that depend upon it and appreciate it, a voice at every decision making table that could provide help or do harm.
The Delaware Riverkeeper Network is the only citizen action organization that works the entire length and breadth of the Delaware River and its watershed, speaking and working for both its protection and its restoration.
Meetings are scheduled for the second Thursday of the month, September through June, and are free and open to the public. For more information, please visit www.gcnatureclub.org.
