Rural Americans Learning ABC’s of Activism : Environment: Many formerly quiet communities are battling everything from hazardous waste dumps to golf courses.

Known by such names as GASP, PEACE and STOP, America’s normally placid country folk are getting a little radical, yelling “No!” at those who would build it, burn it, make it, sell it or store it in their communities.

Leaders of these rural, grass-roots groups say it’s not enough to plant signs in their yards and sing at candlelight vigils to knock down the multimillion-dollar plans of industry and government.

“You can’t beat these guys with bake sales,” said George Martin, co-chairman of Environmental Neighbors United Front in the western Pennsylvania borough of Burgettstown.

ENUF opposes a planned treatment plant for industrial wastes. Hundreds of similar groups from coast to coast are tackling medical waste burners, golf courses, trailer parks and adult bookstores.

In Vermont, a doctor is trying to stop prosecutors in drug cases from seizing homes where children live. In Utah, merchants and retirees are battling a theater near the entrance to Zion National Park.

This firebrand activity may surprise those who see rural Americans as quiet, reticent and malleable. And that perception may be why developers largely avoid cities and suburbs and head for the heartland with their projects, said Robert Ging Jr., attorney for several Western Pennsylvania groups.

But Ging said the savvy of country people often is underestimated. They’re usually motivated to fight, he said, because they want “the right to choose the rural way of life.” After all, the Constitution protects some rights of property owners but doesn’t say a whole lot about who or what moves in next door.

“People are disillusioned with politicians, and they realize they need to do things for themselves,” said Tensie Whelan, vice president for conservation information at the National Audubon Society. “I think people are becoming more empowered with the idea they can change things in their back yards.”

Many group members were surprised by their own public-speaking skills. Others learned the names of their federal, state and county lawmakers--and in some cases, their neighbors--for the first time.

Their activism means long hours. It means piling kitchen tables high with pamphlets and legal briefs. Phone bills go up, and time with the family goes down. And not everyone in town feels kindly toward these neighbors-turned-activists.

“I’m tired of seeing my friends at each other’s throats,” said Brenda Petrick of Cambridge Springs, Pa., south of Erie. A new prison for women, converted from the nation’s first Polish college in her sleepy resort town, pitted job seekers against others who like things just the way they are. Someone is nabbing anti-prison signs from front yards, and someone else donated $1,000 toward the opposition group’s legal bills, anonymously.

Joe Tuminello, a member of Citizens for Property, said: “Would you move to a town that had a prison?”

In Woodland, N.C., opposition to a proposed hazardous waste incinerator brought the black and white communities together as a political force, but also pulled at longtime friendships.

“You can see it at church on Sunday, or at the high school basketball games,” said Brenda Remmes, a high school guidance counselor who is co-chairwoman of Northampton (County) Citizens Against Pollution. “People are avoiding starting conversations because they’re afraid the incinerator will come up.”

At home, “dinner is a joke,” she said. “We had an exchange student with us last year, and I’m sure he went back and told everyone Americans live on hot dogs and pizza.”

Like Remmes, most of these rural activists are worried that the big new neighbor could mean big new health problems.

“Ten years ago the environmental movement meant creatures and sunsets and forests. The buzzword was ‘caring capacity’ for all those things. Now it’s ‘cancer,’ ” said Peter Sandman, director of the Environmental Communication Research Program at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

At last count, there were about 6,000 groups nationwide fighting waste issues alone on the local level, according to Dave Wood of the National Toxics Campaign. And that figure doesn’t include others tackling non-environmental issues.

Some news from the front:

* This summer in Burgettstown, Pa., about 30 miles west of Pittsburgh, ENUF members pinned black ribbons on their chests and packed a school auditorium for a hearing on Mill Service Inc.’s plans to mix cement and heavy metals and store the blocks in a lagoon. Outside, Saabs pulled alongside pickup trucks in the parking lot; inside, suburbanites, farmers and retirees united against redevelopment of Mill Service’s former landfill site.

* Near Silver Run, Md., farmer Sharon Krumrine and her neighbors hauled a band of Buddhists into court in an unsuccessful bid to block construction of a pagoda in the fields. The sanctuary opened this summer, but its opponents haven’t given up. These days, Krumrine counts travelers entering the complex and compares her tally to the sanctuary’s claims. “Very few cars with out-of-state license plates pass through here without getting a wary eye,” she said.

* The Great Old Broads for Wilderness are arguing the environment’s case as Congress develops a management plan for Colorado’s public lands. A dozen over-45 “skiing and hiking buddies” formed the Old Broads in 1989 against arguments that the outdoors should be developed to make it more accessible to senior citizens. “I found that kind of insulting,” said Old Broads President Susan Tixier of Cedar City, Utah.

* Dr. Kathleen DePierro switched from organizing Gulf War peace rallies to founding Stop Forfeiture of Children’s Homes, a group of about 70 Vermont residents seeking reform of property seizures in drug cases. DePierro, of Waterbury, said she’s prepared for civil disobedience to stop police from taking homes where children live, but for now she wants a meeting with federal prosecutors involved in the forfeitures.

* The Zion Canyon Alliance of about 100 residents of Springdale, Utah, are taking on World Odyssey, the developer of a big-screen theater near the gates to Zion National Park. Group member Marcel Rodriguez said his problem isn’t with the theater, but with its location.

* Art Andrews became a one-man opposition group in Koonsville, Pa., after he spied a work crew pouring a gooey black fluid into holes near an old telephone pole on his property. The workers said they were preserving the pole, but Andrews, who identifies himself on his literature as a “potential victim of cancer and death,” said the oozy stuff is bad news for his well. He erected six front-yard signs and spread fliers in parking lots. “I won’t stop until I’m dead,” he said.

* In northwestern Pennsylvania’s Clarion County, Protect Environment and Children Everywhere bought the timber rights to 500 acres targeted for a hazardous waste incinerator. Group attorney James Arner said the rights expire this fall and renewal remains uncertain, but for now PEACE members can keep tabs on their foe. The group also bought an adjacent patch of land and asked the state for approval to bottle and sell water from a spring to raise cash.

* Two organizations in Bloomington, Ind., oppose Westinghouse Corp.’s planned incinerator and landfill because of polychlorinated biphenyls found in the college town’s sewers. They’ve toned down their tactics of shouting down speakers at public meetings. In 1985 they ripped the microphones from a City Council table.

* Members of PEACE, the Pennsylvania incinerator group, torched dummies representing executives of waste company Concord Resources Inc. outside courtrooms and public hearings. When state regulators visited the site, protesters surrounded their van and rocked it, driving the officials away.

“People reach a point in their frustration, and they have to vent,” said Kyle Skarada, a PEACE member. Also, “you need that radical fringe, and you can use it to your advantage. If it wasn’t for them, nobody would know what we’re doing up here.”

However, an executive of a Pennsylvania chemical company said noisy marchers usually aren’t viewing the issues rationally--and that muddies the debate in a state where each year 800,000 tons of hazardous wastes are produced with no place to put the stuff.

“Like opponents of the Industrial Revolution who threw their wooden shoes into machinery, the opponents of reasonable solutions to our state’s industrial environmental needs are sabotaging clear thinking about the issue,” A. James Freeman, vice chairman of Lord Corp., wrote in a newspaper column.

The activism in rural America promises to grow as today’s protesters breed tomorrow’s protest leaders. A 13-year-old formed his own group, Young People Against the Incinerator, to give classmates a voice in the Bloomington, Ind., debate. In Clarion, Pa., PEACE member Kathy Krouse heard her daughter’s voice on the air as she watched a public TV debate on the incinerator project. She’d called from another room to sound off.

“We tried to shelter the kids at first, but it didn’t do any good,” Krouse said.

Now her daughter is applying activism to other causes. “At school her class was ending up always last in the cafeteria line, getting the last of the food. She wasn’t going to sit back and take that,” Krouse said.

“She organized a petition drive and presented it to the principal. I really don’t think she would have done that a year ago.”