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Phil Valko puts it simply: “It’s a textbook environmental justice issue.” In St. Louis, some of the poorest residents are saddled with the worst environmental conditions. The sources of toxic waste, dirty air and hazardous conditions are located just outside the doors of predominantly low-income, African American neighborhoods.

The advocates at Trailnet aren’t willing to let that trend go unnoticed — or unchallenged.

Despite the staggering heat, the St. Louis bicycle and pedestrian advocates drew a big crowd for an event to shed light on the issue this weekend. On Saturday, Trailnet hosts its third Environmental Justice Ride and nearly three dozen people came out to witness firsthand the clear and tragic inequality.

Phil Valko, Trailnet’s Active Living Program Manager, says the ride was the organic result of a partnership with the residents in the affected communities.

“We started this ride through a partnership with a social services non-profit called Grace Hill Settlement House,” he explains. “Grace Hill and Trailnet successfully collaborated on an EPA grant application, which included hosting two of these rides. The first ride was attended by approximately 30 people, which included roughly half local residents and roughly half folks from other areas. Many of the riders on that first ride were lower-income residents. The EPA grant allowed us to provide free bike helmets, free bike locks, and $5 coupons to a local cafe or the local food co-op, too. In addition, Trailnet partnered with another local organization, St. Louis BicycleWorks, to provide free loaner bikes.”

Because the first two rides made such an impression, Trailnet decided to host a third without EPA support.

“The ride highlights the high concentration of dirty businesses and the adjacent low-income, predominantly black neighborhoods,” Valko says. “The air quality within the district is among the worst in the entire state. As the rides moves through the area, it becomes clear why: There are waste incinerators; scrap metal yards that shred toxic metals and spew dust; exposed piles of salt that leave trails of saline dust on windy days; radioactive hotspots that the Army Corps and EPA are finally remediating after 60 years of contamination; and more. And all of this is adjacent to one of the poorest areas in the region.

So how can a bike ride change entrenched social injustice? “The goal is to raise awareness in hopes that we can catalyze action,” Valko suggests. “This third ride we are hosting may be the beginning of that. The first two rides grabbed the attention of the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center, so we decided to hold a third so that they could do the ride and see the issues first hand. We hope that they’ll pick up the ball and run with it afterwards, but of course, keeping community members engaged in the process.”

Stay up-to-date and read more about Trailnet on their blog.

PHOTO: Riders from the first Environmental Justice Ride in April. (Sam Blue)

At long last, a living memorial now grows in the city of Susie Stephens’ tragic death.

Had she not been struck and killed by a bus while legally crossing the street in St. Louis during a conference in 2002, Susie would have turned 46 years old young this past Saturday, April 16. To commemorate and honor her joyful and lasting legacy, a handful of bike/ped advocates planted a Susie Tree in the shadow of the iconic Gateway Arch.

As many of you know, Susie was not just a co-founder of the Alliance; she was an inspiration to all who knew her. She was a passionate bicyclist and environmentalist, who celebrated life through song and advocacy and, above all, believed that the tough work of making the world a better place is best done with a smile on your face.

After her death, Susie’s mom, Nancy MacKerrow, started the Susie Forest project, planting trees around the globe to memorialize Susie’s indominable spirit. Sinking roots into the city where Susie passed was a long-held hope for MacKerrow and her family. This weekend, a trio of advocacy groups — Trailnet, the Great Rivers Greenway and the Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation — helped to make that hope come true.

“This will provide some closure to a terrible incident that happened in St. Louis in 2002,” Brent Hugh, Executive Director of the Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation, said in a press release before the event. “Susie was killed just about the time I was getting interested in bicycle and pedestrian issues, and it had a profound impact on me and on our work at the Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation.”

On the blog for the Susie Forest project, MacKerrow described the weekend as bittersweet.

“The trip to St Louis was wonderful but hard,” MacKerrow wrote. “It was hard to show Jack and Becky [Susie’s brother and sister] the corner where Susie was killed and hard to walk where she had walked to the Gateway Arch on her last evening. Somehow the cold and windy and rainy weekend seemed appropriate. And yet the flowers and the emerging leaves on the trees also seemed appropriate.

After getting to bed at 2:45 am because of a late plane, it was a groggy threesome that trudged to the arch on Friday morning to watch Susie’s tree go into the ground. The planting crew had to listen to my Susie spiel and look at the pictures and maps, but they were rewarded with tree-kibbles, which they deserved because they planted the Bur Oak correctly.

On Saturday the people from Great Rivers Greenway and Trailnet who made this planting possible came to dedicate this tree to Susie and to wish her happy birthday. None of them knew her, but had heard wonderful things about her. It was very emotional to hear them speak about her influence. We wrote tree-grams, which we hung temporarily in the tree for picture-taking because they are not allowed in national parks. They will be hung in Spokane’s mystery birthday tree when I find it. Someone suggested that I put my tree-gram under the mulch we shoveled. I like that idea because the disintegrating paper will feed the roots and send my thoughts through the entire tree. Perhaps I will do this for every anniversary tree I plant.

I don’t know how to thank the wonderful, welcoming people of Missouri for making this dream of mine come true.”

Read more about the Susie Forest Project here. 

The Great Rivers Greenway District, a public organization developing a unique 600-mile web of 45 interconnected greenways, parks, and trails, known as The River Ring, announced the completion of more than 150 miles of bike trails and on-street lanes. The most recent includes 77 miles of dedicated on-street bicycle routes and shared traffic lanes and the McKinley Bridge Bikeway and Trestle. This makes St. Louis the third city in the world, after the High Line in New York City and the Promenade Plantée in Paris, to convert a historic elevated steel trestle into a linear urban recreation amenity.

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