Marion Stoddart: The Work of 1000 30 minutes / All ages / 2010 /
United States of America / Average: The inspirational story of
environmentalist Marion Stoddart, as she eschewed her future as
a suburban housewife and mobilized a community to save New
Hampshire’s polluted Nashua river, proving that an “ordinary”
person can accomplish extraordinary things. In the 1960s, the
Nashua River in New Hampshire and central Massachusetts was one
of the 10 most polluted in the country, clogged with
multicolored, toxic sludge from nearby paper mills. Around that
time, housewife Marion Stoddart moved to the area with her
family, so close to the river they could smell its noxious
fumes. At a low point in her life, she decided to fight her own
emptiness by taking on the biggest challenge she could find -
cleaning up the Nashua. Her dramatic success in mobilizing the
community showed people that change was possible, even though
they'd lost hope. Marion's efforts helped get the Massachusetts
Clean Rivers Act passed so that com