Six 'Green Nobels' to be Awarded Today

Some props' for the ones who fight back!!!!


by Douglas Fischer

SAN FRANCISCO — Craig Williams' son was a year old when he learned the U.S. government planned to incinerate 523 tons of chemical weapons 8 miles from his home in rural Berea, Ky.

Worried about the risk, Williams, a Vietnam veteran, pulled out his typewriter and started writing. He is still writing.

Today his son is 23. The weapons — nerve and mustard gas — have not moved, but the Army has agreed to a safer, water-based process to destroy the stockpiles there and at three other sites throughout the country.

For his efforts, Williams today is one of six winners of the 2006 Goldman Environmental Prize, a $125,000 award that is the highest honor of its kind for grass-roots environmentalists and is often called the "Green Nobel."

Winners represent each of the six major continents. The award was founded in 1990 by San Francisco philanthropist Richard Goldman and his late wife, Rhoda Goldman, heirs to the Levi Strauss fortune.

This year, all six Goldman winners have fought not just to protect the environment but to force their governments to protect the voiceless, rather than pander to special interests.

Williams, 58, has spent 23 years fighting the Army's plans to burn the roughly 24,000 tons of obsolete chemical weapons agents stockpiled in eight sites around the United States.