Victoria Howard - Volunteer
Victoria has received two nominations, which have been combined below.
Description of Individual or Organization
Victoria Howard grew up in rural North Texas in the 1980s. After several adult years spent in sprawling suburbia, she and her husband moved back to the country to raise their young family. They have 4 acres where they grow xeriscape plants, herbs and an array of weeds.
Victoria has worked her entire career in education, first as an assistant educator in the Montessori tradition and then as a private piano teacher.
She discovered her inner environmental advocate in 2017 when her local Lucas City Council discontinued curbside recycling. She successfully created and led a grassroots door-to-door campaign to convince Lucas to reinstate recycling, and now the program is flourishing again.
Not content with Lucas's restriction of curbside recycling to only city residents, Victoria’s newly formed advocacy group, Save Lucas Recycling/Turn Lucas Green, hit the streets again in 2019 and signed up residents in unincorporated areas who also wanted access to curbside recycling. "Save Lucas Recycling/Turn Lucas Green" then brokered a deal to act as the intermediary between the unincorporated neighborhoods and the recycling provider, securing the curbside recycling option for 500 additional households.
In 2019, Victoria joined the Dallas Sierra Club first as Programs Co-Chair and then in 2020 as the chair of the Conservation/Eco Action Committee. With an creative, thoughtful, and effervescent personality, she has worked tirelessly to bring environmental and social justice to communities large and small.
Environmental Impact (Nominee demonstrates a positive impact on the local environment via policy change, product offering, significant volunteer contribution or other achievement)
Victoria Howard created Save Lucas/Turn Lucas Green in the spring of 2017 to convince the City of Lucas to resume curbside recycling over a two year hiatus. She organized high school students to canvas the entire city and garnered support from the Dallas Sierra Club and The Texas Campaign for the Environment. Her efforts filled the City Council Meeting Room on the night of their decision, and her persuasive arguments carried the day.
In 2018, Victoria organized First Saturday Styrofoam Recycling which served people in Dallas, Richardson, Plano, Allen, Fairview, Lucas, Princeton, and McKinney. This project is a model for other communities in North Texas.
In 2019, Victoria began serving as Dallas Sierra Club Program Co-chair, a role that she still fulfills bringing excellent environmental programs to our membership. She became a full member of Dallas EXCOM (Executive Committee) in January 2020. Her vibrant personality, openness, and clarity of thought have led the DSC to new levels of excellence, even during COVID.
In her role as the chair of the Conservation/Eco Action Committee, Victoria works on the Lane Plating site, the Globe Union Superfund site, the Proposed McKinney Concrete Recycling and the Proposed Waste Water Plant in Murphy.
In addition, her leadership is apparent if you look at the successes of her Conservation Eco Action Committee members, for example, they have:
• Built pollinator beds at a local high school near the garden they created. They are also working with Ben Jones from the TCA to create a prairie zone at the school and are also looking to make the school garden interactive and educational.
• Worked on the application for an EPA grant that would enable setting up/create a template( or intermediary website) so that people know how to communicate with different government and local officials when they’re faced with an environmental problem.
• Researched neighborhood betterment projects around Bonnie View and Loop 12 in South Dallas that to help with.
• Helped Universal Unitarian churches in the area with renewable energy programs.
Community Impact (Nominee demonstrates commitment to DFW green community through involvement with causes, business ventures or organizations)
In 2020, Victoria became Co-Chair Conservation for the Dallas Sierra Club. She has greatly expanded the membership of this group so that they have been able to take on several new projects.
- Five Conservation Group members continue to work with the Lane Plating Neighborhood Association over concerns about water contamination both on site and in the surrounding wetlands and creeks that eventually feed into the Trinity River. Key actions are data checking and verification that EPA and TCEQ ground water monitors are actually operational and ideally located. The group expects to request additional water testing before the next phase of EPA cleanup.
- Fighting illegal concrete batch plants in West Dallas. The City of Dallas is now formally prosecuting The Reliable Company for 14 violations on ten properties in Dallas.
- Addressing pollution from water runoff from a future batch plant site near a flood plain at California Crossing Road in Irving
- Supporting Marsha Jackson and her Floral Farms neighbor as she faces new zoning violations in her neighborhood after the Shingle Mountain cleanup.
- Promoting the Universal Unitarian Church's renewable power campaign to convert residents and churches to solar (with David Gray).
- Involving students and faculty from SMU in environmental projects.
- Inspiring the Coppell High School Environmental Team to get involved with the EPA by providing data and arranging neighborhood meetings on health impacts from the all-but-official superfund site at the Globe Union Battery facility.
- Mentored Sahan Yerram, an outstanding young environmental leader who formed an Environmental Team at Coppell High School. They now have four large composting bins, a new onsite garden, and an excited teacher as mentor. A greenhouse and solar panels are next on the list. It is planned that an official Dallas Sierra Club Branch will be created within Coppell High School as an actual school club beginning in fall of 2021. Sahan has also interned as a roving reporter for DFW GreenSource this summer, and he will intern for the Texas Conservation Alliance.
- Liaison with lead abatement groups in Garland, where lead concentrations sixty times higher than EPA limits were found.
Other reasons for your nomination
The activities of Victoria and her group constitute the bulk of the Dallas Sierra Club's engagement with environmental problems/issues in the DFW area