A Co Galway nun has won one of America's highest awards for social action. Sister Miriam Mitchell (54), a member of the Sisters of the Holy Spirit congregation at Kramer, south-east Louisiana, has been presented with the Harry Fagan Award by the Roundtable, the US National Association of Diocesan Social Action Directors for her work.
Since 1994 she has assisted people in Louisiana to compel oil companies to clean up a commercial exploration and production waste site near their homes in Grand Bois. More recently she has helped communities in Amelia and Morgan City as they try to stop a toxic waste incinerator being built in Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin.
Grand Bois is a small, isolated community of French-speaking native Americans. When the locality was chosen as a site for toxic waste Sister Miriam organised prayer and candlelight vigils in the bayous of Louisiana, drawing national attention to the issue in the US and forcing the Governor of Louisiana to intervene for the health and safety of the citizens of Grand Bois. The Exxon facility was forced to cut back its intake of waste by 80 per cent. At the awards ceremony in Los Angeles she was described as "not at all a do-gooder. She's very much Irish."