A banner coalition.

Lilian Robinson doesn't want a waste wood incinerator built across the street from the local elementary school. But it's hard to persuade her Flint, Michigan neighbors. "The word |incinerator' means nothing to them," she says. "They've never seen one."

Robinson's local environmental group has joined the Great Lakes Health Banner Project, a coalition of over 80 community groups, workers, veterans, school groups and environmental groups who are concerned about growing health problems in their communities and angry at government officials who have failed to respond. Together they created an 85-yard-long "Great Lakes Health Banner" to document, community by community, the environmental health crisis in the Great Lakes basin.

Each group has illustrated one square - and many are frightening. One depicts the state of Michigan as a tombstone, with plumes of incinerator smoke billowing behind it. Several squares list toxic waste sites, contaminated landfills and major industrial polluters in the region; many list the health problems experienced by local children.

Says Phyllis Gorski of the Troy, Michigan-based Parents Against Cancer Plus, "The banner reflects our group's motto - |Disease Prevention Through Pollution Prevention.' It shows that we're trying to clean up our state, and draws attention to both our individual and collective demands."

The first few original squares were sewn together in 1990 by a national group called the Environmental Health Network. Then in 1991, Maryann Stroup of Romeo, Michigan's Families for Environmental Health Awareness presented a 15-square banner to the International Joint Commission - a Canadian and U.S. government agency - urging officials from both countries to commit to zero discharge of persistent toxic substances in the Great Lakes basin (See "Sunset for Chlorine?" E Magazine, July/August 1993).

Last October, Michigan citizens took the now-60-square banner to the State Capitol to demand that the governor and the health department take steps to protect them from environmental health hazards. "We decided to |wrap' them in our concerns," says Stroup.

Many groups have taken the banner back to their own communities to display at parades, rallies, meetings and public hearings. The banner connects local concerns to a broader vision, explains Kay Haffner of Palisades Watch, a group which monitors Michigan's Palisades Nuclear Power Plant. "When people see that this is an epidemic, they realize we need to do something about it." Contact: Great Lakes Health Banner Project, P.O. Box 633, Romeo, MI 48065/[phone].