Baltimore Activist Among Winners of Goldman Green Prize

A Baltimore college student whose work to block construction of a trash incinerator in her working-class neighborhood was recognized Monday with the Goldman Environmental Prize, The Washington Post writes. Campaigners from Puerto Rico, Peru, Cambodia, Tanzania, and Slovakia also received the $175,000 awards honoring grass-roots green activists, NBC News reports.

Destiny Watford was a 17-year-old high-school student when she started mobilizing classmates and neighbors in Curtis Bay, a South Baltimore community that was already reckoned the city’s most polluted, to oppose plans for a giant plant that would burn 4,000 tons of garbage a day. Their efforts have secured an indefinite halt to the project, for which state officials are now seeking to revoke a permit. Now 20, she is the third-youngest winner of the annual prize for environmental advocacy established by the late Bay Area philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman.