Kenyan, Phyllis Omido, honoured with US Prize for Eco-Activism

After learning that her breast milk was making her baby sick, a Mombasa woman launched a campaign to shut down a smelter that was spewing lead fumes and untreated wastes in Owino Uhuru slum.

Phyllis Omido, a 36-year-old single mother, was honoured in the United States on Monday for her success in protecting local residents against those toxic discharges.

Ms Omido was chosen as the African recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, which awards each winner $175,000. She was one of six individuals - one on each continent - saluted for their grassroots environmental activism. The Goldman Prize was established in 1989 by California philanthropists to recognise and promote the work of "environmental heroes."

Once blood tests had revealed lead poisoning in her two-year-old son in 2008, Ms Omido encouraged other mothers in the Owino Uhuru slum to have their children tested for lead contamination. Three were found to have lead levels more than 20 times higher than those of children in the US.

"Some of the children were passing out," Ms Omido said in an interview that Goldman Prize sponsors posted on YouTube. "The water they were drinking was poisonous. It was a really, really painful situation that no one should allow another human being to live under."

Ms Omido formed a local group that petitioned the Kenyan government to shut down the smelter operated by the EPZ Metal Refinery. It extracted lead from car batteries for use in solar-power installations.

Her Centre for Justice, Governance and Environmental Action achieved initial success, with the government ordering the smelter to close. A month later, however, it was allowed to resume operations.

Ms Omido had earlier quit her job at the smelter and persuaded EPZ to pay her son's $2000 hospital bill. The company demanded in return that she remain silent, but Ms Omido organised protests against the smelter based on what she described as a sense of obligation to her neighbours.

Police arrested and jailed Ms Omido in 2012 on charges of holding an illegal gathering and inciting violence. She was also attacked by two armed men as she walked home one night.

The smelter was permanently closed last year as the culmination of a campaign that began in 2009.

Members of the Kenyan Senate Health Committee have toured the site where the smelter operated. "Appalled at what they saw," the Goldman Prize committee relates, "they pledged to provide testing for all community members and clean up the contamination."

Ms Omido hasn't stopped fighting, however. She is developing a class-action lawsuit against EPZ and the Kenyan government to force them to decontaminate the soil around the factory.

The six Goldman Prize winners are to be feted in Washington on Wednesday following an award ceremony in San Francisco on Monday night that drew an audience of over 3000.