David Turcotte:
Profile
By Seyda Chan
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As program director for the University of Massachusetts Lowell's Center for Family Work & Community, David Turcotte has seen his share of environmental degradation in his days. The plaques on his office wall are reminiscent of years of experience. That is why he has worked in coalition with the Toxic Use Reduction Institute (TURI).
Turcotte agrees that local communities, like Lowell and neighboring towns, have benefited from toxic waste contamination into local rivers and waterways because of TURI. While growing up in Dracut, Turcotte recalls "the brook near my house, seeing oil and chemicals floating on top of the water because there were no controls, people and companies would dump chemicals into waterways." Thus began a movement to combat environmental contamination in the 1970s when the first Earth Day started. Massachusetts became the first state to have a comprehensive pollution control bill setting a precedent where many other states have followed suit. Turcotte, an ex-Raytheon electronic technician, whose first job helped build the hawk missile (the predecessor to the patriot missile) and tested guidance systems and repaired radar systems, says the impact of "1960s affected a lot of people and how they viewed things, you know, there was a lot of questioning of the government at the time." It apparently affected Turcotte who was not necessarily pro-war, but decided he did not like the military mentality of the company, soon left after two years with the company. He attended Southern New Hampshire University and got a degree in sociology and minored in political science. From then on, Turcotte got very active in politics becoming a part of Chet Atkins congressional campaign staff and the anti-nuclear movement. He was part of the many who protested the nuclear plant in Seabrook that proved unsuccessful because the plant was built. Turcotte even worked as an English teacher in Mexico for 16 months, where he learned to speak Spanish fluently. Within a few months, he moved on to work in the city of Lawrence on economic development and training issues. After working with the city, he spent a number of years in the private sector doing consulting. Some time later Turcotte got a master's in community economic development where he helped write a grant and started to work for UMASS Lowell full-time about seven years ago. Although collaboratively working with the university on environmental management systems, a concept based on setting up management practices within an organization that looks at the course of the business and its impact on the environment, Turcotte is involved in many other projects aside from this with the university like the worming composting project. David Turcotte says his work is a grassroots approach in partnership with the university and the city of Lowell. As program manager he oversees much of the work, however is not a part of all of it. Many of the current projects that go on work in partnership with other organizations such as projects relating to sustainability. Funded by the National Institute environmental health sciences, the Lowell Community Health Center and the Coalition for Better Acre are an example of such projects. Among the long list of projects Turcotte has been involved in, he recalls the most important by far is a scenario workshop planning for sustainability. Its "futuristic scenarios on what life would, could look like twenty years into the future," says Turcotte amicably. Surely Turcotte is excited for many projects to come and with the experience and variety of jobs Turcotte has held, it is ironic this man who went from building missiles is now helping build a better and cleaner communities. |
Established under the Toxic Use Reduction ACT (TURA) in 1989, TURI's' mission is to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals used during the manufacturing process thereby eliminating and reducing any toxic by products. And in working with companies TURI has done just that. The amount of wastes generated and dumped into local waterways has significantly been eliminated.