Art Williams, right, was honored in 2023 with a lifetime achievement award from the Kentucky Resources Council. With him are his wife, Noel Rueff, center, and Sarah Lynn Cunningham, , executive director of the Louisville Climate Action Network. (Photo provided)
People in Louisville can literally breathe easier because of Art Williams’ work.
Williams, who died Oct. 20, helped steer a politically-charged and technically-complex process that led to Louisville industries deeply reducing releases of toxic chemicals into the air.
Earlier, as a state environmental attorney, Williams successfully defended Kentucky’s Wild Rivers Act against a challenge by coal and logging interests.
In more recent years, Williams worked internationally as a consultant with a nonprofit helping China plan for environmentally sustainable growth while reducing heat-trapping greenhouse gasses. He participated in United Nations climate conferences around the world and served as counsel to the Louisville Climate Action Network board.
Williams and his wife, Noel Rueff, also made time to grow and sell their Hot 2 Trot Kentucky Horseradish Sauce at farmers markets. Rueff said they hoped their product’s following helped attract customers to “support the real farmers.”
Wiiliams, who would have been 72 this month, was “smart, kind, empathetic, funny and cared deeply about the environment in which we live,” said James Bruggers, an environmental journalist who lives in Louisville.
As director of the Louisville Metro Air Pollution District, Williams “had the temperament to navigate the politics of what I think is the most significant environmental program in Louisville in decades,” said Bruggers, who reported for the Courier Journal before joining Inside Climate News.
Injustice in the air
By the end of the 20th century, Kentucky’s largest city had some of the nation’s highest levels of hazardous air pollution — substances known or suspected of causing cancer, birth defects and other health problems. These dangers were — and still are — borne disproportionately by low income, predominantly Black residents of West Louisville, which borders an industrial complex called Rubbertown. Studies showed that living near Rubbertown shortened residents’ lives.
Activists, including the late Rev. Louis Coleman, protested the environmental and racial injustice, while business interests warned of lost jobs and plant relocations if industries were forced to install new pollution controls.
“Art told me he could not just wave a magic wand and make the air cleaner by adopting regulations willy-nilly,” Bruggers recalls.
Instead, Bruggers said, Williams helped then-Mayor Jerry Abramsom lead “a slow, methodical process” that in 2005 yielded STAR, for Strategic Toxic Air Reduction Program.
Since STAR’s adoption, emissions of toxic chemicals have dropped almost 80 percent, according to the air pollution district.
Abramson last week said Williams was indispensable to the effort’s success. “Art guided me on how to work through compromises that ultimately got us across the goal line. Art was a wonderful leader of the air pollution control agency bringing environmental advocacy and reality to the table.”
In 2008, ABC News reported that “ounce per ounce, the Louisville program packs a greater punch than almost any other community’s program,” according to S. William Becker, who was executive director of a national organization of pollution-control officials.
Airborne toxics remain high in Louisville compared to other large cities. The problem is again being examined, through monitoring of air and wastewater, thanks to a $1 million environmental justice grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
A rare skill
Bruggers, the reporter, recalls watching “as Art would attend community meetings and take the brunt of decades of frustration by Louisville residents, particularly in western Louisville around the Rubbertown chemical plants, who were fed up with the poor air quality that was making their lives miserable with strong orders and shortening their lives, too.
“He would let people vent and patiently explain what the air district was doing. Residents of western Louisville had and still have legitimate environmental justice complaints, but it was Art’s steady leadership that guided the city toward much improvement.”
Even after overcoming the local obstacles, the STAR program had to “survive a pretty furious challenge in the legislature,” Bruggers said.
Louisville’s Looking for Lilith Theatre Company captured the high stakes and drama in “Prevailing Winds,” an original play in 2015 about the struggle for safer air. In a memorable scene, a character says the prevailing wind blows from southwest to northeast. “So it is a real fallacy to present this as just a West End problem. It is a problem for all of us.”
Reaching agreement, Rueff said, “was just a bear. To pull that all together. To get the politicians to buy in, industry to buy in, citizens to buy in. Everyone was at the table.”
On a more whimsical note, Rueff said their horseradish business turned the tables on her husband, a career government regulator of air, water and waste management. “It was fun to watch him be the regulated,” she said, as he pursued Hot 2 Trot’s permits and trademark and compliance with health rules.
After leaving the Air Pollution District, Williams served as executive director of the Kentucky Conservation Committee which lobbies the legislature on environmental issues. Lane Boldman, now the group’s executive director, said that when she succeeded Williams and “began to meet with lawmakers he had worked with, it didn’t matter which party they were from, they all expressed great respect for Art and his skills in helping them work through environmental issues. This is a rare skill when working in a forum that can be very partisan, and where issues can be politically challenging.”
Women’s hoops fan
Born in Bowling Green, Williams was a fan of women’s college basketball, beginning as a student at the University of Tennessee, where he earned undergraduate and law degrees and later as an avid supporter of the University of Louisville Cardinals.
Williams was diagnosed and successfully treated in 2013 for metastatic head and neck cancer which returned a few years later, Rueff said. He died at University Hospital in Louisville.
The Kentucky Resources Council last year honored him with the Winnie Hepler Lifetime Achievement Award for his dedication to environmental protection, starting in college with a recycling program and continuing through his leading role in creating “a model for the nation “ in STAR.
In addition to Rueff, his wife of 44 years, Williams is survived by son, Ben Williams and daughter-in-law Sarah; daughter Emily Helm and son-in-law Charlie; and grandchildren, Cullen, Louisa, Hayes Williams and Jack Helm.
A memorial gathering is being planned.
Memorial donations are suggested to the Kentucky Resources Council and Louisville Climate Action Network.