The first generation to know about climate change is the last that can do anything about it
Pat Costner has spent her life protecting the natural resources of our environment. She has lived in Eureka Springs for 50 years, is a retired senior scientist for Greenpeace, co-founded the National Water Center (NWC) and created/coordinated Save the Ozarks (StO).
“Pat Costner and Barbara Harmony were very important in our lives,” Doug Stowe said. “They weren’t self-promoting; they just quietly did their own thing. You wouldn’t know that Pat had been involved in Greenpeace, but she was their lead person on toxic waste.
“SWEPCO wanted to put powerlines where we could see them from ESSA [Eureka Springs School of the Arts]. If you’re involved in a community, you even care about what other people must look at. Pat was the leader of Save the Ozarks. That was an important thing. However, if you go up to her now, the first words out her mouth are not ‘save the Ozarks.’ It’s whatever has come up more recently. Pat’s not self-promoting, Pat promotes causes.”
Pat Costner grew up in Northeast Arkansas where she developed a great appreciation for the natural world and a strong awareness of her place in it. She earned a B.S. in chemistry and mathematics, and then a M.S. in physical chemistry and mathematics.
She began her career working with Shell Oil where she was the only woman working in their research lab in Houston. She then moved to Boulder, Colo., where she worked with the University of Colorado, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and a division of Syntex International called Arapahoe Chemicals.
“By this time, I had three children I did not want to raise in a city, and rural land outside of Boulder was scarce and very expensive,” Pat said. “So, my children and I drove across Kansas and down through western Missouri, looking for a piece of land.
“When the Realtors showed us this 180-acre piece of woodland hills with two creeks, lots of springs, and no nearby neighbors, I bought it. We lived in a tent until we hired a carpenter to build a small, very simple house, and we got acquainted with Eureka Springs. I set up an analytical laboratory in Blytheville, Arkansas, that analyzed water and wastewater for small towns and industries. We stayed on our place in Eureka because it is our home.”
The home that Pat had built for her children was burned down by arsonists on March 2, 1991. She said the only thing she misses from that house are her photographs, her visual history. She had a new house rebuilt on the same spot, where she resides today.
“I was scared after my home and office were destroyed,” she said. “As David Helvarg wrote in his book, The War Against the Greens: The ‘Wise-Use’ Movement, the New Right, and the Browning of America, violence against environmental activists was rampant in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I was the only figure in the book who was a national figure and a scientist.”
Barbara Harmony, Jacqueline Froelich, and Pat Costner co-founded the National Water Center (NWC) in Eureka Springs on Spring Street. The point of the water center was to directly test the quality of water in and around Eureka Springs.
In 1990, Pat wrote We All Live Downstream, a guide to waste treatment and stopping water pollution by influencing communities to switch to low flush or composting toilets. In 1993, she and Joe Thornton published Playing with Fire: Hazardous Waste Incineration. She was also an internationally sought-after speaker and environmental consultant.
At 84 years young, Pat is still willing and able to disseminate pertinent information regarding Eureka Springs’ most precious resource, water. She just sent me a thousand-page Exfiltration Study that the National Water Center did in the early 1980s, a comprehensive study funded by the Environmental Protection Agency. The study is about the natural water system in Eureka Springs and how it is affected by the city’s manmade wastewater system.
“It culminated in the findings of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee and its recommendations for improving the city’s wastewater system and protecting its most important springs,” Pat said. “The recharge zones of a large number of the springs in Eureka were mapped and their water quality was determined. We paid teams of Eurekans to map the sewer lines and determine their integrity.”
Southwestern Electric Power Company proposed building a 50-mile long, high voltage transmission line across Northwest Arkansas in 2013. The transmission line would have reached from Bentonville to the Kings River. So, Pat created Save the Ozarks and stopped this from becoming reality. Still to this day, one can find these orange signs hanging out around Eureka and her springs.
Pat Costner was very outspoken about the downhill gravity trails at Leatherwood City Park. Her main concerns are soil erosion, as the trails are in such close proximity to Leatherwood Creek which feeds the White River, and the danger the trails could pose to the habitats of endangered species living at Leatherwood.
She has also supported local movements to stop Carroll Electric from spraying herbicide along corridors for powerlines.
“Rather than a love of nature, I would say that my motivation springs from my love for my children and grandchildren. I have always wanted them to be as immersed in natural settings as I was as a child, living with my parents and grandparents and working on their farms: picking and chopping cotton, raising chickens, cattle and pigs. So, I would say I was willing to give all of myself to working for a particular way of life for myself and my offspring. I have lived an extraordinarily rich life.”
Pat Costner, who has a Wikipedia page, said she believes the two most important issues of our time are water and peace, both survival issues. She said these will be resolved when we learn to live thoughtfully and cooperate with each other, forever.