Charlie Atherton

I have been involved, for about 38 years, in all local public issues that affect all the people of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana. This includes environmental and environmental health concerns and issues. Since I retired, I spend about 80% of my time on environmental and environmental health concerns and issues.

I have been married to the same young lady for 38 years, have 5 sons, 6 grandchildren, and have lived in Calcasieu Parish since 1944. I graduated from high school in 1959, went to college for 2 years, completed a degree in Industrial Instrumentation from a technical school, completed my military obligation and worked in industrial plants for 40 years before retiring 2 years ago. I have spent the last approximately 20 years in industrial plant management.

I am the non paid executive director of the environmental group CLEAN (Calcasieu League for Environmental Action Now); a member of the local LEPC (Local Emergency Planning Committee); a member of the Calcasieu Estuary Task Force (a potential Superfund Site); involved on numerous steering committees with state and federal agencies such a USEPA, LADEQ (Louisiana Dept. of Environmental Quality), LADHH (Louisiana Dept of Health & Hospitals), ATSDR, and NOAA; have served on numerous Blue Ribbon Committees for local government and school board; and served on the committee that wrote the City Charter for the City of Sulphur.

Without realizing it, I wound up spending most of my life trying to improve the quality of working people's lives and holding elected officials and agencies accountable. I continually push to put the processes and procedures in place to begin implementing solutions to problems that plague everyday working people.

Making public participation a citizen tool that will actually work for the public fits into my personal goals. Currently my focus is to continually improve and restore the quality of human health and the environment in Calcasieu Parish.

My overall plan and goal that guides my public participation efforts is to try to make every working citizen feel like they could immediately swap places with me every time they see me on the front lines addressing public issues on TV or read about me in the newspaper, because I am representing them individually as they want to be represented.