Patrick Leahy: “We're just everyday people,'' said Linda Raymond of herself and her husband, Mike, of Woburn, MA. ``But we stopped a…”

“We're just everyday people,'' said Linda Raymond of herself and her husband, Mike, of Woburn, MA. ``But we stopped a landfill from expanding and raised environmental awareness. Any community can do what we did.'' The Raymonds live in a blue-collar suburb of Boston where they both work in the public school system. Three years ago, while walking on a wooded trail in their neighborhood, they discovered that the city's landfill, which had been dormant for 15 years, was bustling with truck traffic. They had cause for alarm. Woburn is the setting of the events that were described in the book, ``A Civil Action.'' After rates of leukemia shot upward, local industries were sued in the 1980s for polluting the area water. The Raymonds, who had not previously been involved in environmental activism, sprang into action, determined to discover what was being planned for the landfill and how this would impact the community's public health. The Raymonds' story was recounted in the January 25, 2004, issue of Parade magazine. ``When Linda Raymond contacted town officials to find out what was going on, she hit a stone wall. `I couldn't get a straight answer from anyone,' she says.”