Seffner resident Cam Oberting is the last person any government official wants to tangle with. Although she is 74 years old and barely 5 feet tall, this homemaker from West Tampa is one of the most tenacious environmental advocates in Tampa Bay. For nearly three decades, Oberting and the Taylor Road Civic Association have fought against landfills, litterbugs, illegal dumping and borrow pits (dug by the county or Florida Department of Transportation to gather dirt for road construction). Here's Oberting on:
Her priorities:
"My first priority is my family. My second priority is the environment."
Winning the first-ever Hillsborough County Moral Courage Award in 1992:
"I can't take full credit for that. I'm not the only person. I think [the Taylor Road Civic Association has] accomplished a lot of good."
Borrow pits:
"We have seven borrow pits in this area. There's not one where you can agree it's a nice site."
Justice for all:
"Everybody deserves justice, whether you have the big pocketbooks or the person who pays very little taxes. I don't see a lot of that, especially in Hillsborough County."
Threats due to her activism:
"My life was threatened years ago. I'm not a pussycat. I don't scare easily"
Littering in Seffner:
"If only the [Hillsborough County] Sheriff's Department would send out an unmarked car to see who is littering and cite them. Then, in the newspaper, put a picture of the litterbug. I guarantee in six months you won't see any more litter."
The road clean-ups she helps organize every year:
"I don't just talk the talk when there's a cleanup. I do the walk."
On Florida Department of Transportation's recent waste dumping without a permit in a Seffner borrow pit:
"I'm not finished with them yet. I want an investigation."
This article appears in Jun 13-19, 2007.