When it comes to fighting for state funding for health studies of cancer clusters or tougher state pollution standards, they typically find themselves no match for high-powered industry lobbyists. And Utah's pro-industry Legislature has been anything but sympathetic, they say.

Proposals to encourage recycling through deposits on soft drinks or to require state agencies to use recycled materials have received chilly responses from lawmakers loath to impose any environmental mandates no matter how worthy.

But that's not to say citizens haven't made a difference. It was citizen activists who led the battle for two decades to win compensation for victims of Cold War nuclear testing and uranium mining.

Another group, Citizens Against Chlorine Contamination, recently hounded environmental regulators to do something about Magcorp's chlorine pollution. And members also pushed for dioxin testing at the Tooele County plant. With the EPA breathing down its smokestacks, the company relented.

People can make a difference, said Chip Ward, a Grantsville activist who wrote about the Magcorp case in his book, "Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West."

"People often wonder if they can made a difference against seemingly insurmountable odds," he said. "The Magcorp story illustrates that they can, and it underlines the powerful relationship between the vitality of a community's civic environment and the health of its natural environment.

"Chalk one up for citizen activism. Commitment and determination pay, and winning feels good."

But by and large, Utah's environmental voice has been scarcely a whisper. When it comes to battling for tougher environmental laws, Utah activists have typically joined with politically powerful allies like the Sierra Club. And the battlefield has typically been in Washington, D.C., not Utah. And the results have been national policies, not solutions to local problems.

Chip Ward likens the public apathy toward environmental problems to the proverbial frog in a pan of boiling water. Add the frog to water already boiling and it will immediately jump out. Put the frog in cold water and then raise the heat to boiling and the frog will cook to death.

Utahns, Ward says, are the frogs in a pan, and the water is getting hotter and hotter.

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E-mail: spang@desnews.com; donna@desnews.com