In Northwest Dade, where environmental issues were a major concern long before saving the earth became good prime-time TV, residents have been successfully fighting developers and governments.

The latest victory came in June, when a state legislative committee rejected a $6.2 million request from the Florida Department of Transportation to purchase the land for a proposed jetport site in far Northwest Dade.

One of the main people behind the anti-jetport movement is Carl Dasher, a 14-year resident of Palm Springs North who accidentally learned that state legislators were about to vote on the proposed land purchase.

Dasher bought a ticket to Tallahassee and went to see the politicians. "I'd never done anything like this before," said Dasher, manager of financial planning for Eastern Airlines. "I had about 20 seconds with every key leader I could find. I spoke for two hours. When I heard the final vote, I shouted, 'Yeah!' "

Besides the jetport, area residents have fought malathion sprayings, illegal dumping, proposed coal plants and noise pollution.

The effort is a grass-roots one. Activists meet in each others' homes at night and plan huge gatherings at high school gyms. What they lack in money, they make up for with knowledge, determination and numbers.

Politicians say the groups do make a difference.

"When people get together like this, it makes elected officials more accountable," said state Rep. Luis Rojas, R- Hialeah.

"It's refreshing to see people can still make a difference in their government. You can't always agree with them, because sometimes you have more knowledge than they do. What is refreshing is that the area has rallied together. It has been democracy in action."

On Tuesday night, more than 200 people -- most of them members of the Palm Springs North Civic Association and the West Dade Federation of Homeowners -- packed the American High School auditorium to hear 13 county commission candidates speak about environmental issues and other concerns.

Government agencies, often the opposition in the activists' battles, say they pay attention to the groups, but downplayed their influence.

"Most of the groups that have environmental concerns are not much different from the people in a division such as ours," said Richard Gaskalla, director of the state Department of Agriculture's division of planned industry and one of the officials who made the decision earlier this year to spray malathion in Northwest Dade. "Many of our employees have environmental concerns."

The groups are not ignored, he said. "We're certainly willing to listen and if there's a need to change, make the appropriate changes," he said.

Chris Mangos, spokesman for Dade County's aviation department, said his department -- which tried to get the state money to buy the land for the Northwest Dade jetport -- must listen to citizens because they are a public agency.

But Mangos said it was tough to gauge whether the residents' protests had ultimately stopped the legislative funding to buy land at the site. "I really couldn't tell you whether they were instrumental or not. That's difficult to speculate," he said.

Activist leaders say the important thing is to get the information needed and get involved.

Joe Podgor, a long-time Northwest Dade environmentalist who has been involved in fighting the proposed Northwest Dade jetport, believes the first step in getting your concerns heard is knowing you can.

He cited his favorite example from the early 1980s, when a group of residents decided to oppose a condominium development because of the dangers to a North Key Largo reef.

Without much experience, they found getting information on the project from the state government wasn't easy. They researched the law and went to work. They rented a copy machine, bought two boxes of blank white paper, loaded it into a hand truck and went to the state capitol. They also carried a copy of Florida's public records act, which requires access to most government documents.

With a copier and paper in tow, they marched into an office and calmly asked for directions to the file cabinet.

"We told them, by law, they even had to show us where to plug in the copy machine," said Podgor. "We found the documents we were looking for and quite a bit more."

In the end, the project was stalled long enough for the development to go bankrupt. The state purchased the land and decreed it was for public use.

"Anybody can get what they want," said Podgor, who works full-time for the Friends of Everglades and manages their Environmental Information Service in Miami Springs. "The problem is they don't know how. I say do it. Try."

One place to start is Podgor's Environmental Information Service, "where people come to find out where to go, what to do and who to speak to on environmental issues," he said.

Like most other activists, Podgor never planned on getting involved. "When I was in college, I thought you go to city hall, push a button and they'd come running out with information," said Podgor. "I've been looking for that button ever since. We've met the button and the button is us."

A word of caution: The victories don't happen overnight. Few fights take less than two years. Some take as long as 10 years.

"The difficulty of having regular citizens participate in the decision-making process in government is that you basically have to be a professional lobbyist to have your views heard on a regular basis and implemented," said Rodney Derhan, assistant chief for the state Bureau of Drinking Water and Ground Water Resources. He has heard from many a feisty citizen, including Podgor, over the years.

Derhan says Podgor has been successful because "he doesn't argue for the sake of arguing. He understands frequently technical environmental matter. He does his homework."

Elmore Kerkela, 77, often called the "grandpa" of some of Northwest Dade's ad hoc movements, also does his homework. Kerkela, who has been fighting for 40 years, is best known for his involvement in the 1973 recall of four county commissioners over the misuse of funds for a hospital that never was built.

Today, Kerkela spends his days driving his white Buick down dusty roads and through Northwest Dade dump sites, checking for illegal dumping where toxics could seep underground into the drinking water supply.

He said most of the dump site owners don't like him because he's always snooping around.

Last week, Kerkela learned that A.B. Martin, owner of a 110-acre Northwest Dade roofing material dump site, does monitor wells and survey lines, and gives rewards for those spotting illegal dumping. "I'm an environmental nut," Martin said.

Another one staying on top of businesses is Edmund Benson, known for leading the eight-year cleanup of the county's Northwest 58th Street incinerator, once known as the Miami Monster.

In 1981, it snowed toxic ash on Doral and Costa del Sol residents.

In 1985, the state sued the county and terminated the plant's operating contract.

An American flag now flaps where heaps of old garbage used to bake in the sun. Juan Portundo, president of the new company, Montenay Power Corp., calls Benson, a frequent visitor, "our conscience."

The biggest weapon in all these environmental fights is persistence, said Benson. "I don't have reverse gears. I have one. It's forward."

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