Lee Botts early career consisted over the years 1969-1994. Botts determination lead her to gain leadership roles in community projects, conferences, and campaigns. Working as a researcher, journalists, editor, advocate and consultant using her roles to enhance protection and preservation of the Great Lakes. Within her early career Botts did a lot of traveling around the United States and out of the country. During Lee Botts early career she was a
columnist for, and then
editor of, the weekly
Hyde Park Herald. Botts started off her career writing a garden column for the weekly Hyde Park Herald in Chicago in the 1950s, becoming the paper's editor-in-chief in the 1960s, the Post-Tribune previously reported. Conservation was her passion.
Open Lands Project In 1969 she became a staff member at the Open Lands Project, now known as
Openlands, in Chicago. Botts became involved as a volunteer in several local issues such as the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference, and Botts took a leadership role in the campaign which in 1966 resulted in the creation of the federal
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Botts organized the first earth day celebration in
Chicago. In 1970, Botts continued to work as a consultant to the Chicago Department to Streets and Sanitation, working on how Chicago can recycle plastic waste. While on staff at Openlands, Botts founded the Lake Michigan Federation, which today operates as the
Alliance for the Great Lakes. Within the wave of new interest in environmental issues in the U.S. during that period, the Federation was the first independent citizens' organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of a specific Great Lake. The new organization persuaded Mayor
Richard J. Daley to have Chicago become the first Great Lakes city to ban
phosphates in laundry detergents, led U.S. advocacy for the first binational
Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (1972), was a key advocate for the landmark federal
Clean Water Act of 1972, and played a key role in persuading Congress to ban PCBs via the 1976
Toxic Substances Control Act. After several years leading the Federation, including numerous trips to
Washington D.C. to
lobby Congress, Botts spent two years as a staff member at the Region 5 office of the young federal
Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). In 1977 President Carter named her head of the Great Lakes Basin Commission, headquartered in
Ann Arbor, Michigan. After all federal basin commissions were eliminated in President
Ronald Reagan's first federal budget, Botts held for several years a faculty research appointment at
Northwestern University followed by two years as a staffer and consultant for the City of Chicago's new Department of the Environment. In 1986 she narrowly lost an election to the board of Chicago's
countywide wastewater treatment district. Twice during the 1990s Botts traveled to the former
Soviet Union to coach fledgling citizen-environmental groups. In 1990, she participated in an environmental information exchange with Russian officials and citizens around Lake Baikal in Siberia. Later, she led a workshop on citizen participation in
Kyiv, Ukraine; and helped organize a conference in
Tartu, Estonia, on watershed management for government officials, environmentalists and academic experts. Lee also served as an advisor to the
Commission for Environmental Cooperation that was established under the environmental side agreement to the 1994 (NAFTA)
North American Free Trade Agreement.
Indiana Dunes Environmental Learning Center Lee Botts late career lasted from 1997-2019. Bott's continued to be strategic in gaining to support to guide the community. During this time Botts lead foundations that offered educational experiences for children to learn about the environment in which they live. Lee Botts co-authored scholarly books and was involved in the Alliance for the Great Lakes as a board member and board president. Later on, became an executive producer for a documentary depicting the natural history and restoration in the norwest Indiana dunes. In 1997 Botts realized a longstanding idea by leading the founding of the Indiana Dunes Environmental Learning Center, now the Dunes Learning Center. Located within the
Indiana Dunes National Park at the former Camp Goodfellow, which was a summer camp for children of U.S. Steel employees during the middle of the 20th century, the learning center offers sleepover environmental education programs for grade-school students and teachers. Since then, more than 175,000 students have experienced nature-based learning with the center's nonprofit education partner, Indiana Dunes National Park.
Co-author and Executive Film Producer In 2005 Botts co-authored a scholarly book on the landmark
Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. She served on Indiana's state Water Pollution Control Board (a division of the
Indiana Department of Environmental Management) from 2007 to 2010. Botts was a board member emerita of the
Alliance for the Great Lakes and board president emeritus of the Dunes Learning Center, served on the board of the Delta Institute and the
Save the Dunes Council, and was an advisor to other environmental groups including the
Shirley Heinze Land Trust.
Shifting Sands: On the Path to Sustainability, a 60-minute documentary film that Botts conceived and of which she was executive producer, was released in April 2016. The film, which depicts the natural history, the course of industrial development, and subsequent environmental restoration in the northwest Indiana dunes and surrounding region, has been shown on dozens of PBS stations and was nominated for a Midwest Emmy Award. Botts collaborated on that film with producer and director Pat Wisniewski, co-director and co-writer of the award-winning 2013 documentary about the great Kankakee marsh,
Everglades of the North. ==Awards and recognition==