A Kenyan community whose children and residents were sickened by lead poisoning from a battery smelting plant has been awarded $12 million (1.3 billion Kenyan shillings) following a civil lawsuit.

The court ordered the government to clean up Owino Uhuru, a village on the outskirts of Mombasa, within four months and gave the relevant agencies 90 days to pay out the compensation money.

The ruling comes after years of grassroots work by environmental activist Phyllis Omido, who launched a legal challenge against the government and the smelting plant owners, accusing them of violating of Kenyan environmental and human rights law and exposing the community to lead poisoning.

Omido worked at the lead-acid battery recycling plant, Metal Refinery EPZ, as a community relations manager in 2009. She quit after three months when her baby became sick and doctors found lead in her son’s blood test they said he might have ingested from her breast milk. Soon, she noticed strings of similar illnesses related to lead poisoning breaking out in the community.

She kick-started years of grassroots demonstration for the factory’s closure and investigation into residents’ allegations of health problems caused by the smelting factory’s activities.

The company shut down in 2014 eight years after it began operation nearby the village and only when Kenya made the exportation of scrap metal illegal. Dozens of residents tested positive following a 2015 assessment by the government and in some tests conducted showed blood lead levels that were deemed dangerous by the Kenyan Centers for Disease Control.

Her campaign through the Center for Justice, Governance and Environmental Action she founded in 2014 to tackle environmental abuses in Kenya has led to the shuttering of at least 10 toxic waste smelters in the East African country in the last five years.

Omido was named one of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize winners and she has been dubbed the “East African Erin Brockovich.”

Culled from edition.cnn.com