By the late twentieth century, some decisions about development and environmental protection became embedded in government bodies, but not all Bay Area communities experienced equal protection. Across the nation, communities of color had long confronted environmental racism—the disproportionate burden of environmental hazard and harm placed on underrepresented communities from toxic waste and industrial pollution in their neighborhoods. In the Bay Area, the city of Richmond proved a case in point. Home to the Chevron oil refinery and a host of other industries, neighborhoods in Richmond experienced higher levels of pollution and toxins, habitat destruction, lower qualities of natural resources and environmental amenities, and exploitative dumping. Yet again, residents organized to demand change for their communities, this time for environmental justice—the equal treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in environmental decision-making. By the close of the twentieth century, citizen activists from Richmond and other Bay Area communities played an important role in placing people—not just landscapes—within the environmental agenda. Their ongoing efforts, from shutting down toxic incinerators to ensuring a community voice in decision-making, have reshaped public policies to include the principles of environmental justice at all levels of government.

Environmental Justice arose in the late-1900s and represented an important evolution of environmentalism in California and the United States. In many respects, environmental justice infused the long struggle for Civil Rights into the Environmental Movement. While preservation protected rare landscapes from human development, and conservation balanced that development with environmental protection through regulation, environmental justice placed people and public health at the center of those discussions. In earlier decades, the environmental impact of industrial pollution was measured in habitat destruction and water quality. Environmental justice advocates emphasized how pollution created higher rates of cancer and asthma for residents in the low-income communities–often communities of color–who lived adjacent to those factories. For these marginalized residents, the solution was not just more government regulation, but a greater voice and equal participation in the development and implementation of economic and environmental policy. That process embodied the principles of environmental justice.

"We cannot be afraid to talk about environmental racism."

— Pamela Tau Lee

Co-founder, APEN (Asian Pacific Environmental Network)

Watch the Video

"Communities of color or low income communities have borne the brunt of the siting of chemical companies, refineries, landfills, and transportation routes which have given them a disproportionate impact."

— Henry Clark

Executive Director, West County Toxics Coalition

Play Podcast - "Environmental Justice For All"

Explore the Story

For a deeper look at the development of the environmental justice movement in the Bay Area, listen to this section's podcast linked below. Here you'll hear the full story of how grassroots efforts in Bay Area cities like Richmond played a critical role in addressing the harmful relationship between community health and the environment—a story told through the voices of the participants.

Press the button to listen.

"What we wanted industry and the government to use as the criteria for action was the facts: that there is a Superfund site there, that the soil is contaminated, that children are sick, that people have cancer."

— Pamela Tau Lee

Co-founder, APEN (Asian Pacific Environmental Network)

A Summit in Washington

In October 1991, a forty-five member delegation of Bay Area activists and community organizers traveled to Washington, DC, where they joined fellow activists from around the country at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. Participants at the four-day event, sponsored by the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice, discussed a wide-range of topics from toxic pollution and environmental racism, to housing discrimination, transportation, and land-use policies. In the process, activists from communities of color drew new attention to the people who lived, worked, and learned within polluted and degraded environments, and together they adopted an influential resolution known as the Principles of Environmental Justice. These principles became a guidepost for policymakers and community leaders across the nation. In the podcast above, listen to Bay Area activists reflect on their experiences at this historic summit. Click the button below to read the Principles.

Read the Principles of Environmental Justice

"There will have to be a much more systematic acknowledgement that environmental and social issues are connected; they are not separate....The environmental justice movement in some fundamental way must become mainstream of the environmental movement."

— Carl Anthony

Co-founder, Urban Habitat Program

Environmental Justice in the Bay Area

Communities of color have long confronted environmental racism, yet most organizations in the environmental movement focused on other issues, like preserving redwood groves or protecting bay shoreline from new construction. By the 1980s, concerns about toxic industrial waste led communities of color in the Bay Area, and across the nation, to create new organizations and demand environmental justice. Residents in East Bay city of Richmond formed the West County Toxics Coalition—a multi-racial organization aimed at empowering their community to address environmental issues impacting their neighborhoods, such as the pollution of the nearby Chevron oil refinery. In Berkeley, professor Carl Anthony co-founded the Urban Habitat Program (UHP), which combined education with advocacy and coalition-building to achieve health, social justice, and sustainability in low-income communities of color throughout the Bay Area. Through its advocacy, community initiatives, and publications—like the groundbreaking journal Race, Poverty, and the Environment—UHP played an instrumental role in establishing environmental justice in the region, and helped expand the agenda of the environmental movement to include issues of public transportation, housing, health, economic stabilization, and access to parks and open space. On the heels of the 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, Asian Americans in the Bay Area created the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), which established a Laotian Organizing Project and the grassroots Asian Youth Advocates while also building and working within regional and national environmental justice coalitions. By the end of the century, these three organizations, together with a variety of other environmental justice groups, formed a diverse network of activism throughout the Bay Area.

Voices

Featured Oral Histories

Carl Anthony (1939 - )

Born in Philadelphia, Anthony was a professor of architecture at UC Berkeley and a leading advocate of environmental justice. He attended Columbia University, conducted research in West Africa, and later joined the faculty of UC Berkeley’s colleges of Environmental Design and Natural Resources. He left academia in 1980 to focus on urban planning and environmental work. In 1989, he co-founded the Urban Habitat Program, a division of Earth Island Institute that advanced environmental and social justice throughout the Bay Area and across the nation. Over the next decade, Anthony and the Urban Habitat Program advocated for and expanded issues of environmental justice in policy discussions on the local, state, and federal levels.

Carl Anthony Oral History

Henry Clark (1944 - 2022)

Clark was a community organizer and executive director of the West County Toxics Coalition, or WCTC, based in the Bay Area city of Richmond. A lifelong Richmond resident, he grew up with an acute understanding of the health and environmental consequences his community confronted due to toxic pollution from the Chevron oil refinery and other nearby industries. Clark earned his PhD in religious counseling and in the mid-1980s led WCTC to demand justice and change from industry while bringing community concerns to policymakers. Coordinating with other environmental groups, WCTC advanced environmental justice in Richmond, throughout the Bay Area, and abroad.

Henry Clark Oral History

Pamela Tau Lee (1944 - )

Tau Lee is a labor and community activist, and co-founder of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, or APEN. After growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Lee attended Cal State East Bay and became involved in the Third World Liberation Front on UC Berkeley’s campus. In the 1970s and 1980s, she engaged in labor and community organizing in San Francisco, which led her to the burgeoning environmental justice movement. She participated in the 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, which drafted and adopted the Principles of Environmental Justice. In 1993, she helped create APEN, an organization that has worked throughout the Bay Area, including with the Laotian community in Richmond, to advance environmental justice through policy, regulatory oversight, and community engagement.

Pamela Tau Lee Oral History

Ahmadia Thomas (1928 - 2024)

Thomas was an environmental justice activist with the West County Toxics Coalition, or WCTC, based in the Bay Area city of Richmond. Born in Danville, Virginia, she grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the Great Depression. In the early 1970s, she worked as a VISTA volunteer in Washington, DC, and in 1974, she moved to Richmond, where she expanded her environmental consciousness. She remained active in community organizing and joined WCTC in the 1980s to advocate for environmental justice. She worked for many years as WCTC’s office manager.

Ahmadia Thomas Oral History