Steph's Blog

Here the report here: Environmental Justice story on KALW

October 23, 2005

Transcript:

Intro:

When San Francisco’s newest district attorney took office, she decided to go after a new type of crime. Not blue collar or white collar but brown collar. Cracking down on the dirtiest criminals around – the polluters. San Francisco’s District Attorney Kamala Harris has created an Environmental Justice Unit to prosecute those who dump their toxins into San Francisco’s air, it’s water and ultimately into its citizen’s bodies. But the people who have born the brunt of the city’s pollution for generations say politicians have made promises of this sort before. Stephanie Loleng has our report.

Loleng: For San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, the reasons to fight pollution extend beyond the laudable notions of cleanliness and biodiversity. She says she’s treating pollution as a matter of life and death.

District Attorney Kamala Harris: When we’re talking about environmental crime, we really are talking about activity that does result in death. And so, I’ve dedicated the resources in my office to this issue in the same way that I believe we should think about homicides and other crimes in terms of their seriousness.

Loleng: Right now, the environmental justice unit consists of one staff attorney and one investigator. The San Francisco police department also helps by doing inspections and handing out search warrants when needed. Harris says, the environmental task force will focus on the Bay View Hunter’s Point neighborhood.

District Attorney Kamala Harris: There have been crimes that have been happening to that community that are environmental crimes that would have gone without consequence. We are now turning the spotlight on that community recognizing that the neighbors in that community deserve to live in an environment where they can breathe the air and drink the water and walk the streets, knowing that they will be healthy and safe.

Loleng: Many people think of environmentalists mainly as people with enough money to drive out and enjoy the national parks but for the poor who may not enjoy that luxury, environmental pollution is sometimes right in their backyard. The median family income here in Bay View is 24% below the city’s average. According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, polluters release more toxins in this neighborhood then anywhere else in the city. The Department conducted a study that concluded toxins from the Naval shipyards like pesticides, chlorine gas and various radioactive materials continue to pollute the area. People living here have to go to the hospital for chronic health problems four times more often than the average Californian. According to Sherlina Nageer, some of the pollutants have been here for decades.

Nageer: So we’re standing right on a little hill over-looking the Naval shipyard in Bayview Hunter’s Point which is a federal superfund site. Superfund meaning, easy way to remember is super-contaminated.

Loleng: Nageer works for Literacy for Environmental Justice, a non-profit group at Bayview Hunter’s Point. Nageer points up the hill to a row of houses where families live.

Nageer: So, you know a stone’s throw away from the Superfund site we have folks living and if they have their windows open and it’s a windy day. Contaminated dust can easily blow into the windows and that’s actually one of the factors. Bayview as you know, has a really high rate of asthma. And you know, also high rates of breast cancer and other pediatric cancers. And a lot of people feel that the reason that they’re ill is because they live so close to a lot of toxic sites.

Loleng: Nageer leads what are called “toxic tours” which start here at the shipyards.

Nageer: There’s a building to our right which if you look at it is a huge big grey building and the significant thing about it is that it doesn’t have any windows. And it doesn’t have any windows because it used to be the Naval Radiological Defense building. That’s where they did their nuclear weapons testing during World War II. There were reports that they experimented on 50,000 rats, mice, dogs, horses, and some people say prisoners were even experimented on.

Loleng: Nageer says that the Navy buried the animals here in a landfill along with other chemicals like lead based paint, corrosives and PCBs. Several times the landfill has caught on fire wafting the houses with contaminated smoke. The tour ends with a leisurely stroll pass the PG&E power plant, which provides 30% of San Francisco’s electricity.

Nageer: Whenever the power plant is on people report their asthma flaring up, lots of kids having to miss school or not being able to pay attention or do well in school because coughing or runny eyes, that sort of thing.

Loleng: One out of every six kids here has asthma, compared to the national average of one in thirteen. Marie Harrison has seen it first hand with her own grandson.

Harrison: I could not take it anymore. I could not take watching a four-year-old begging for breathe. Asking you not to let him die. That’s crazy. We don’t live in some third world country where it’s common everyday, and I say this to make a point. It shouldn’t happen anywhere. But you would think in a place with such means. That’s not supposed to happen here.

Loleng: But pollution has been happening here as long as Harrison can remember.

Harrison: When I worked at the shipyard. Do you know that they new for 30 years before I actually took a job as a young teenage person, young mother that the asbestos that they were sandblasting off these ships were cancer causing? They would allow us to walk in there everyday come in with the plastic sheets blowing and the stuff getting all over your clothes and all in your hair. So many people have to die first before they say oh darn, I better start trying to address this. Why would you let a mass of folks die before you address something that was going to happen anyway? I don’t understand it. I just don’t get it.

Loleng: And Harrison isn’t sure if politicians like Kamala Harris get it either. She says she has seen plenty of other politicians ignore the environmental plight of Bayview and isn’t convinced Harris will be any different.

Harrison: I think Kamala is a very powerful woman in her own right but I don’t think that her office has a clear cut idea of what environmental justice is. I found that out with the mayors, with the governors, our last two governors, our last two mayors. They don’t have a clue. People don’t know what environmental justice is.

Loleng: But those in charge of environmental justice in Kamala Harris’s office are trying to find out. (sound of Devina on phone) Devina Pujari is a staff attorney in charge of the unit. She says the investigators are constantly visiting the Bayview neighborhood and doing unannounced inspections of possible polluters.

Pujari: We’re actually going to be going out into the community and doing multi-agency inspections and what we call roll outs where literally law enforcement personnel and environmental inspectors drive out or roll out to a scene and conduct an inspection there and then. The Environmental Justice Unit has already filed three lawsuits. But Bayview residents are still wondering if Pujari and her staff will have the clout and political backing to prosecute polluters.

This piece discusses the struggle that Bindlestiff Studio went through to keep their doors open. Since this piece was aired, they were able to get some funding from the city to re-build the only Filipino American theater space in the world.

listen:

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I went down to Justin Herman Plaza at the Embarcadero last week to check out the mayhem of the Olympic torch protests. I saw a lot of Free Tibet supporters and general anti-China folks out. Here’s a clip of a group that carried a long banner that read “San Francisco says no torch in Tibet.”

listen:

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There were definitely a lot of pro-China groups as well — I heard later that day from some friends that they were bused in from other parts of Northern California like San Jose and Sacramento. I did see some of the buses out come to think of it.

It was an exciting day seeing all those people very passionate about their beliefs. One thing that pissed me off though was when a Free Tibet supporter was yelling at a couple of Chinese guys screaming, “You stupid Chinese man!” It had a racist tone to it which I didn’t like. All in all an exciting time, just disappointment from the crowd that the torch never made it to the original destination because it was re-routed to the Marina. Gavin Newsom was afraid that people would rush the torch bearers. And he was right to fear that because there was a man telling people to block the torch from coming into Justin Herman Plaza in any way they could.

Today is my dad’s birthday. It’s been two and a half years since he died. I made this audio audition piece for NPR’s Radio Host search. But I’d rather it be on my site, for my audience.

listen:

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August 10, 2006

I interviewed a few med students who have or are studying medicine in the Philippines. Because of the educational system in the Philippines mirroring the educational system in the U.S. and the fact that Filipinos are fluent in English, studying there is a good way for Filipino Americans to get a good education and qualify for residency in the U.S.

Check it out here:
at KQED’s Pacific Time