Law Commons^™

Fighting For Environmental Justice Takes Long-Lasting Coalitions, Helen Kang

Publications

“It’s official!” read Theresa Mueller’s long-awaited February 2011 e-mail to community activists. A veteran deputy city attorney with the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, Mueller was referring to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission decision that finally allowed the Potrero power plant, the second of the two dirtiest fossil fuel power plants in the most polluted area of San Francisco, to close.

Power plants do not typically close. Although power plants are designed to operate for thirty to forty years, most power plants continue to operate long beyond their planned life spans. The last step in a long list of agency, …

Fighting Back Against A Power Plant: Some Lessons From The Legal And Organizing Efforts Of The Bayview~Hunters Point Community, Clifford Rechtschaffen

Publications

Although the environmental justice movement catapulted into national consciousness during the 1990s, as reflected most notably in President Clinton's 1994 Executive Order on Environmental Justice, communities of color still face an uphill struggle fighting specific siting decisions. One community in the midst of such a battle is Bayview-Hunters Point, a low and middle-income community in San Francisco, overwhelmingly comprised of people of color. It is home to San Francisco's two existing power plants, and is burdened with a very high concentration of the City's dirty industries. In 1994, the San Francisco Energy Company proposed siting yet another power plant in …