Clean Air & Clean Water

CLEAN AIR AND WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT

Rest in Power Ms. Marie Harrison, your fight for clean air and legacy will continue to inspire our work for environmental justice. Read more about Marie’s Legacy. 

Greenaction believes that having clean air and water is a human right.  Unfortunately, too many communities across the US and the world suffer from polluted air and contaminated water. Even in wealthy countries like the US, many low income and people of color communities continue to drink toxic contaminated water and breathe air with pollutants that can cause cancer, respiratory illnesses and other health problems.

Campaigns and Programs

Clean Water for Kettleman City

While Flint, Michigan has had contaminated water for a few years, Kettleman City’s water has been contaminated with benzene and arsenic for decades. In the last few years, the benzene (contamination from old oilfield operations) is being removed but pumped into the air near homes. Drinking water continues to be contaminated with arsenic. The settlement of the civil rights complaint filed by Greenaction and El Pueblo of Kettleman City required the state to use their best efforts to bring clean water to the town. The California EPA now says that the toxic water supply will be replaced with water from the California Aqueduct and treated with a new system in the Spring of 2019.

Protect the Colorado and Green Rivers 

Greenaction brought together an upstream/downstream alliance of Native Nations, grassroots Indigenous groups, environmental justice and environmental organizations to support each other and build a stronger movement to oppose ongoing and new threats to the Colorado and Green Rivers and protect them from radioactive and toxic pollution.

Key campaigns are fighting;

  • The proposed Green River nuclear power plant,
  • The White Mesa Uranium Mill,
  • Oil and gas operations throughout the region

Participants included Greenaction, Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, Mohave Elders of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, grassroots indigenous groups White Mesa Concerned Community (of Ute Mountain Ute Tribe), Dine CARE and Haul NO from the Navajo Nation, Gila River Alliance for a Clean Environment, tribal members from northern Utes, Skull Valley Goshute, Hopi, O’odham, and non-Native allies including Uranium Watch, Living Rivers, Canyon Country Rising Tide.

Protect San Francisco Bay’s Shoreline Waters

Rising sea levels threaten contamination sites on San Francisco Bay waterfront. Greenaction is leading the fight to challenge industry and government agencies to properly clean up waterfront radioactive and toxic contamination threatened with inundation by rising sea levels caused by climate change. Our work on this issue focuses on San Francisco Bay, where government, industries and mega-developers have ignored the true threat posed by rising sea levels in Bayview Hunters Point, Treasure Island and other communities.

Radioactive and toxic contamination is already leaking into the Bay from these sites, including the notorious Hunters Point Shipyard Superfund Site. Adding to the problem is the fact that the USEPA and Navy want to leave radioactive and toxic waste buried at the Shipyard Superfund Site right on the Bay waterfront.

We Stand with Mauna Kea

The protection of Indigenous Lands and sacred sites and landscapes go hand-in-hand. The summit of Mauna Kea in Hawai’i is one of these sacred landscapes. To Native Hawaiians or Kānaka Maoli, the mountain, Mauna Kea, represents many things; a place of worship, an ancestral burial site, and a life-giving source of fresh water.  The aquifer located within Mauna Kea provides fresh water for the town of Hilo and other surrounding communities. Greenaction advocates and supports the protection of Mauna Kea and is adamantly against the building of the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Project. The TMT project would have devastating and irreversible environmental impacts on Mauna Kea’s fresh water aquifer and desecrate sacred lands. The TMT summit is already overburdened by thirteen previously built telescopes, which have been proven to leave toxins. Greenaction stands in solidarity with the “We Stand with Mauna Kea” and “Protect Mauna Kea” movements and protective actions.

Kū Kia’i Mauna!

Click here to read more about the recent peaceful blockade at Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

TAKE ACTION NOW! CALL NOW TO HALT THE TMT CONSTRUCTION!

Governor David Y. Ige

(808) 586-0034

Contact the Governor Online

Contact Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation 

(650) 213-3000

NO TMT! Protect Native Sacred Sites:

 

Ask them: Why are you desecrating Mauna Kea????
Tell them: “NO TMT! Protect Native Sacred Sites

“Please Divest from Desecration”

Sign this Petition 

For more ways to stay updated and support the Mauna Kea Protectors, please visit:

     Weblinks

 Facebook Pages 

Use these Hashtags on Social Media
#ProtectMaunaKea #WeAreMaunaKea #MaunaKea #ProtectTheSacred #ProtectTheSource #WeStandWithMaunaKea #WeAreStillMaunaKea #NOTMT #TMTShutDown #WeStand 

Stay Tuned to Greenaction for more Direct Action!

Clean Air for Kids in Fremont

Greenaction is working with parents in Fremont, California whose kids attend an elementary and middle school right next to Tri-City Rock’s concrete batch plant. Emissions from the stack, diesel buses, and from the uncovered piles blow onto the school grounds constantly. 

See our action flyer

Clean Energy Now! Keep Fossil Fuels In the Ground 

Visit our Energy & Climate Justice page.

Statement of solidarity;

Greenaction stands with all communities fighting all over the world to put an end to the fossil fuel industries. We stand with Standing Rock, we stand with the communities organizing to stop the XL pipeline, and Line 3 in Minnesota. We stand with those organizing to stop fracking and drilling and those frontline communities organizing to end Tar Sands mining. We stand with the communities most impacted by the Chevron Refinery in Richmond California.

DIESEL IDLING & EMISSIONS REDUCTION CAMPAIGNS

Greenaction has active campaigns to reduce the harmful and illegal idling of diesel trucks in Bayview Hunters Point/San Francisco, Kettleman City & Avenal in the San Joaquin Valley, and we are spreading this successful effort to other communities including the Salinas Valley.

Read our fact sheets on

BVHP and Kettleman City Community Air Monitoring Projects

Greenaction, in partnership our close community partners, has begun two multi-year community air monitoring project to identify, evaluate and reduce particulate matter pollution as well as exposure to harmful emissions in Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco and Kettleman City in the San Joaquin Valley of California. In both communities, residents suffer high rates of health problems likely linked to pollution.

Read more about the BVHP Community Air Monitoring Project

Read more about the Kettleman City Community Air Monitoring Project

Stop Incinerators and Incinerators in Disguise:

Greenaction works with our community partners to close polluting incinerators and to stop new proposed incinerators, including plasma arc, gasification and pyrolysis technologies. Incineration does not safely or completely destroy the waste being burned, and emits a wide range of toxic contaminants, particulates, and climate change pollutants into the air we breathe.

We work for safer technologies, such as sterilization of medical waste instead of incineration.

In addition to watchdogging government and industry to learn of any new incinerator proposals, Greenaction is engaged in active anti-incinerators campaigns:

Close the Evoqua hazardous waste facility on the Colorado River Indian Tribes, Parker, Arizona

Greenaction continues to work with tribal members to shut down the Evoqua hazardous waste facility where toxic wastes shipped there from companies and government agencies across the nation are burned in a “carbon reactivation” furnace. The facility got built on the reservation in 1991 due to false information presented to the CRIT tribal government by the USEPA and company that claimed that only steam was emitted. In fact, dioxin and a wide range of other hazardous chemicals and metals are emitted into the air. Greenaction is supporting the Colorado River Indian Tribes’ appeal of the permit improperly issued in 2018 by USEPA.

Shut the Stericycle medical waste incinerator in North Salt Lake City, Utah now, and stop it from moving to another community or state.

Greenaction started the campaign to close the Stericycle medical waste incinerator in North Salt Lake City twenty years ago. In 2015, the company was fined due to serious air pollution violations and submitting false emissions reports. In a clear example of Utah government’s pro-polluter bias, Stericycle was told they could move to a more remote area in Tooele County and incinerate there – despite the major violations and even without a public hearing process. Greenaction joined North Salt Lake City residents and Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment in demanding an immediate closure of the incinerator, and Greenaction opposed it moving to Tooele County. We are currently watchdogging the situation to ensure the incinerator is closing, and to monitor if the company tries to take their polluting incinerator operation to a different state. Medical waste should be sterilized, not burned.

Shut the Covanta garbage incinerator, Crow’s Landing, California

Covanta burns solid waste at their aging incinerator in Stanislaus County in California’s Central Valley, an agricultural heartland. We work with the Valley Improvement Projects and the Grayson Neighborhood Council in this effort.