Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice (GHEJ) is a San Francisco-based nonprofit fighting for environmental, social, racial, and climate justice. Founded in 1997, the organization began as a grassroots response to the proposed construction of a radioactive waste facility in California’s Ward Valley, which threatened groundwater connected to the Colorado River and land sacred to several Indigenous Nations. GHEJ halted the facility’s construction in 1999, and today, California’s Ward Valley remains free of nuclear waste. GHEJ has been serving frontline communities in need of environmental justice ever since. “People in the most vulnerable communities impacted by pollution suffer disproportionate health problems, including cancer, respiratory illnesses, and too often, death,” writes Bradley Angel, GHEJ’s executive director. GHEJ combats these injustices by engaging in community organizing, civil rights and policy advocacy, leadership development, and “nonviolent action against polluters and government agencies that fail to protect the people,” Angel writes.
Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice members mobilize for environmental justice. Photo: Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice
With seven staff members and dozens of interns and volunteers, GHEJ is a small but dynamic group on the frontlines of environmental justice. The group’s advocacy work helped secure a Superfund listing for West Oakland’s AMCO Chemical site in 2003. The EPA completed a $10 million restoration of the site in 2018, removing over 35,000 pounds of pollutants. In 2006, GHEJ forced the closure of San Francisco’s PG&E Hunters Point Power Plant, which had been contaminating the air, water, and soil of the Bay Area with PCBs and other pollutants for 77 years. GHEJ has effected policy change as well. The organization played a leading role in securing a landmark 2016 civil rights settlement that compelled California agencies to adopt new environmental justice, civil rights, and language access policies in response to discriminatory permitting practices affecting disadvantaged communities in Kettleman City, California. GHEJ is currently working with members of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe to stop uranium mining projects on Ute lands in southern Utah.
Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice members at the Climate Strike in September 2019. Photo: Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice