Environmental Racism and Resident Activism

Images of the Golden Gate Bridge and Cables immediately come to mind when one thinks of San Francisco. The city by the Bay is also home to fog, the '49ers, and a 77 year-old power plant. The plant is located in Bayview Hunters Point, an area of the city populated by low-income and minority residents, and is only one of their worries; however, neighborhood residents have been fighting for the closure and/or cleanup of the plant since the 1970s. This is largely because of the plant's impact on residents' health. One study by the University of California at San Francisco showed that "hospitalizations for chronic illnesses including asthma, heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, and emphysema were four times more common in the Bayview than statewide" (Cooper).

This essay will examine the causes that resulted in such a lengthy battle to close what even the power company, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), long ago recognized and admitted to be an environmental hazard. There are three principal causes for the slow response to the concerns of the Bayview Hunters Point residents. These include the existence of other hazards in the same vicinity, PG&E's desire to meet the needs of other customers even at the expense of Bayview Hunters Point residents, and the communities' inability to gather the resources necessary to force a response from PG&E.

One rationale for either keeping the existing plant in operation or bulding a new one in the same location was that Bayview Hunters Point is already home to some 325 toxic sites, including San Francisco's only Superfund site (Knight). This rationale goes that if something potentially hazardous must be located in the City, it would be better to further concentrate one area than potentially contaminate additional regions. Additionally, in the face of such a great number of toxic sites, the costs and benefits of removing, replacing or adding one more seems negligible.