Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP) is a low-income community of color located on San Francisco Bay in southeast San Francisco. The residents and environment of BVHP are disproportionately impacted by many stationary and mobile pollution sources, including radioactive and toxic contamination at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund site and dozens of other contaminated sites along the waterfront and throughout the community. Greenaction is working with the Bay Area Association of Governments’ DACTIP (Disadvantaged Community and Tribal Involvement Program) on water quality improvement projects around the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco.
Students worked to support these projects by completing the following deliverables of:
(1) Research on water quality monitoring and contaminants in bay area fish
(2) Subsistence fishing signage: creating multilingual signage to support subsistence fishers in understanding potential toxins (3) Billboard about illegal dumping: researching costs, permits, and plausibility.
The Watershed Project and other local partners recently collaborated to design shoreline adaptation and multi-benefit infrastructure around the North Richmond wastewater treatment plant. San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority is working on the current design, which will include a horizontal levee to protect the plant from rising sea levels and new landscape designs to make the beach area more accessible for community members. Students created community outreach materials on the proposed North Richmond shoreline adaptation project. They compiled an annotated bibliography focused on three topics: history of environmental justice in Richmond, current shoreline adaptation technology, and socioeconomic implications of levees. This research informed a series of ten interviews with technical experts and community members, which they used to make an informational video on the living levee project.