October 8, 2024
In today’s world of magical modernity, we can have anything we want the next day. A pack of socks, a Cuisinart® food processor (top rated), a new electric toothbrush—a click of a button and poof!—it appears at my doorstep. I fold up the cardboard packaging into my apartment’s blue bin where it will be recycled and toss the plastic wrappers in for good measure (they recycle those too, right?). They say good things come to those who wait; I say good things come immediately to those who pay $14.99 a month.
Sound familiar?
Behind that “deliver tomorrow” button is an untold story—a story of complex supply chains and the hidden costs they impose on the many communities in their path. There are now four Goldman Environmental Prize winners from the state of California—all from Latino communities negatively impacted by the byproducts of manufacturing, consumption, and waste. As underscored by the example of next-day delivery, it turns out that the “magic” of our modern world has some serious side effects.
Through his 15+ year career of community organizing and advocacy, environmental justice leader mark! Lopez understands more than ever the connection between oil extraction and globalization, between air emissions and zoning. “People get to know me for one thing,” he noted, “but then they learn, ‘hey, you’re also working on this?’” Against the urban backdrop of East Los Angeles, mark! is at the forefront of an interwoven quilt of environmental justice advocacy across the state of California. And he isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
The Beginnings: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice
The namesake of mark!’s organization, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice (“East Yard”), was a rapidly expanding railyard in Los Angeles County’s aptly named City of Commerce. When Japanese-American farmers in the area were placed in internment camps during World War II, their farmland was sold to Union Pacific Rail, mark! explained. The sleepy railyard operated for decades until the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) ushered in a new era of economic cooperation and, with it, explosive railway growth, freeway expansion, and an influx of polluting trucks and businesses. Incoming ships from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, two of the largest container ports in the country, brought a steady stream of goods through Los Angeles and the wider region, en route to their next destination. Almost overnight, mark! reflected, East Los Angeles exploded into a hub of freight transportation and industry.
For decades, East Los Angeles has served as a landing spot for immigrants: first from Eastern Europe, Japan, and Northern Mexico and now from Colombia and Venezuela. “A lot of people stay and embrace the diversity,” mark! reflected. “I’ve got four generations of my family here.” mark! describes his community as tight-knit, vibrant, and hard-working.
In a part of the county that has borne the brunt of bad city planning and zoning for decades, many of the communities of East Los Angeles are struggling economically and suffering from toxic air pollution. “My daughters are 10 and 12 now,” mark! shared. “They’re starting to look around at their school and their neighborhood and notice problems as well.” mark!’s family motivates his work as an environmental justice leader—he wants his daughters’ childhood experiences to revolve around love, joy, and beauty rather than the pitfalls of East Los Angeles. “I don’t want contamination and health impacts to be normalized,” he concluded.
Exide: A Pollution Disaster and an Ongoing Clean-Up
In 2015, mark! and his community successfully shut down one of the polluting industries in East Los Angeles, the Exide Technologies battery recycling plant. While recycling may sound great, the output from the facility was toxic: a sampling of dust on rooftops of nearby buildings found lead levels of 52,000 parts per million—where 1,000 parts per million is considered hazardous waste. In addition to a successful campaign that closed the plant, mark! rallied his community to demand remediation, securing an initial $178.8 million (now a total of $500 million) for the testing and clean-up of affected homes. mark! won the Goldman Prize in 2017 for this victory.
When asked how the clean-up is going, mark! grimaced. Reporting in February by the Los Angeles Times explains his reaction: the remediation has been plagued by poor planning and clumsy execution. A study by USC, Occidental College, and East Yard revealed continued lead contamination beyond both state and federal thresholds. The project now has a new contractor and a third-party monitor in place, and mark! continues to stay on top of the details with dogged attention.
This September, the US EPA proposed adding the Exide Technologies site to the Superfund list. mark! is sanguine about the pending Superfund designation and optimistic about the EPA’s prospective involvement, believing that it will add needed capacity and expedite the clean-up effort. At the same time, he is wary that the Superfund status will change the clean-up’s standards—federal remediation measures are not as strict as the state’s. mark! is already pushing the EPA to look at East Yard and the Exide Technical Advisory Group as partners in the clean-up. “Our community is here to work,” mark! said emphatically. “We’re here to offer solutions and make sure this project continues to move forward.”
Regional Environmental Justice Victories Move the Needle
mark! jokingly describes his work as an environmental justice organizer as “trying to pick out a weed in a yard full of weeds.” It’s tedious and overwhelming, but he believes there is palpable momentum building locally and nationally. From advocating for parks along the LA River to setting up a zero-waste compost collective, East Yard’s recent accomplishments in California are setting a standard for the rest of the country to follow. That includes two major victories: the shutdown of the Southeast Resource Recovery Facility (SERRF) and the adoption of the Freight Rail Yards Indirect Source Rule.
Operational since 1988, SERRF was a “waste-to-energy” facility—a euphemism for trash incinerator—in Long Beach, producing excessive pollution and greenhouse gases and very limited energy. SERRF operated around the clock, burning waste hauled by diesel trucks from neighboring cities, which received a diversion credit for sending their waste to SERRF. As part of its campaign to advance true zero-waste solutions and shut incinerators across the state, East Yard and its partners pushed SERRF to cease operations in January 2024. East Yard is now partnering with Valley Improvement Projects to campaign for the closure of Stanislaus Resource Recovery Facility in the Central Valley—California’s last incinerator.
East Yard’s other recent win, in August 2024, was in persuading air quality authorities in Southern California to adopt the Freight Rail Yards Indirect Source Rule, which requires an 82% reduction in emissions in and around railyards in the region by 2034. With these two victories in the bag, mark! is turning his attention to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach—a rising source of particulate matter from diesel fuel. The South Coast Air Quality Management District reported that, “by 2023, oceangoing ships will surpass heavy-duty diesel trucks to become Southern California’s largest source of smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution.” East Yard is collaborating with the Trade Health Environment Impact Project and Moving Forward Network to advocate for true zero emission freight systems.
Questioning the Cost of Convenience
Throughout his work, mark! has found that if you pull at one thread, the whole tapestry starts to unravel. His recent work has crisscrossed California—west to Long Beach and north to Stanislaus County—and has even taken him even overseas to the Marshall Islands and Colombia with fellow Prize winner Andrea Vidaurre. The duo was exploring their next target: curbing pollution from international freight ships.
“A lot of what makes people’s lives easier and convenient makes other people’s lives inconvenient,” mark! noted. For years, he has been guided by three questions: “What is it? How does it affect us? What can we do about it?” This inquiry drives his organizing and motivates him to build a community of well-informed and well-equipped advocates.
By questioning, learning, and advocating for solutions, mark! knows that working-class communities can create a green and equitable future that works for them. After all, he’s seeing it happen in East Los Angeles, one domino at a time.
About the author
Ellen Lomonico
Digital Communications Manager
Ellen is excited to elevate the stories and amplify the impact of Goldman Prize recipients around the globe. She manages the Prize’s digital presence, produces written and visual content, and contributes to strategic communications planning. Prior to joining the Prize, Ellen held various roles in the solar industry, from marketing to education program management. She holds a BA in Geography and Environmental Studies, with minors in Spanish and Environmental Systems and Society from the University of California, Los Angeles. She joined the Prize in 2020.
