The long-neglected water system in Marin City is one of the most vulnerable to climate-driven flooding in the Bay Area. Nearly 3,000 people — 63% people of color — live there.
"Marin City is like a bathtub with only one drain.” – @kzhill, @UCBerkeley.
"Marin City has flooded for over 80 years."
Terrie Harris-Green, executive director for Marin City Climate Resilience and Health Justice, has fought for environmental justice for this community for decades.
“It comes to race. It comes down to it.”
Last October, an atmospheric river parked itself over Marin City, turning residential streets into rivers. This flooding is a precursor of what the Bay Area will experience as climate change escalates, increasing the risk of a California megaflood.
The worst-case scenario for #MarinCity is if a megastorm and king tide happened at the same time, trapping residents for many days.
"The problem is we built our infrastructure assuming these events were very rare. Now, they are something you should be expecting."–@Weather_West
The history: Many of Marin City's Black residents were displaced in the 1960s when officials tore down temporary housing from the shipbuilding effort.
"White families were able to go out and buy homes. Not so for people of color."–Terrie Harris-Green.
In 2020, Harris-Green's group and the @SFEstuary surveyed 280 residents and found that:
▶️85% were concerned about aging pipes
▶️43% about sewage contaminating their drinking water
▶️40% about chemical dumping in Marin City during WWII
"We have the same breath in our bodies that anybody else has. We should have the same environmental rights and freedoms as everybody else."--Aalaya Wheeler
Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters acknowledged that Marin City has not received significant investments for flooding or testing issues because of "systemic racism."
"I believe we need to change up our systems."
California is exploring how to repair the harm of a violent history of slavery and centuries of oppression through the work of a statewide task force on reparations.
“We want fair justice and we want equal treatment.”–Shannon Bynum, Marin City resident
Read the full story by @ezraromero here: kqed.org/science/198052…
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