Rising Sea Levels Threaten the Bay Area’s Low-Income Communities with Toxic Flooding

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Many of the Bay Area’s industrial sites are situated on the waterfront, right next to communities of color. As climate change causes groundwater levels to rise, toxic chemicals buried there threaten to release into the neighborhoods, exacerbating a decades-long pattern of environmental and economic injustice. Now some community advocates are calling for reparations in the form of climate justice, asking for money and services to repair the harms caused by the decision to allow toxic industries in their communities. Forum talks about the threat of toxic flooding and what can be done to prevent it. Guests: Kristina Hill, director, Institute for Urban and Regional Development, College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley. Ezra David Romero, climate reporter, KQED Margaret Gordon, co-director, West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho La Puerta, boated the number one wellness resort and spa by readers of travel and leisure magazine in 2024.
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0:43.0	From KQED.
0:59.0	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. For decades around the bay, before the waterfront was for sipping rosé, it was a working
1:04.0	place that made and transported things. And it being the 20th century, many of those processes
1:10.0	generated toxic waste. And it being the 20th century, many of those processes generated toxic waste.
1:11.6	And it being the 20th century, many black and brown people were forced into segregated neighborhoods right alongside those hazards.
1:18.6	But now, it's the 21st century, and global warming is already causing sea levels to rise with far more predicted.
1:25.6	So what's going to happen when the toxins in the ground that have been leaching down meet
1:30.3	the water that's rising and who will pay to protect communities that have already faced decades
1:35.0	of environmental racism?
1:36.8	Perhaps the cleanup could be a form of reparations that's coming up next after this news.
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