Marin City       I had met Terrie Harris-Green, the Executive Director of Marin City Climate Resilience and Health Justice once before in Oakland at an ACORN–Anthropocene Alliance training.  Coincidentally, her organization and My Eden Voice were both in attendance and both were working in unincorporated areas in their California counties, Marin in one case and Alameda in the other.  It seemed natural to make both of them some of the fifteen groups in ten areas where ACORN would partner with A2 in building their capacity through 2025.

Marin City is hardly a sign on Highway 101, as commuters speed to their suburban homes from San Francisco.  The sign directs you to Sausalito on the right and Marin City on the left, with Mill Valley and more coming up quickly afterward.  Marin City is small, hardly over 5000 with a couple of thousands on the hill with more than 3000 lower income, mostly minority, families below.  Driving into Marin City, I turned near the Target along the tidal pool and wound into the hills where a housing project designed by Frank Lloyd Wright was cantilevered to the left, until I came to the organizations office address, where I would meet Green, universally known and introduced as Ms. Terrie.  When we began talking about the issues and campaigns the organization is tackling, it became quickly evident that it would take less time to discuss the issues they were NOT fighting, rather the long list where they were deeply engaged.

The area suffered from flooding for the better part of a century.  Shipyards and the highway department pushed their overflow into the tidal pools and combined with outdated and inadequate drainage made flooding frequent.  The drainage system in the Golden Gate housing project was so limited that sewage often rose up in the yards despite the hills.  The impacts on health there and in the bottoms were of course terrible.

None of this seemed coincidental when listening to Ms. Terrie.  As an elected member of the Water Board, even when she had helped raise funds to repair the drainage, Marin County and its supervisors refused to take the almost $7 million to do the job.  Recently, she was able to get the local Congressman to intercede and go around the county’s opposition to greenlight the project by funding the Army Corps of Engineers to do the work.  She has been thwarted getting the maps to the underground pipe system and some of the geology under the roadways, which they believe were built on an old streambed, easily flooded at high tide and heavy rains.

That’s not the end of the community’s travails.  The sound from all the commuter traffic along the 101 should have meant construction of an adequate sound barrier.  Progress with CAL Trans also stopped when Marin County would not provide its share.  Other issues had to do with development plans.  One proposal would raise the roadway and allow yachts to come in from the bay, making much of the housing in the plan high income without a clear allotment for affordable housing.  I passed a picket line where residents were opposing housing and a mall to be built on park and school land.

Ms. Terrie’s dream is to see Marin City incorporated to force action by the county, but that’s not easy either.  The community would have to prove that it would have the tax base to support picking up the services.  Because the area has become the place to site public and other affordable housing and other things that no one wants in their backyards, proving the tax base would also be difficult.

Marin City Climate Resilience has its work cut out, and we will be with them all the way.