Name of Host Organization: The Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment

City, State: San Francisco, CA

Issue area: Environmental Justice

Sponsor: Equal Justice Works

Ensuring a safe, affordable water supply is a major challenge in rural California, particularly in the intensively-farmed Central Valley. Studies indicate that over 4 million California residents do not have drinkable tap water, and an estimated 90% of residents in rural counties rely on contaminated groundwater supplies. In an effort to address these problems, Laurel Firestone has initiated the Rural Poverty Water Project at The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) in Delano, CA. The Rural Poverty Water Project seeks to enable poor rural communities in California’s Central Valley to secure safe and affordable drinking water. The project provides a number of direct services to communities facing drinking water challenges. It provides direct advocacy and legal representation to community groups fighting for safe, affordable drinking water; holds training sessions with community groups on issues related to water quality challenges; is initiating regional, inter-community meetings to share experiences and discuss reform initiatives; and is creating a handbook on rural water advocacy for community groups and other rural water consumers. The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) is an environmental justice litigation organization dedicated to helping grassroots groups across the United States attack head-on the disproportionate burden of pollution borne by poor people and people of color. Laurel Firestone graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and has focused on environmental poverty law. A native of California, she spent her last year of law school at Boalt Hall through the Berkeley-Harvard Exchange Program. During law school, she worked on a variety of projects combining human rights and environmental law, from working with trash pickers in the major cities of Brazil, to advising indigenous groups who sought to protect their traditional knowledge and genetic resources.