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About Us

established in 2009

against environmental injustice

First Generation For Environmental Health & Economic Development was established to assist low income communities, often of color, when it comes to environmental injustice and health.

our Commitment

organizing engagement

We are committed to organizing direct engagement with governmental agencies to reform unfair policies directly impacting frontline communities to promote environmental justice solutions.

our Mission

grassroots approach

To empower Bay Area communities—to help support them and their fight against environmental, economic and health injustices through grassroots action and education.

our History

beginnings

Jesse Mason
Jesse Mason, Founder

Founded by Jesse Mason, First Generation For Environmental Health & Economic Development grew from the depth and soil of the Bayview Hunters Point community in San Francisco California.

Our focus has always been on servicing disadvantaged communities through education and policy change when it comes to environmental injustice and health.

Today, our footprint has broadened from our humble beginnings at Bayview Hunters Point to include the Greater Bay Area. We continue to shine the light on practices and factors that negatively impact the environment and our health.

We envite you to join the first generation that can make a difference for those who come after.

our Team

lonnie mason - executive director

Jesse Mason
Jesse Mason, Founder

Born and raised in the BayView Hunters Point Community, Lonnie has been a citizen of San Francisco for over 40 years. He has over 15 years of experience in community organizing, advocacy, on environmental health and environmental justice advocacy for the low-income communities of color.

Lonnie continues to organize communities and individuals from affected environmental justice communities, assisting them with the needed tools and confidence to advocate for positive changes in policies and actions affecting their health and communities.

He provides leadership and support to grassroots community based organizations throughout the Bay Area. He continues to play a crucial role in the processes related to Environmental Health, Water Quality and Environmental Justice as well as Economic Development by ensuring that the communities’ voices and direct involvement are included in these processes.

Lonnie is a former member of the Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) where he sat on the board to help the U.S. Navy implement ideas and needed action to be taken within his community.

His voice continues to be heard throughout many community based organizations that are focused on environmental justice and health changes.

  • Restoration Advisory Board (RAB)
  • Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD)
  • Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment
  • California Air Resources Board (CARB)
  • SECC (South East Community Coalition)
  • Community Fish and Health Advocacy Committee
  • San Francisco Estuary Partnership

Lonnie has also partnered with the California Department of Public Health, Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, California Endowment, CARB (California Air Resources Board), SECC (South East Community Coalition), San Francisco Estuary Project and other community based organizations to develop effective communication and outreach materials for environmental justice and low-income minority communities of color.

He has helped monitor local contractors on removal of hazardous waste in the Bayview Hunters Point Community. Lonnie was also responsible for help organizing the Community Fish and Health Advocacy Committee who’s stakeholders are from affected EJ communities who help provide much needed direction and recommendations on the needs and issues affecting low-income EJ communities, and how best to serve their needs.

FirstGen4EHED Logo

The environment is where we all meet, where we all have a mutual interest. It is the one thing all of us share.

Lady Bird Johnson
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Dredging Contaminated Soil
Escavator

Around the corner in this Daly City community, bulldozers cast diesel fumes into the air as workers clad in hazardous-materials jumpsuits rip up her once neatly groomed neighborhood park, now festooned with dozens of warning signs: CAUTION. NO TRESPASSING. HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS.

  • Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and state officials concede that toxic substances seeped into the earth during the early 1900s via a gas manufacturing plant, which was taken over by PG&E and is now the company's Martin Service Center.
  • During World War II, Navy builds Midway Village housing complex next to site of the shut-down gas plant.
  • PG&E finds contaminated soil at its Martin Service Center. PG&E and the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control haul away affected soil.
  • Later, PG&E's Martin Service Center is placed on the Superfund list of most- contaminated industrial sites in California.
  • Later, The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry releases a document showing high levels of genetic abnormalities among Midway Village.
PM2.5 Hazards
Homeless Shelter

Environmental justice advocate Ray Tompkins says homeless shelter residents are forced to breathe air filled with tiny particles that can become embedded deep in the lungs due to placement near cement factories.

  • Scientists have said that there is a clear link between the particles and health problems while questioning the safety of the homeless shelter site.
  • A 2020 draft study by the city’s health and planning departments noted that aggregate handling near Islais Creek, not far from the shelter site, contributed to elevated PM 2.5 levels nearby.
  • Masks and filters only afford so much protection against the particles swirling everywhere.
  • "Just because they’re homeless, doesn’t mean they’re not deserving a clean breath of air.” - Ray Tompkins, Retired Chemistry Teacher
  • "This the worst place for a human being, in terms of air quality. It’s in the middle of a gravel pit, which is used for making cement.” ~ Ray Tompkins, African American Community Health Equity Council
Sewage Plant
Waste Water

The impoverished, isolated and largely African American neighborhoods didn’t always have the dubious distinction of being San Francisco’s outhouse. Until a revamping of the city’s sewer system in the 1970s, only 20 percent of the city’s sewage went to the area’s Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant. Since the revamp, residents there have beseeched the city to do something about the plant’s odor and the unfair sewage burden placed on them with more sewage to come.

  • 27- acre sewage plant just southwest of the corner of Evans Avenue and Third Street — the intersection serving as the portal to the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood
  • 10 digesters — tanks that give off a rotten egg-like stench — and two flare stacks that spew odors when the systems aren't working right.
  • 67 million gallons of sewage flow to the plant, get treated through a biological-chemical process for about 10 hours
NRDL Facility
Radioactive Sign

The United States Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) was an early military lab created to study the effects of radiation and nuclear weapons. The facility was based at the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco, California. Activities of the facility led to:

  • Oversaw the dumping of huge amounts of contaminated sand and acid into San Francisco Bay after they were used in attempts to clean irradiated ships.
  • Spread radioactive material on- and off-base, as if it were fertilizer, to practice decontamination.
  • Burned radioactive fuel oil in a boiler, discharging the smoke into the atmosphere.
  • Sold radioactive ships as scrap metal to a private company in Alameda.
  • Hung a source of cobalt-60, a nuclear isotope that emits high-energy electromagnetic radiation similar to X-rays, in San Francisco Bay for two weeks, apparently just to see what would happen
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