COMMUNITY PROFILES IS A WEEKLY SERIES THAT APPEARS EACH MONDAY AND DELVES INTO THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE, WORK AND PLAY IN SANTA MONICA. Local advocate fights for NRDC
By AMY KAUFMAN Special to the Daily Press
SECOND STREET — Melissa Lin Perrella is a voice of the people.
Seated in her office at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Perrella’s desk is cluttered with legal papers in stacks of intimidating size. Surrounding Perrella, 32, are images which suggest advocacy: an “I ‘heart’ Clean Air” button is affixed to her bulletin board while a black and white print of the famous protest at Tiananmen Square rests behind her head.
Such messages hold strong meaning for Perrella, who has served as a senior project attorney for the NRDC, fighting for cleaner air quality in California for the past two and a half years. Recently, the lawyer helped NRDC win a major victory in a case involving Northern California’s Port of Stockton, halting major port expansion which was causing detriment to the environment.
Housed in one of the most environmentally-friendly buildings in all of Santa Monica and the world, the NRDC fights for the safety of the Earth’s people, planets, animals and natural systems. With famous friends such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Redford and James Taylor serving as members of the organization’s board, the NRDC addresses issues ranging from global warming to reducing the impact of the Navy’s sonar equipment use on whales and marine life. The organization has offices from Washington D.C. to China, as well as in downtown Santa Monica, where Perrella works.
Raised in Northern California, Perrella studied at the University of California, Berkeley. But when Perrella decided to travel to Georgetown University Law Center to become a lawyer, she was in for a surprise.
“I thought law school would be like college,” Perrella laughed. “But I had no idea of what I was getting myself into. I was completely naive. I thought ‘Yeah, it’ll probably be hard work, whatever.’ But in my first year of law school I studied more than I had in all of my years at Berkeley combined and I still didn’t receive as good grades.”
Eventually, Perrella got the swing of things. When an environmental law class piqued her interest, Perrella began to consider a career in the field. Today, the attorney shows no signs of ineptitude in the area of law, often facing off against large corporations and coming out the victor. Even with her busy schedule, Perrella sat down with the Daily Press to discuss her most recent victory, California’s air quality and the perks of giving back to the community.
When did you decide to become a lawyer?
“I don’t think I figured out that I wanted to go to law school until I was an undergraduate. I studied social welfare, which is like social work and ethnic studies — pretty much the history of different races.Through both of those majors, I started to become really interested in public interest work. And then of all of things that I was studying in school, the ones I admired most included people who were making social change. I decided that’s what I wanted to do. And when I went to law school I wanted to do public interest work, but if you were to ask me at the time where I thought I’d end up, I don’t know if I would have said an environmental organization. I was probably more interested in civil rights issues and women’s issues and reproductive health, things like that. But I did have an interest in environmental law and took some environmental law classes. I think I always had, as an ideal job in the back of my mind, something like this. Some kind of public interest job. It sounds so corny, or vague, but I just knew I wanted to help people. And in a lot of ways, I didn’t really care what the vehicle was to do that. I just wanted to feel like I was helping people or making a difference or, as corny as it sounds, to feel like my life was worth something other than just fulfilling my own needs. Whatever was going to fill that need, I think I was going to be pretty happy with.I went to work for a private firm for four and a half years and ended up doing mostly business litigation — corporations suing other corporations. All along, I knew it wasn’t the right place for me. And so I started looking for other jobs and then I saw an opening for this position. And what was interesting to me was, you know, I liked the environmental aspect of it, but the work that I do is not just an environmental issue, it’s also a public health issue. And it’s also, in many ways, a civil rights issue as well.”
How is your work a civil rights issue? “Well, it’s no surprise that some of the areas where the air quality is the worst tend to be lower-income, people-of-color communities. And that’s because that’s where the refineries are... And in most instances, you don’t have really rich neighborhoods crop-ping up next to industrial type facilities. And so everything we do has a public health focus. If you were to see a legal brief that we wrote or a piece of legislation that we authored, it’s always coming back to the public health issue. Some of the statistics that we always cite are that in California every year, pollution from the goods movement system causes 2,400 premature deaths. And studies show that when they say premature deaths, they’re not just talking about one or two years off of your life, it’s like, 14 years off of your life. And then there are a lot of studies that show cancer clusters all around port areas. Just higher instances of cancer. Kids in Long Beach have asthma rates that are like twice the national average. So whenever we’re talking about air pollution, we’re also talking about public health. It was kind of that intersection of all the issues that makes this job interesting to me.”
What is it like working in Santa Monica? “I love it. This is one of the greenest buildings in the world. We offer tours of the building to the public a couple of times a week, so if folks are interested in coming to see the NRDC facility they can set things up. This building meets very high environmental standards. We tried to minimize our footprint, meaning that we don’t want to be causing harm to the environment through this building. Many things in the office are made from recyclable material, including the carpets. Lots of the wood is all bamboo. The tables that we have in the library are made from trees that would otherwise be turned into pulp. We have many windows to try to reduce the amount of electricity we need so we get a lot of natural sunlight. The lights dim and adjust to the sunlight coming in. We have a gray water system which collects sink and rain water and cleans it and uses it to flush the toilets. We also have solar panels. A lot of stuff like paint and furniture and fabrics can cause indoor air pollution because they’re made with toxic dyes or the chemicals aren’t sound. It’s a great place to work.”
Has being involved in this field caused you to become a more environmentally conscious individual?
“I think I’m very environmentally conscious.Am I at every protest? No. I think that I’m probably not that different than most people but because of the work that I do, I’m a little more aware of the impact the choices that I make have.”
You mentioned a benefit of your job is helping individuals affected by hazardous port situations. Have you witnessed your effect on the community first-hand?
“Just last night, I was at a public hearing for the Port of LA expansion project. It’s basically a terminal close to where a number of people live. We gave 15 minutes of comments pointing out the deficiencies in the study they did and our discussion was technical and legal. A number of people from the public also stood up and gave comments. And a few individuals stood up and thanked us for coming and said things like, ‘It’s difficult for a member of the general public to make this argument and we’re so thankful the NRDC is here to speak on our behalf.’ Comments like ‘Port: you haven’t been listening to us, we hope you listen to them.”
What port affects residents of Santa Monica?
“The Los Angeles Port. There is still a ton of work to be done there. After our landmark victory against the Port in the 2001 lawsuit, they were required to use alternative fuel yard tractors and 70 percent of its ships had to use AMP. And the Port also had to put $50 million into a fund to pay for parks and other air quality measures including replacing older polluting trucks. But that only dealt with one terminal at the Port of Los Angeles and there are nearly 30 terminals there. So don’t get me wrong, this lawsuit was a landmark because it was the first time anyone had really challenged the Port in that way and the result of that agreement was that the Port began to use technologies they’d been really resistant to before. They’ve been using them now for three years and have done really well. Because of that, we can continue to ask the ports to implement these systems. And I think they will. They’re starting to realize that if they want to continue to grow, they’re going to have to undertake some of these measures. It’s still constantly a push.”
Is the Port close enough to Santa Monica that residents should be concerned about its pollution affecting their health?
“Yes. If you were to take the 405 to the 110 and drive to the end of the 110, you’d run smack into the Port of Los Angeles. Ports are the largest contributor to pollution in the whole South Coast region. The pollution that’s coming out of the port right now is being breathed by the people in Van Nuys and Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. It’s not just Wilmington and San Pedro and Palos Verdes. It’s everybody in this region.”
Should residents be just as concerned about port pollution as they are about car pollution?
“Well, if ports are the largest source of pollution, then, yes, I think it’s definitely something to be concerned about. Smog is created as a result of the ports and car emissions.”
What does your job at the NRDC entail? “Our focus in this program is to try and improve air quality. We have a specific focus on air quality in California and an even more narrow focus of air quality in Southern California as its impacted by the goods movement system which is basically ports, distribution centers, every type of facility you can think of that’s essential to making sure folks get the clothes that they wear and the toys and electronics and all that stuff.”
How does the NRDC decide upon which cases to take?
“We have a lot of independence in determining what are the best cases to bring. We are really the front line when it comes to identifying what those lawsuits should be. And sometimes what happens is that community members tell us of existing problems and say,‘Hey, this huge project’s going on, do you guys know about this? It just doesn’t seem right.’ And that can be one way that we learn about projects. Another way that we can learn about lawsuits is that, for instance, if the Port wants to expand its operations, it has to go through an environmental process under state and federal law. And so a lot of times we learn about cases because they are undergoing that process. We’ll get something in the mail or a document which says the Port is looking to expand and we’ll say, ‘Hmm, that looks interesting,’ and we’ll investigate further. We’ll be involved in the process and watching the Port to see if it dots all its i’s and if it doesn’t, that might be an avenue to try and challenge what the Port has done.”
What kind of research goes into forming a case?
“If a port wants to do a major expansion project, it will need to comply with certain environmental laws. And one of the California laws is that they have to put together an environmental impact report which basically looks at and studies what are all of the environmental impacts that could occur from this project. They have to look at the impact on air quality, water quality, endangered species, traffic, on everything you can think of. Part of the research involved is reviewing these documents and seeing if the port has complied with the law. So, one of the things they’re supposed to do is report all of the air quality impacts in the report. And sometimes what we’ll find is that the methodology isn’t quite right or the assumptions that the port has made aren’t quite right, so at the end of the day what they’ve done is reported numbers that aren’t quite accurate. Maybe they are underestimating the health risk from the project.We’ll make an argument later based on the research we do on such issues.”
You recently celebrated a victory in the case at a port near San Francisco. What was the situation there?
“We didn’t win the case, but we won a victory in it and we are still pretty early on in the life of the case. It’s still a huge victory. Basically, the Port of Stockton is looking to expand its operations. They were given as a gift from the Navy this island which is over 1,400 acres. The Port of Stockton already exists, but they want to expand onto this island. This expansion project would triple their size. It’s a huge, huge expansion project. I think once they’re done they’ll have 150 ships coming to the island every year and over 50,000 vehicles and trucks coming in and out every day. One of the things they needed to do to undertake this massive expansion project was to dredge.”
Why would ports resist implementing the newer technologies?
“Part of it is a lot of not wanting to change the way you do business. From a business perspective, if you’ve done things the same way for hundreds of years and that process has been lucrative for you, why would you want to change? Part of its stubbornness. Some of the stuff does cost money too. But we see it as the cost of doing business. For example, we all have to get smog checks. And we all have to pay for that and that’s the price to have a registration and a car. I don’t want to simplify some of the things we’re asking ports to do, but that’s the kind of mentality that we’re trying to get the ports to buy into.”
What can individuals in the community do to help ports clean up?
“Ports are the largest source of pollution in Southern California. If community members wanted to become involved, the first thing to do would to become educated on the issue. There are two port reports that NRDC put out that are on our Web site (www.nrdc.org) that talk about ports and how they’re polluting and what ways they can be cleaned up. Port expansion is a public process. They are accessible. The ports generally have hearings on the projects as well where community members can become more informed. They can have hands-on experience by looking through the documents, attending the hearings to know what’s going on in their communities. They can also be supportive of legislation. Contact your local representative or send letters into the Governor as well.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 25, 2006. Read the original PDF.