The news this past month has felt like a nightmare I've had before. Toxic oil devastated our beautiful Southern California shorelines, and the headlines were ghosts of the past. There were critical communication gaps between federal and local officials, delays in the initial response, dramatic miscalculations of the spill's magnitude, and a lack of trained volunteers. We seem to relive the same horrors during practically every major oil spill.
When Jon Rosenfield started at Baykeeper in 2019, he already had a long history of protecting the Bay. He was practically destined to join our team.
After graduating from Cornell, Jon landed his first job at Earthjustice in San Francisco (then called Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund), where he helped attorneys build cases against government agencies that weren’t following environmental laws.
Because of the drought, Governor Newsom asked Californians to conserve water. Yet, during drought, the state’s almond, walnut, and pistachio orchards suck up more water than all of us combined.
Polluters don’t like getting caught. They get defensive—even when our field team catches them red-handed with photos and water sampling results demonstrating serious pollution violations. After we sue them, some polluters push back with empty threats and others drag their feet.
That’s why Baykeeper’s work doesn’t end after our lawsuits are resolved. Even with a signed commitment to not pollute, some companies would fail to abide without a watchful eye monitoring them.
