Environmental Justice

Our Environmental Justice Academy organizes and empowers community residents to take ownership of their advocacy abilities. The goal is to ensure low-income and immigrant communities’ inclusion in discussions and policies related to climate change. Through this process, participants built their environmental understanding incrementally as a cohort during the multi-week sessions. We continue to work with participants upon completion from the program by connecting them to other opportunities and supporting their advocacy projects.

E-mail us to learn more about our next Academy.

Join us at one of our Bayshore Limpiezas (“Clean Ups”) to help clean up our bayshore, learn about the local ecosystem and how it benefits our community! Snacks and clean-up materials are provided, and volunteer stipends are available for these events. Our Limpiezas are held at the Baylands Nature Preserve, Ravenswood Open Space Preserve, and Flyway Trail. Our partners from the Fish & Wildlife Service, Grassroots Ecology, and Environmental Volunteers join us at these events to teach us about the importance of these local ecosystems.

You can also help protect and restore Redwood and Cordilleras Creeks through our partnership with Grassroots Ecology. At these events, you can spend time outdoors with your community to create a stronger, more resilient creek. Together, we plant and care for native plants. Stipends are also available during creekside restoration events.

E-mail us to learn more about our next Limpieza or Restoration even.

The Estuary Youth Council is hosted by San Francisco Estuary Project (SFEP) which provides hands-on learning experiences like field trips and leadership and professional development opportunities that prepare them for environmental planning and management careers. Nuestra Casa helps recruit young adults from our community to participate in this program, and we mentor them for the duration of the program through to their final Capstone project. Watch this final Capstone video about flooding from the 2026 cohort. To learn more about the program, please e-mail us.

Our Environmental Justice work includes movement and power-building, such as collaborating with the San Francisquito Creek Joint Powers Authority (SFCJPA) on the SAFER Bay Project. We engaged East Palo Alto and Belle Haven community members in shaping this critical project, which promises infrastructure, habitat protection, resilience to flooding and sea level rise, and improved recreational access using engineered and nature-based solutions. We ensured community involvement by recommending leaders for the SAFER Bay Community Advisory Committee, conducting outreach for update meetings (whose feedback informed the draft Environmental Impact Report), and fielding 346 SFCJPA surveys to shoreline residents. This input ensures the final design and implementation reflect our communities’ needs.

In partnership with the San Francisco Estuary Project (SFEP), we are educating our community members about a novel nature-based solution to sea-level rise and flooding being built in their own backyard: the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Project. As part of this project, we are developing curriculum about nature-based solutions for our Environmental Justice Academy and connecting community members to professional development opportunities in the fields of wastewater management. We are also conducting field trips of the Palo Alto Horizontal Levee Project. Finally, we are engaging our community members in fun, experiential science projects through BioBlitzes and microplastics research. To learn more about this project, please e-mail us.

Our community members live on land that encompasses 428 contaminated sites across 5 square miles. Peninsula Accountability for Contamination Team’s (PACT) mission is to advocate alongside community members to advance contaminated site clean-up and infrastructure resilience, addressing the impacts of sea level and groundwater rise in low-lying areas of the Peninsula. Through this work, we aim to safeguard the health and well-being of our community for generations to come. PACT members include representatives from Belle Haven Community Development Fund, Belle Haven Empowered, Climate Resilient Communities (CRC), Nuestra Casa, and Youth United for Community Action (YUCA). Learn more about PACT’s work here. You can also read about the impact of groundwater rise in this Noticia or this longer report.

East Palo Alto has a long history of water rights and quality issues. Working with the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water and the San Francisco Estuary Partnership, Nuestra Casa is part of a broad Bay Area water justice initiative. Under this initiative, we support residents in assessing and test their drinking water. We receive technical assistance to guide this work as part of the Disadvantaged Community and Tribal Involvement Program (DACTIP). Once the results are in, we plan to work with the community to determine the best path forward for improving water infrastructure, access, and quality. Read the results of a survey of community members from 2019 in this report. Click here to learn more about our Water Justice work.