Mayor Bob Foster: Think Global, Act Local

This week, Mayor Bob Foster will be the recipient of our Environmental Leadership Award in recognition of his entire career as an environmental champion. 

Most people don’t necessarily see the role of mayor as being one that can influence national or even state policy.  But Bob Foster, the mayor of the City of Long Beach – California's seventh largest city – challenges that notion. 

As Mayor, he spearheaded an aggressive clean-up of the Port of Long Beach, initiated the conservation of the Los Cerritos wetlands by acquiring key portions of one of the last intact wetland ecosystems in Southern California, and led the efforts to decommission the outdated, polluting South Bay Power Plant in San Diego. Mayor Foster also worked closely with CLCV to advance the implementation of landmark global warming and land use laws AB 32 and SB 375.

The clean-up of the Port of Long Beach effort may be his best-known accomplishment. Combined with the Port of Los Angeles, the two ports receive over 40 percent of the goods entering the United States.  As a result, the neighboring communities are the recipients of a disproportional amount of air pollution from the trucks moving the imported goods inland.  It’s no wonder that people in these communities suffer from higher rates of asthma and other respiratory diseases. 

Cleaning up the Port of Long Beach is of national significance – other states with port pollution issues like Texas and Virginia have been watching to see how our state's major ports address this problem.  At a 2008 GreenXchange Global Marketplace Conference, Mayor Foster spoke about the significance of the clean-up efforts at the Port of Long Beach, saying:

"We’re taking it upon ourselves... to clean up those ports, to electrify them, and to make sure that the handling equipment is clean... We’re going to change the trucking industry to have alternative fuel trucks and clean diesel trucks.

“Quite frankly, my first job as mayor of Long Beach is to protect the health and safety of my citizens. In my city, families that live along the trade corridors have two to three times the statewide average of asthma cases. That’s not an accident. I’ve said it many times: we are not going to allow kids in Long Beach to contract asthma so someone in Kansas can get a cheaper television set. Those days are over.”

Long before his current position as Long Beach Mayor, Bob Foster was a champion for the environment. In his previous role as President of Southern California Edison, Foster led the company in implementing the largest renewable energy portfolio in the United States. The clean energy program included a mix of solar, geothermal, biomass, and wind.  He helped bring the utility to 20 percent renewable even before the state legislature passed a mandate requiring utilities in California to do so.

CLCV hopes to see you on December 1 when we honor Mayor Bob Foster, along with three other environmental champions, at our annual Environmental Leadership Awards in Los Angeles.