Peggy Shepard

West Harlem Environmental Action
1854 Amsterdam Avenue (at 152nd Street)
2nd Floor
New York, NY
USA 10031

Biographical Sketch: Peggy Shepard has successfully combined grassroots organizing, environmental advocacy and environmental health research to become a national leader in advancing the perspective of environmental justice in urban communities -- to ensure that the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment extends to all. A recipient of the Calver Award from APHA, the 10th Annual Heinz Award for the Environment, and the Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ms Shepard is a leader within the national Environmental Justice Movement, and in New York where she is co-founder and executive director of WE ACT For Environmental Justice (WE ACT), based in West Harlem, which has a 22-year history of engaging Northern Manhattan residents in community-based planning and campaigns to affect environmental and environmental health policy locally and nationally. WE ACT’s work has provided a clear road map of how a community based organization can positively impact local, state, and national environmental justice, public health, and equity issues. WE ACT’s 1st campaign achieved the retrofit of the North River Sewage Treatment Plant and a lawsuit settlement of a $1.1 million environmental benefits fund. A ten-year campaign spurred by a community-based planning process has resulted in the construction of the Harlem Piers at 125th Street on the Hudson River which opened last year; and a community planning project is underway currently to renovate the 135th Street Marine Transfer Station into a community facility on the Hudson River. She was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science from Smith College last May for “two decades of leadership in environmental justice and urban sustainability.

Papers:
4090.0 Building Community Resilience in Public Housing after Sandy 4209.0 Cleaner fuel oil in New York City: A local assessment of health and climate co-benefits