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