An Environmentalist for All Seasons

Felicia Marcus lives only a block from the Santa Monica Bay, yet she rarely gets over to see it. That’s because she has been so busy trying to save it.

Marcus is an environmental activist and lawyer--neither especially remarkable on the issue-oriented Westside. But in addition to belonging to a myriad of environmental groups, she is a founder of Heal the Bay, the burgeoning volunteer organization that has successfully pressured the City of Los Angeles to stop dumping sewage sludge into the ocean.

As a key strategist in Heal the Bay’s ongoing campaign, Marcus has spearheaded what is arguably one of the most effective grass-roots environmental campaigns of the last two decades.

“Felicia is extraordinarily committed,” says Jan Chatten-Brown, environmental affairs assistant for Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, who has known Marcus for eight years.

“I think she’s had a significant role in Heal the Bay’s success because of the way she has chosen to pursue issues, combing through the existing laws that are already on the books, persuading public officials to listen. She has given Heal the Bay credibility by taking careful, analytical positions on the various legal issues.”

What Marcus emphasizes is an overview of systems. “Everything is connected--if you throw something away, it goes somewhere,” she comments. “Who we are as a society depends on how we take care of things.”

She is a particularly good example, say friends and associates, of the kind of person who got involved in environmental issues long before it was trendy, and who has done it the old-fashioned way: by learning what the Clean Water Act really says, the structure and vulnerabilities of storm drain and sewer systems, the real potentialities of recycling.

Board memberships give some indication of her depth of commitment: Coalition for Clean Air, Environmental Quality Board, League of Conservation Voters and National Estuary Program are only a few.

“I have breakfast meetings every day and evening meetings almost every night, and I read when I get home, mostly environmental studies and engineering reports,” she said, adding ruefully, “I don’t know when I last read a novel.”

And all that is in her spare time--outside her work. Marcus, who lives in Venice, is director of litigation for Public Counsel, the Los Angeles County and Beverly Hills bar associations’ public-interest law firm--the nation’s largest--which provides legal services to the poor in areas ranging from children’s advocacy, immigration, civil rights and consumer issues, to housing discrimination and homelessness. “It makes a nice balance,” says Marcus, of her ambitious two-part career. “I do get tired, running from one thing to another. . . . But I know hundreds of interesting people. It gives me a lot in return.”

And although neglect of the environment may have been the rule up to now, Marcus thinks the tide is turning. “This is a great time to be an environmentalist,” she proclaims with characteristic optimism. “We can fix this stuff!”

Sitting in her mid-Wilshire office--a sea of paper, posters, files, cardboard boxes and books--Marcus, 33, apologized for serving coffee in a non-biodegradable plastic foam cup (“I’ve been meaning to bring in some paper cups”) and talked about the particular challenges of being an environmentalist. Her conversational style is disarming, spilling over with facts, figures, case studies and philosophic reflections.

“It’s not a clear issue, like race discrimination, where there are rights and wrongs,” she said. “It’s a huge number of facts, and to be an effective advocate, you have to know what you’re talking about.”

Tedious Work

And despite a certain glamour to the idea of saving the air and water, the reality is tedious plugging. (One of Marcus’ working memberships is the Sewer Limitation Ordinance Citizens Advisory Committee).

“You have to know how a recycling plant works and how a sewage treatment plants works,” she said. “It can bury you in paper work and meetings.”

Furthermore, until recently, environmentalism didn’t seem a very urgent or especially compelling issue. While civil rights or the plight of the homeless might provide passionate conversation at a dinner party, the primary screening of sludge was hardly a topic to be introduced along with the coffee and dessert.

In fact, it wasn’t a topic that Marcus herself focused on when she began thinking about a career. She grew up in the San Fernando Valley and graduated from Birmingham High School. “It was the end of the ‘60s activism,” she recalls. “The students just behind us were more interested in sock hops. I was a current-affairs person. I read all the newspapers and Time and Newsweek.”

She went to Harvard, where, intrigued by China, she majored in East Asian studies and learned to speak Chinese--with the notion of being an influential academic. “I was going to enlighten foreign-policy makers. I planned to write important articles for Foreign Affairs journal, concentrating on Sino-Soviet competition in the Third World, pulling all these things together. It was a grand scheme.”

Change of Plans

But after a year on a fellowship in Hong Kong, she decided it might not be foreign policy that intrigued her, but just the intricacies of policy per se. Maybe the domestic front offered more opportunity than foreign affairs.

That notion was confirmed when she went to work in the Washington office of Rep. Tony Beilenson (D-Los Angeles).

When Beilenson needed a legislative aide to work on environmental affairs, she “snapped it up,” and was on her way. It was the late 1970s and the oil crises of ’74 and ’79 had sparked a national interest in energy programs. Beilenson was spending a lot of time on the Santa Monica Mountains, offshore oil drilling and the Channel Islands National Park--all issues Marcus found challenging from a policy perspective.

“It’s undeniably important and the trade-offs are fascinating in terms of how to sensibly run our affairs. Look at the oil drilling battle that has gone on and on, and the battle to figure out a sensible energy policy. It just gets to the core of things.”

She was fascinated by the intricacies of environmental problem-solving and the discovery that solutions exist. “We have great environmental statutes on the books--the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. (But) I could see that law school would be a necessary tool.”

She went to New York University and specialized in environmental law, thus joining a rather select community. “There just aren’t that many people who like to read EIRs (Environmental Impact Reports). I do--it’s fun, like a puzzle, because it involves large-scale governmental decisions.”

She Came West

She liked the East Coast life style, but in 1983 she came home because “the things I care the most about are here.” And she believed that, more than in an Eastern city, “Los Angeles is a place where things can change. The government is more open, we are moving from our first stage to our second stage.”

She joined a small group on the Westside that was protesting a request by the City of Los Angeles to continue dumping partially treated sewage into the Santa Monica Bay (which sweeps from Palos Verdes to Malibu).

In 1985 they formed Heal the Bay. “There were six of us in Dorothy Green’s living room in Westwood,” says Marcus. “It was a remarkable, caring group of people with a common approach--a willingness to dive into details and a willingness to pound tables.” Their timing was right--the group has enjoyed spectacular growth and recently passed the 6,000-member mark.

‘She Jumped In’

Recalls Green, president of Heal the Bay: “Felicia was there at the very inception and she jumped into it with both feet.”

Heal the Bay joined in an EPA lawsuit against Los Angeles because the city was in gross violation of the Clean Water Act. The pressure on the city and its neglected sewage treatment plant took many other forms--letter-writing, press conferences, demonstrations at the beach after sewage spills and buckets of sludge carried in protest to the Water Board meetings. Eventually Heal the Bay was invited by the courts to monitor the city’s 12-year cleanup plan.

Says Green: “Felicia wrote briefs, letters to the judge and helped to negotiate with the city how best to fulfill their obligation. She has a remarkable legal mind and an ability to synthesize technical and legal issues.”

Marcus also gets high marks for diplomacy from L.A. Deputy Mayor Mike Gage. “I first met Felicia in City Hall when she was representing Heal the Bay in a meeting with our city engineers and sanitation folks. They were a bit on pins and needles--here was somebody who’d filed a suit against them. But even though she was an advocate for her position, I felt she worked very well with people theoretically on the other side. She was clear, cogent, insightful and easy to work with. She defined the issues well and set the parameters for resolution.”

Marcus emphasizes the conciliatory approach. “You don’t just go in shouting, ‘Raw sewage is bad and you’ve got to stop pouring it into the bay!’ You have to understand the basic characteristics of the storm system and the sewage system. You have to realize that everything that gets flushed down the toilet ends up in the bay. You have to suggest solutions.”

And, she added, you realize that your adversaries are not terrible people. “Sanitation engineers don’t go to school so they can preside over the deterioration of waste systems. People can work together on these things.”

Heal the Bay’s brochures can now boast that no new sludge is going into the ocean, that sewage is being fully treated, and that, while many more cleanup measures are needed, a healthy start has been made.

And Marcus, who can vigorously rattle off the number of outlets in the city’s storm drain system and explain the need for pumping stations throughout the sewage system (it’s not an all-gravity flow system), says: “I can look at the Santa Monica Bay and know we have made a difference.”

Unsung Dedication

Observers note that Marcus is one of a number of dedicated, unsung watchdogs who are seeing a phenomenon many thought they never would--popular opinion coming around to their way of thinking.

“We wanted to create a political climate where it is appropriate to be an environmentalist, and I think this is happening.”

The old conventional wisdom--that in Southern California you don’t mess with peoples’ cars or their trash--is no longer applicable, she maintains, ticking off the evidence:

-- “The City of Los Angeles is committed to the most ambitious recycling plan in the country. That’s astonishing!

-- “The City of Los Angeles has enacted a sewer limitation ordinance, limiting building permits. This would have seemed impossible just a few years ago, when they were even denying the problem.

-- “The City of Los Angeles voted to support air quality management.”

So while others may bewail the deterioration of air and water in Southern California, Marcus looks around and sees a “lot of newborn environmentalists appearing all over the place.

“This is an interesting time for those of us who’ve been environmental infrastructure nuts,” she says. “It’s like the time has come. With any kind of social activism, you have to keep beating the drums for years and years, you have to be there and not get disheartened. Now it’s very exciting because the public’s consciousness is raised. They are starting to demand accountability.

“It’s a good time to be an activist.”