U.S. EPA Administrator Steve Johnson honors Dorothy Green with the President's Service Award. Image: EPA

Dorothy Green, Heal the Bay's beloved Founding President, was honored on February 26, 2007 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with the President’s Volunteer Service Award. The award, given to volunteers nationwide, recognizes the outstanding contribution of those who have made volunteering and serving a central part of their lives.

A leader in California water policy for over thirty years, Dorothy is one of the first environmental advocates to receive the President's Volunteer Service Award. Her steadfast devotion, energy and commitment to improving the world in which we all live and share is an inspiring example of how one person can make a tremendous and lasting difference.

Dorothy's many volunteer achievements are impressive and could fill an entire book. Her most notable accomplishments include:

• Founded Heal the Bay in 1985 and has continued to serve in countless capacities ever since, including our Board of Directors.
• Started the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council.
• Helped establish the Public Officials for Water and Environmental Reform (POWER), which sponsors the annual California Water Policy Conference that Dorothy has chaired for the past 17 years.
• Helped launch the California Water Impact Network, whose goal is to move the state towards a sustainable water future.

From all of us at Heal the Bay, a heartfelt congratulations to you Dorothy on a well-deserved award and recognition!

Dorothy Green: A Life of Volunteerism

Cover of the Spring/Summer 2005 Currents newsletter (PDF: 1.7MB) featuring Volunteerism and Dorothy Green. Image: Heal the Bay.

The text below is from an article that appeared in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue (PDF: 1.7MB) of Heal the Bay's Currents membership newsletter.

“I got involved in environmental issues generally because I was looking for a place that needed work,” she said. “It was a response to my depression, really, about the Vietnam War, civil rights issues—all that was going on in this country at the time,” said Dorothy, as she reflected on her career path and how she came to organize Heal the Bay. “I said: ‘I’ve got to get out of bed and do something!’”

Most of her energy first went to the Exceptional Childrens’ Foundation. As the mother of a mentally challenged child, she established a successful greeting card business for that nonprofit organization. But that wasn’t enough. “The way I was raised was to be an active part of the community and to be charitable—it’s part of the Jewish tradition,” she explained.

Her drive to be involved led her to the campaign to pass Proposition 20, an initiative passed by voters in 1972 to establish the California Coastal Commission. She then became president of the Los Angeles League of Conservation, which was her introduction to sewage treatment and its disposal.

As a music major at UCLA and Berkeley with no science background “reading the (U.S.) Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis was my education,” she said. “I realized there wasn’t an organization to monitor sewage treatment, and Heal the Bay was born.” In its infancy, Heal the Bay meetings held in Dorothy’s living room included League of Conservation members, friends who would bring friends, and a young doctoral student named Mark Gold who was writing his dissertation on an epidemiological study of the affects of swimming near storm drains. Heal the Bay operated out of Dorothy’s living room for almost two years, and the number of people who wanted to volunteer their time to cleaning up Santa Monica Bay continued to surprise the organizers.

The first annual meeting was held eighteen months later, and with so many volunteers wanting to participate, the group used Santa Monica’s Democratic party headquarters to accommodate the crowd. Following a successful fundraising drive that brought in $5,000, Dorothy recalled, “we took a leap of faith, rented office space on 10th Street in Santa Monica and hired someone to answer phones part-time.”

With little acknowledgement of the hours she volunteered to get Heal the Bay off the ground, Dorothy reflected on the imagination, energy and dedication of those who volunteered alongside her in those early years.

“They were some of the most creative, innovative people I’ve ever known,” she said, “and I’m fortunate to still be friends with many of them. Heal the Bay is a very special organization, because it touches peoples’ personal ties to the beach and the ocean, and that has benefited the organization enormously.” Dorothy remembers the first Speakers Bureau meeting, and how the plan was to begin the meeting with everyone sharing their stories as to why they wanted to be a part of Heal the Bay. What was supposed to be a brief ice-breaker exercise became a spiritual sharing that took up most of the evening. “The experiences they described were mystical,” she said. People “spoke of deep, spiritual connections to the ocean, of floating or swimming with dolphins, or about how they had gotten sick from the water and wanted to help heal it.”

While she says Heal the Bay has taken off in ways she never could have predicted, she worries about the present and future of volunteerism. “When we were starting out, women were not in the work force in the numbers they are today,” Dorothy said. “There was a big pool of stay-at-home moms with not enough to stimulate them. That pool is no longer there, with so many women working. It means volunteer time is more limited.”

She also expressed concern that the younger generation is more interested in self-fulfillment and less concerned about “a lifestyle that’s beautiful and worth living. The sense of community and cooperatively working together is not what it used to be. It seems to be more money driven versus a quality of life. It worries me.”

However, Dorothy certainly doesn’t see this trend in the volunteers that keep devoting their time to Heal the Bay. She notices the same passion in new recruits when she volunteers her time at Speakers Bureau training sessions. “Heal the Bay volunteers are a special group of people,” she said. “With their passion and commitment the sky’s the limit. And of course the ultimate goal is to put ourselves out of business.”

In 1995, Dorothy went on to found the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, with a mission to preserve, restore, and enhance the economic, social, and environmental benefits of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel River Watersheds. She continues to be involved in statewide water policy, and remains a driving force in protecting water quality for future generations. Dorothy truly is an inspiration to all of us, and is an incredible example of how one person can make an incredible difference.