​Marin City Residents Press County On Air Pollution, Housing Bonds And Climate Equity

MARIN COUNTY, CA — Environmental justice concerns in Marin City took center stage at Tuesday’s Marin County Board of Supervisors meeting, as residents renewed demands for freeway protections, questioned county flood‑control plans and challenged the ethics of financing new housing projects.

Several Marin City speakers called for a long‑sought barrier wall along Highway 101, arguing that decades of exposure to traffic exhaust and noise have caused serious health and quality‑of‑life impacts for the predominantly Black community.

“Air pollution kills,” said Terrie Harris-Green, chair of the Marin City Community Services District and executive director of Marin City Climate Resilience. She warned that current plans for a large pump station in the Marin City shopping center — on what residents describe as a historic wetland — would lock in environmental damage and block future restoration.

“We want our wetland restored,” Harris-Green said. “You put that big old pump station in there, we’ll never be able to do it.”

Another Marin City resident cited stark disparities in local health outcomes, pointing to studies showing roughly a 20‑year life‑expectancy gap between Marin City residents and those in wealthier nearby communities. The speaker called a highway barrier wall a relatively small cost compared with the long‑term health burden of unchecked freeway pollution.

County leaders pushed back on the idea that Marin City has been neglected.

“[Marin City] has been one of our communities that we have really made a concerted effort across departments to make continued investments,” said County Executive Derek Johnson said

He pointed to a joint $500,000 commitment from the Transportation Authority of Marin and the county to complete the Caltrans‑required technical studies for a potential sound wall along Highway 101.

The Board also held a federally required TEFRA hearing and approved the use of tax‑exempt bonds to help finance two related affordable housing projects — 42 units at 825 Drake Avenue in Marin City and 32 units at 156 Shoreline Highway in Mill Valley. The California Municipal Finance Authority, not the county, issues these bonds and sells them to investors; the developer, not the county, is responsible for paying them back. The resolution sets a maximum cap of $60 million in bond authority for the two sites combined, even though only about half that amount is expected to be used, giving the financing some legal wiggle room without creating county debt.

Supervisors faced criticism over expanding bond authority after earlier litigation over the financing, with some speakers urging the county to press the developer to rely more heavily on private capital.

Supervisor Brian Colbert said recent events have created “uncertainty that some communities are feeling right now,” noting that for others “it has been a long standing reality.” He stressed that Marin’s focus must remain on “civil rights, public safety, transparency and of course, accountability” as it navigates overlapping climate threats and historic inequities.

Those climate threats were on vivid display earlier in the month, when a Jan. 2–4 storm and record king tides flooded roads from Sausalito to San Rafael, stranded vehicles in several feet of water, and briefly knocked out 911 service after an AT&T hub in San Rafael flooded.