Preserving the legacy of Bay Area Action’s environmental work from 1990–2000 and beyond.
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Technology is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when contemplating the work of an environmental nonprofit, but the history of Bay Area Action is in fact intertwined with the history of Silicon Valley and the rise of the internet.
Before the rise of the tech industry, the South Bay region was renowned for its lush orchards and vibrant agriculture, earning the nickname “Valley of Heart’s Delight.” In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the valley was blanketed with thousands of acres of fruit trees — especially plums, apricots, cherries, almonds, and walnuts.
By the 1960s and 1970s, urban growth and the emergence of high-tech industries, spurred by nearby Stanford University, transformed the region. Santa Clara Valley orchards gave way to offices, research parks, and the booming semiconductor industry eventually earned the name “Silicon Valley.”
The rapid rise of semiconductor and electronics manufacturing led to widespread use and dumping of hazardous chemicals, especially solvents like trichloroethylene (TCE), which contaminated groundwater, soil, and air. Today, toxic plumes still linger underground, posing health risks to residents and workers, while cleanup efforts can inadvertently cause further spread or create new problems.
As early as 1991 BAA was raising awareness of 19 Superfund hotspots at Moffett Field alone, in an article by Peter Drekmeier titled “The fate of Moffett Field.”
A 1993 article by BAA member Dennis DeRyke titled “Lethal brew bubbles under Bay Area” catalogued over two dozen Superfund sites between San Jose to Palo Alto.
Wrote Dennis:
At one time Silicon Valley seemed to herald one of the great promises from the realm of science fiction: a day-dream future where industry boomed in high-tech epicenters devoid of smoke stacks. Now it is common knowledge that the “clean industry” of chip manufacturing has left the valley's groundwater and soil tainted with solvents, fuels, and other toxics. In fact, Silicon Valley sports 28 Superfund sites. The clean-up will take years, perhaps decades, to complete.
Bay Area Action having been formed in Palo Alto, the birthplace of companies such as Hewlett-Packard, the computer visual interface, and many other technological innovations we take for granted today, it’s perhaps unsurprising that many of BAA’s members were technology workers.
But a handful of them did more than just work with technologies like the internet, they were internet pioneers.
Abhay was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2023, as an Internet pioneer who laid the groundwork for FTP and email in the 1960s and ’70s with his work at MIT and ARPANET. “As the author of more than 20 RFCs [Request for Comments], Bhushan was responsible for codifying many standards for both the future Internet and e-mail. Among other rules, his RFCs established the format for e-mail headers, including the use of the @ sign,” reports the Internet Hall of Fame.
Abhay was an Earth Day 1990 volunteer and a BAA co-founder.
Michael wrote the first native-code C++ compiler and debugger, and co-founded Cygnus Support (later Cygnus Solutions) in 1989, widely regarded as the first company to commercialize open source software, before the term “open source” had even been coined.
He went on to numerous leadership roles at Red Hat software and later served as President of the Open Source Initiative (2005–2012) and contributed to organizations like the GNOME Foundation and Creative Commons.
Michael was also an early BAA leader.
Many BAA regulars were tech workers by day and eco-warriors by night and on weekends, whether they were cleaning creeks or simply grooving to music at a BAA Café at St. Michael’s Alley.
Here are just a few…
This is just a sample — and the BAA Archives don’t reflect all the associations BAA members had with tech, so we’d love to hear your story — contact us!
Many years before EVs would become a commonplace technology on the roadways, Bay Area Action was demonstrating the viability of clean, quiet electric vehicles as a commute alternative.
Due in large part to the leadership of David Coale, in 1991 the Electric Vehicle Project started a DIY conversion of an MG Midget from gasoline power to electric power. EV Project volunteers and members of the High Schools Group also converted a Volkswagen Rabbit to electric power.
EV Project members also worked with the SnoWhite, the country’s fastest electric race car, and created a slideshow about electric vehicle conversions.
With full technical documentation on the MG’s conversion available on the late-1990s BAA website, the EV Project was an important source of information for other DIYers around the world in a time when no major car companies sold an electric car.
Bay Area Action’s first website, created in 1995 by Impact Online, was one of the first nonprofit websites in history. “I think there were just hundreds or maybe 1,000 when BAA was online,” said Steve Glikbarg, Impact Online co-founder.
In fact, BAA was one of the first websites of any sort. In January 1995 there were a few more than 10,000 websites in the world, whether they were .orgs, .coms or otherwise. By contrast, in just two years that number had increased 65x to 650,000. In 2025 there are between 1.1 and 1.2 billion websites.
BAA quickly graduated to their own domain name — BAAction.org — and in a few short years would boast numerous websites, including BayAreaEarthDay.net, HeadwatersForest.org, and EcoCalendar.org, all designed and coded by your humble scribe.
All those websites have been offline for decades, but a lot of the pictures and articles and maps and whatnot could be important to future historians. Not to mention acknowledging the work of many volunteer coders. We just need to put them back online...
In digitizing the BAA Archives, I’ve learned that numerous tech companies donated money, equipment, and in-kind services over the years, among them:
In case you’re wondering whether such financial support could influence BAA’s activism, did you know BAA actually had policy for avoiding greenwashing?
I want the historical record to acknowledge the support of these and other companies for BAA’s work in the 1990s, but we haven’t compiled all those data yet.
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This article was originally published on Mark’s Substack, where he chronicles the making of this website and his research in the BAA Archives.
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