What BAA Did
People
Archives
About
BAA and the Peninsula Conservation Center Foundation merged in 2001 to become Acterra.
This is intended to be a short-lived project that accomplishes 3–4 distinct goals, then shuts down. We’re not trying to start BAA back up again.
BAA has been gone a long time, but the accomplishments of the amazing volunteers and supporters of BAA should not be forgotten.
Plus, those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. BAA was warning about global warming, overpopulation, overdevelopment, traffic gridlock, pollution, and many other issues 35 years ago.
This site serves as a reminder that concerned citizens made positive change happen in the 1990s, and can do it again.
Yes! Even before this site was built, filmmakers, students, charitable foundations, universities, journalists, and the US government had all used materials from the BAA Archives!
Here’s a list
Mark Bult is doing the digitizing, organizing, writing, and fundraising. He’s spending 90% of his time in 2025 on this project, and when you donate you’re paying his salary, as well as project expenses. He is supported by some of BAA’s leaders and founders.
The original idea around 2010–2015 for this project was indeed Mark’s belief that Peter Drekmeier should write a memoir about the formation and subsequent 10 years of BAA. But Peter has other important stuff to do. So Mark decided in spring of 2024 to do it himself, not as a memoir, but as a chronicle / history book.
After talking over the idea with several BAA founders, considering the audience for such a book would be very tiny, and realizing that the info had to be collected and digitized and organized to write a book anyway, Mark decided there were more important goals.
So will there be a book? Maybe. If we still have enough time and money at the end of the project, or we raise more funds. But the first three goals are more important, and a book can’t even be written until they’re accomplished.
Please do. We can only build the Archives with your financial support.
Donations pay for the time spent researching and archiving the history; writing and editing articles; scanning, OCRing and posting historical articles; digitizing videos; scanning and sorting photos and negatives; identifying, cross-referencing, and cataloging items (physical and digital).
There are also third-party costs such as web hosting, digital platform fees, fundraising and credit card transaction fees, utilities, internet, and postage; plus materials costs like storage boxes, books and periodicals, research materials, etc.
We keep the project’s costs very, very low, and we have a detailed budget for the project. However we’re only a fraction of the way toward achieving our fundraising goals and won’t be able to continue for free.
No.
Probably.
We hope everyone involved in BAA can be proud of their involvement in a group that made a positive impact in the world, but we acknowledge that there are circumstances that may cause an individual to feel differently about their name appearing in the BAA Archives. We have developed a policy and process to address “the right to be forgotten.”
We are redacting certain PII from the records before they are included in the online Archives, such as home phone numbers, mobile phone numbers, home addresses, and personal email addresses.
See the Policies page for more info.
Of course. If you were a part of the Bay Area Action community we want to hear your story. If you have memorabilia we’d love to add it to the Archives.
Absolutely! We want to tell the story of the 1990s environmental movement through pictures. Or video, if you have it! We can scan your photos (prints, negatives, or slides) or digitize your videotapes. Please contact us.
One can be part of a system and criticize it at the same time. We all do that as citizens of a country, don’t we?
Despite the platform’s faults, most of the BAA old-timers have or had a Facebook account, so it has been invaluable in finding and reconnecting with the people who would be interested in this site (perhaps you?).
We’d love it if Facebook reformed its ways, or if a viable alternative platform emerged. There may come a time when the BAA Archives chooses to remove its account on Facebook, or purposefully make it dormant.
