Eye on the Prize

Lorrae Rominger would like you to meet the unsung environmental heroes of the world.

To ensure that the public is well aware of the tons of fair-trade coffee Starbucks is proudly snapping up and the thousands of gallons of used cooking oil McDonald’s is planning on converting to biofuel, both companies’ corporate PR machines are running on overtime. But if you’re Margie Eugene-Richard—a schoolteacher in Norco, LA, who single-handedly led a 13-year fight to force the nearby Shell Oil plant to admit its role in the area’s high rates of cancer and birth defects—who will bring your cause to the masses? And what about Yu Xiaogang, a Chinese environmentalist whose research on how dams have hurt his country’s ecosystem resulted in the government seizing his passport—how will the world hear his message?

If Lorrae Rominger, the 55-year-old deputy director of the SF-based Goldman Environmental Prize, has her way, no eco-warrior will go unnoticed. “We honor people who’ve devoted their lives to [righting] an environmental injustice,” says Rominger, who in 2003 was wooed away from her post as executive director of the San Francisco Film Commission by Richard Goldman, the longtime SF philanthropist and cofounder—with his late wife, Rhoda—of the prize. “Mr. Goldman created this international award for people who start green movements at the grassroots level and end up affecting thousands of people. I help give them a voice.”

Since the prize’s inception in 1990, the 119 honorees from 70 countries (the six 2007 winners will be announced on April 23) have helped preserve 11 million acres of rainforest, clean up 866 toxic waste sites and save 534 bird species from extinction. Winners are not informed of their nomination until Goldman phones with the news of their $125,000 award. “In the beginning, the winners would say, ‘What’s the Goldman Prize?’ Now they scream. They cry. They fall silent,” says Rominger. “Now they know.”

While Rominger—who lives in SoMa—looks to the prizewinners for inspiration to reduce her own ecological footprint (that is, the total natural resources one consumes in a year), she credits her environmental awareness to her parents. “I was raised on a farm in the Sacramento Valley, where taking care of the land ensured a better crop, and essentially our livelihood,” she says. “I grew up a conservationist, and as a result I feel really connected to my work at the prize. It’s the most humbling job I’ve ever done.”

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