From Homemaker to Harbor Hero: The Lasting Impact of Bea Atwood Hunt’s Environmental Crusade

By Rosie Knight, Columnist

The storied history of environmental activism in San Pedro began with a moment of direct action, as so many radical movements do. Decades ago, a group of Point Fermin residents chained themselves to the pine trees on Cabrillo Beach to protest the proposed construction of a marina that would have destroyed the open-water side of the beach. Since then San Pedro has been a hub for environmental activism as residents and community organizers have fought to make the Harbor Area a safer, healthier place for the people who live here. In this series, Random Lengths will be profiling some of the activists who have made those changes possible through their organizing, the tradition of activism in San Pedro, and the future of the ports. 

For our Mother’s Day issue, it felt only right to look back at one of the trailblazing activists in San Pedro history, Bea Atwood Hunt, who shapeshifted from a comfortable life as a homemaker into one as a local community leader. She went up against corporations with no fear and made San Pedro safer for everyone in it, thanks to her tireless battle against corporate interests to clean up the fuel tanks that have long been part of the Pedro landscape. 

Like many brilliant women, her activism began with her motherhood. When her children left home, Atwood Hunt pursued a law degree from South Bay College of Law, as part of a fight against the U.S. Army for their recruitment tactics that saw her son enlisted under the guise of being a photographer, before being shipped off to Vietnam as a truck driver. She eventually won, getting her son an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army thanks to her work protesting these techniques to politicians in Washington and the Red Cross. 

That radical, but personal beginning saw Atwood Hunt swap bridge games for Senate hearings and soon she was planning her next mission: to make sure that the Port of LA wasn’t making dangerous or unhealthy decisions for the residents who had to live with those very same choices. Atwood Hunt wasn’t afraid to go up against the big guns, as she put it in a San Pedro News Pilot article from 1977. “Let’s face it, somebody has to do something. You can’t just sit back and let them do what they want,” she stated while explaining why she felt like she had to take a stand against the fuel companies. 

It was a mission that she began while president of the Crescent Avenue Homeowners Association. She fought a powerful but ultimately unsuccessful battle against Union Oil as they built two new 300,000-gallon fuel tanks on the land they leased from the harbor adjacent to Atwood Hunt’s home. In a fiery letter to the News Pilot editor after the loss, Atwood Hunt shared that bureaucracy, male chauvinism and a lack of interest from her fellow San Pedro neighbors were reasons their original fight was lost. But she knew things had changed; rather than the expedited approvals that had taken place in the decades before — often taking just a month — their protests caused the approval process to take a year instead and cost Union Oil half a million dollars. It was a harsh loss, but it set off a decade-plus-long fight in which Atwood Hunt and her comrades would eventually succeed in having the tanks removed—though not before a related and tragic disaster struck San Pedro and its residents.  

“All of my life I’ve been the type of person that readily defied authority if I thought authority was wrong.”

Bea Atwood Hunt in 1977

It was the fatal 1976 explosion of the SS Sansinena at the Port of LA, which killed nine people and injured almost 50, that focused Atwood Hunt’s attention on how important it was to continue her fight against the tank farms at 22nd and Miner Street when the explosion happened. Atwood Hunt told the San Pedro News Pilot that she thought it was the tanks next to her that had finally blown up. It’s no surprise she was worried, as the danger was at the forefront of her mind. In 1972, a truck crashed into the 22nd Street GATX tank farm, which caused a chemical fire that injured multiple firefighters. 

By this point, Atwood Hunt had already established the Coastal and Harbor Hazards Council and they turned their eye to the tank farm next to Atwood Hunt’s home at 1717 Crescent Ave. Though she hadn’t planned to be an activist, it didn’t surprise her, as she told the News Pilot. “All of my life I’ve been the type of person that readily defied authority if I thought authority was wrong.” That mindset made her a formidable foe for the corporate interests that she went up against for decades, often as one of the sole voices advocating for those of us who live here. 

During her epic David and Goliath battle, Atwood Hunt became president of the now defunct Coastal and Harbor Hazards Council, which successfully campaigned against the GATX Corp. terminal annex at 22nd and Miner streets. It would be almost a decade later in 1985 that the Kaiser International Corp was finally forced to stop storing Petroleum Coke, much to the dismay of the Harbor Department which leased the land to Kaiser. In an interview that year with the LA Times, Hunt’s care for her neighborhood shone through. “It seems to all of us involved that by allowing Kaiser to operate there, it is another blatant lack of caring for the neighborhood by the Harbor Department,” she said.

When the terminal annex was closed down, Hunt and Co also campaigned to get the land cleaned and detoxified. That was another successful endeavor, forcing the corporation that polluted the land to deal with the damage it caused. That was followed up by another massive win as Union Oil finally agreed to close its tank farm on 22nd Street, paving the way for the gorgeous 18-acre park now next to the Marina and with a view of the port and its surrounding neighborhoods. There has been a campaign to name 22nd Street Park after Bea Atwood Hunt — which we here at Random Lengths support unequivocally — but the Board of Harbor Commissioners has yet to take action to rename the local green space. 

Our publisher, James Preston Allen, remembered Hunt and her fight in a 2023 editorial. “Bea worked tirelessly (and often single-handedly) for over 30 years to get these toxic tanks removed. And she won the war, finally! By rights, this park should be named in her honor as a community activist who took on the system and won, but sadly was never recognized before her death.”

Local community activist and former Cal State Dominguez Hills professor June Burlingame Smith, who knew Atwood Hunt personally, told Random Lengths that she “was a highly energetic person who really cared about her neighborhood and who went out of her way to let authorities know when they needed to make improvements. She was outspoken and dependable to stick up for a better quality of life for our community. And she was fun to be with.”

Hunt’s legacy can be felt in the work of young San Pedro activists like Random Lengths columnist and historical landmark organizer Emma Rault. She is fighting to save Walker’s Cafe by getting the building’s historic landmark status, a battle that is still ongoing. And then there are new groups like Ports for People, a part of the Pacific Environment activist group who are trying to hold the ports accountable when it comes to becoming sustainable and reducing fossil fuels. It can also be seen in the push for Greener Ports that the Port of LA likes to pretend was its idea alone, but without Bea Atwood Hunt and her single-minded care for the community of San Pedro and the Harbor Area, the Port of LA would be in a far worse state. And it’s a great reminder that the best way for us to pay respect to Bea’s memory is to continue the work that she started.