Background
John P. Crevelli was part of Sonoma County’s environmental vanguard, which thwarted PG&E’s plans to erect a nuclear power plant on an earthquake fault at Bodega Bay and fought to preserve public access to the coast. Crevelli was a founding member of the group C.O.A.A.ST (Californians Organized to Acquire Access to State Tidelands), formed in fellow Santa Rosa Junior College instructor Peter Leveque’s classroom in 1968.
C.O.A.A.ST also included Bill Kortum, the dean of Sonoma County environmental activists, and Charles Hinkle, a former county supervisor who was recalled, along with Kortum, in 1976 in a move that paved the way for the board’s first environmental majority. Also, out of C.O.A.A.ST’s endeavors came the 1972 Coastal Zone Conservation Act, parent of California’s Coastal Commission. Crevelli authored Bill Kortum: A Fifty Year History of Environmental Activism in Sonoma County
Collection
Donated by Debra Crevelli in 2014. The John P. Crevelli Papers, dating from the 1960s through 2015, include seven boxes of correspondence, government documents, meeting minutes, newspaper clippings, newsletters, pamphlets, fliers, and ephemera on various county, state, and national environmental issues.
Access
The research material in the collection is available to view by appointment.
