Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Actor; supporter of Heal The Bay
Video: Julia discusses her cause
Mother of Henry, 15, and Charlie, 10

"There's something about being a parent that takes you outside yourself. After I had my first son, I became aware that the beaches and bays in Los Angeles were polluted with sewage. With a child, you want to walk around and put your feet in the water, and we couldn't, because the beach was closed. Seeing a need in my own backyard—that was the beginning of activism for me. I began supporting Heal the Bay, a local nonprofit dedicated to cleaning up Santa Monica Bay and the Southern California watershed, and I eventually joined the board. My activism bleeds into my family life, bit by bit. We try to make small environmental choices every day—fluorescent lightbulbs, cloth bags, post-consumer paper. My sons are aware of why we make these choices, and I just hope these things get under their skin."

About Heal The Bay

Heal the Bay provides water-quality information on nearly 500 beaches in California and runs an environmental-education program that reaches 10,000 schoolchildren. Created in 1985 to combat the sewage then being dumped into Santa Monica Bay—which was killing marine life and rendering large patches of the bay floor lifeless—the organization has helped to reduce the amount of waste released in the bay by 90 percent. Heal the Bay monitors sewage-treatment plants and works to clean up runoff from storm drains, and "one of its biggest successes is the beach report card," says board member Julia Louis-Dreyfus. "It rates how safe the water is to swim or surf in. Now people look out for it regularly—it's like checking the weather."

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