Nit Ounniyom was a high school junior when she heard about a paid internship through her minister.
Eager to make some money, Ounniyom, a Laotian refugee whose family fled the country during the Vietnam war before settling in Richmond, spent the summer of 1997 surveying West County Laotians about their seafood consumption and educating people about the dangers of eating fish caught in the bay. The internship was organized by the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, a Richmond group formed in 1993 to infuse the environmental justice movement with an Asian perspective.
“APEN was organizing Laotians because they were the most recent Asian immigrants in west county,” Ounniyom told Richmondside, adding that most of the group’s leaders were women. “Through them, I saw the importance of being involved, taking a leadership role and talking to community members, and it challenged me to come out of my comfort zone.”
Ounniyom learned how to phone bank, conduct interviews and catalog results and credits the experience with giving her the confidence to attend UC Berkeley.
Today, the organization has grown to three offices statewide — in Richmond, Oakland and Los Angeles — with a staff of 40 and a membership base of nearly 1,000. The organization has positioned itself as a David to Chevron’s Goliath and, lately, David has been winning. Its biggest victory came in 2024, when it helped the city of Richmond secure a $550 million settlement from Chevron, a historic deal that will shape the city for years to come.
‘Make Polluters Pay’ was APEN’s biggest win
APEN’s biggest win grew out of its Make Polluters Pay campaign, launched in 2023.
The effort brought together Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), another Richmond nonprofit, the Service Employees International Union and the Richmond Progressive Alliance. Together, they pushed Chevron to pay for the environmental and public health toll its refinery has taken on the city. An estimated 25% of Richmond suffer from asthma — double California’s rate.
“The process of passing Polluters Pay was a huge move for us,” said Megan Zapanta, Richmond organizing director for APEN. “We’ve done a lot of reactive things connected to the refinery but this was our first time making a real move and that was really exciting … We were phone banking, talking to people and felt we had a lot of support from different sectors. The momentum was really starting to build.”
The organization initially considered putting a measure on the ballot through a signature-gathering drive to tax each barrel of crude processed at the refinery. But given strong Richmond City Council support, they ultimately decided to ask the council to place a measure before the voters.
To avoid that, several city council members negotiated with Chevron for a settlement, which the council approved in August 2024. The agreement will bring in about $50 million annually to the city over the next decade.
“The only reason Chevron ultimately came to the table was because we were winning,” Zapanta said.
Since then, APEN has created a playbook for organizers, environmental justice advocates and local leaders on how to extract big financial concessions from polluting industries before they close up shop — whether that’s due to bankruptcy or a move to another state. The organization believes that it’s only a matter of time before all fossil fuel refineries close as transportation fuels move to greener alternatives.
A history of taking on Chevron
In 1999, an explosion ripped through the Chevron refinery, sending black smoke billowing into the sky. The city’s emergency telephone system sent warnings about sheltering in place, but these messages were largely useless to non-English speakers who went outside to investigate, exposing themselves to potentially dangerous emissions from the fire. APEN began working with Contra Costa County on a multilingual warning system that could send audible alerts in Lao, Mien, Khmu and Hmong languages. The system launched in 2003.
Despite the group’s name, APEN has long taken a broad definition of the environment to also include housing, economic justice and community safety. The group organized ESL classes — often combined with education about health risks of toxins in bay-caught fish — food drives and an internship program that became a pipeline for the next generation of activists.
“In every community we organized with, we would start by listening, learning, and building trust in the community, not by swooping in and telling people we knew what was best for them,” wrote founding director Peggy Saika in an essay marking APEN’s 30-year anniversary. “We knew that to keep people healthy and safe, we were going to have to pursue multiple organizing strategies, meeting people where they were at and lifting up their leadership all along the way … Throughout, we were committed to building relationships that respected the power of the community to speak for themselves.”
As the organization grew, it increasingly set its sights on the Chevron refinery, which has been part of Richmond’s landscape since 1902 and for decades influenced local politics through massive donations and aligned council members.
In 2006, APEN helped craft a successful Richmond ballot measure that ended Chevron’s flat tax rate, which critics said had resulted in the company underpaying taxes to the city for 20 years. Joined by the West County Toxics Coalition, APEN canvassed its growing member base. Voters passed the measure, and Chevron had to pay an additional $28 million in back taxes.
In 2008, APEN and CBE sued Chevron to stop the refinery’s expansion. The suit stalled the project temporarily, giving the coalition time to get a large manufacturers’ tax on the ballot, which passed. Chevron contested the tax and a judge struck it down. But in 2010, after sustained pressure from the city council’s growing progressive coalition, APEN and other community groups, the company agreed to a $114 million settlement over 15 years.
“APEN has been a key member of a broad coalition that has turned Richmond into a respected progressive movement and community, and forced corporations to spend money to fight back to take control of the Richmond economy and politics,” said Andres Soto, a former CBE organizer who has worked closely with APEN. “It was always an alliance. CBE would provide the hardcore technical information on the scientific and legal aspects and APEN’s role was to organize and get their community to show up. Then, the Richmond Progressive Alliance brought the political element, like ‘How are we going to get people elected?’ ”
On Aug. 6, 2012, a corroded pipe at the Chevron Richmond refinery ruptured, sending a large vapor cloud of flammable hydrocarbons into the air, which ignited a massive fire. An estimated 15,000 people were checked out for possible breathing problems, chest pain and eye and throat irritation.
The fire became a major turning point in Richmond, intensifying community organizing around refinery safety and corporate accountability. Two years later, public outcry against the refinery and the growing influence of the Richmond Progressive Alliance helped elect four RPA members to the city council. That progressive majority continues to influence city politics today.
New leadership, new focus in 2026
In February, APEN welcomed a new co-director, Michelle Chan, who spent three decades working at Friends of the Earth, a national environmental organization. Chan will be sharing the role with co-director Vivian Yi Huang. Several years ago APEN made the switch to a co-director model, which it believes is more democratic, sustainable and better reflects the values of the organization. Chan is watching the ongoing closure of the Phillips 66 refinery in Los Angeles closely, looking for lessons about how a city long dependent on a refinery can prepare for its next chapter.
“The state requires refineries to only give (a) 12-month notice,” Chan said. “The refineries don’t have the interests of the community in mind when closing, so it’s up to a community to create contingency plans. We have to be prepared.”
With the recent Chevron settlement payments now coming in, Richmond has a rare opportunity to think seriously about replacing tax revenue from the refinery with cleaner industries that could bring high-paying jobs to the city. That will be no small task given that about a quarter of the city’s budget can be attributed to Chevron. Over the next several months, the city says it will begin collecting community input on how to best spend the settlement funds.
“The good news for Richmond is that we have city leaders who are ready to start grappling with these issues now rather than be in a state of denial,” Chan said. “Part of (the settlement) can be used to address current short-term needs, but another part of it will and should be used to start making a downpayment on a clean, green inclusive economy that will be able to generate jobs and tax revenue.”
What is next for APEN?
Today, APEN is busier than ever.
Current projects include generating renewable energy through microgrids, green tariffs to provide 100% renewable energy to low-income communities, fighting displacement due to rising housing costs and holding workshops to educate immigrants about their legal rights.
The work has become a family affair for some members. Ounniyom’s 19-year-old daughter, Ally, attended city council meetings alongside her mother to advocate for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, evidence that the organizing pipeline APEN built decades ago is still running.
For organizing director Zapanta, APEN’s next chapter is personal.
Zapanta says that she’s inspired by APEN’s elder Laotian members who have survived war, hunger, years in refugee camps and then the shock of being uprooted to a new world.
“When I talk to our elders, there’s a fierceness and a continual dedication, hope and desire to create a better world,” she said.
