The honorees for the 2002 Smith-Weiss Award were Pacoima Beautiful, California Assembly member Fran Pavley, and California State Senator, Martha Escutia.

Pacoima Beautiful is a grassroots, community based environmental organization that was established in 1996 by five PACOIMA residents in an effort to improve their often-neglected community. With few financial resources but a legion of volunteers, this dynamic community group has successfully completed a number of community improvement projects. Among them: creating a program to help residents identify hazardous materials and get them removed; helping to create a partnership that established one of the first environmentally sustainable schools in California; and engaging teens in identifying assets and deficits in their community to share with the community in order to effect change. From its modest beginnings, Pacoima Beautiful now reaches 35,000 residents annually through its various programs. All programs are designed to help residents identify problems and then to find the solutions.

As four-time Mayor of Agoura Hills, former member of the California Coastal Commission and now a member of the State Assembly, Fran Pavley has made the environment a top priority. While serving on the Coastal Commission, where she made protection of the San Simeon coast, public access to the beach and cleaning Santa Monica Bay top priorities, she was recognized by the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and the League for Coastal Protection as the Commissioner with the best conservation voting record. As an Assembly member she has introduced environmental bills that span such issues as the protection of endangered species, indexing of conservation easements, reducing CO2 emissions from cars, Malibu Canyon Scenic Highway, Water Quality and Watershed Protection Act, and Used Oil Recycling Fund among others. Environmental lobbyists in Sacramento refer to Fran as the Rookie of the Year.

As a member of the State Assembly and currently as a State Senator, Martha Escutia has championed a variety of environmental causes, most significantly those dealing with environmental justice. She established the first-ever Children’s Environmental Health Protection Act to ensure that health-based pollution standards consider impacts on children as well as healthy adults, and she is responsible for the creation of a CalEPA Environmental Justice Working Group that will assist the agency develop its environmental justice mission statement. She has also authored bills establishing the California Land Environmental Restoration and Reuse Act, Waste Tire Recycling, brownfields clean-up, hazardous liquid pipelines remediation, and water replenishment. Her work has garnered her recognition from the California League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club and the American Lung Association.