One of our most precious natural resources. The sixth supervisor in San Mateo County. Lennie Roberts has been called many things over her 50+ year career as an environmental advocate. Most often, perhaps, simply: hero.
In 2009, Lennie was voted the Cox Conserves Hero for the Bay Area; in 2016, she received the Environmental Hero Award from the Loma Prieta chapter of the Sierra Club and in 2019 Bay Nature Magazine named her a local hero for her work to protect open space on the San Mateo County Coastside.
“Her legacy here on the coast is what you don’t see,” Midpen Board President Zoe Kersteen-Tucker says. “You don’t see thousands of houses sprawling up the mountainside. What you do see are the beautiful scenic vistas and the agricultural lands.”
As a volunteer legislative advocate for Green Foothills since 1978, Lennie is renowned for standing strong on principle while seeking middle ground.
“Lennie has been effective because she is able to identify what’s important, when to draw a line in the sand, and where to compromise or negotiate,” retired California Assemblymember Rich Gordon said when he was a member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors.
Without Lennie’s work, the Coastside would look very different today: luxury subdivisions, golf courses, a multilane freeway over Montara Mountain. Lennie was the author and cosponsor of Measure A, which voters passed in 1986. This “Coastal Protection Initiative,” gave 38 policies in the county’s 1980 Local Coastal Program the force of law that cannot be changed without voter approval.
Other achievements Lennie takes pride in are helping to create Midpen in 1972 and expanding its boundaries to San Mateo County in 1976. Green Foothills was about 10 years old, and Lennie had joined its board of directors in 1968. She and other Green Foothills leaders led the drive to collect 5,000 signatures to qualify Measure R for the ballot. Voters passed this “Room to Breathe Initiative” by nearly 68%, establishing Midpen.
Lennie and Green Foothills members were also instrumental in expanding Midpen’s boundaries to the Coastside in 2004 and helping to pass Measure AA to fund Midpen’s Vision Plan in 2014. She led advocacy efforts to stop suburban sprawl on lands that later became Midpen’s Russian Ridge, Purisima Creek Redwoods and Bear Creek Redwoods public open space preserves.