Community-University Partnerships to Address Legacy Soil Lead and Advance Urban Gardening.

The legacy of lead in urban soils can complicate, and even prevent, urban gardening efforts. Community-university research and action partnerships may help both academics and practitioners better understand the complexities involved in such urban social-ecological phenomenon. We share lessons learned from an ongoing community research partnership in Sacramento, CA focused on soil lead, urban gardening, and environmental justice. Working with area non-profits that are dedicated to expanding local food access, we have intensively sampled over 120 sites concentrated in two underserved neighborhoods of Sacramento, CA. In conjunction with the soil sampling, we have conducted interviews of residents, activists and policy actors working across scales from individual yards, to neighborhoods, to the city on issues of food access and agriculture in Sacramento. We will present emerging themes from the interviews as well as data from the soil sampling, using the results of both to highlight the contribution of community-university partnerships to understanding potential trade-offs among urban gardening, food production, and the challenge of legacy pollution in urban soil systems. We will reflect on how this community-university partnership has helped to advance our understanding of soil lead patterns, streamline our communication strategy, and promote the joint development of strategies that can both mitigate potential lead exposure and promote access to healthful, local foods.