Big Win In 10-Year Fight To Protect Premier Surf Spot

 
Photo by Chay Peterson    

For more than a decade the Sierra Club has fought a proposed 16-mile toll road through San Onofre State Beach, one of California's most popular state parks. The campaign realized a major victory on December 18 when the U.S. Commerce Department ruled to uphold the California Coastal Commission's rejection of the project.

The Foothill South toll road would have despoiled more than half of the park, including a popular campground, a land conservancy, a sacred Native American burial site, and a pristine watershed feeding into the renowned Trestles surf beach. Below, Club volunteers tabling at Trestles Beach at the Mobile World Championship Surf Tour. Trestles is the only North American stop on the tour.

 
Photo by Ed Schlegel

"This is a victory for all our state parks," says Club staffer Robin Everett, who serves as organizer for the Club's Friends of the Foothills campaign. "If this road had been approved it would have opened the door for development in other state parks."

The fight against the toll road started more than ten years ago in the home of Orange Country Sierra Club volunteer Paul Carlton. In 1999 the Club became the first organization to hire staff and start a formal campaign against the project. "It grew from a small group of motivated Sierra Club volunteers meeting in living rooms to a grassroots movement of over 8,000 activists," recalls Club staffer Brittany McKee, who served as campaign organizer from 2000 to 2007.

 
Photo by Al Sattler 

Above, McKee (left) and Robin Everett (right) are pictured at a February 2008 Coastal Commission hearing attended by more than 7,000 people, the most ever at a Commission hearing. Below, San Diego Sierra Club organizer Micah Mitrosky, McKee, and Everett put together postcards and surfboards to present to the Commission.

 
Photo by Al Sattler 

"We began this fight with a march of 40 people in downtown San Clemente, and ended with thousands of people at the final hearings," says Club activist and Friends of the Foothills Task Force Chair Bill Holmes. "This victory proves that when people come together and don't give up, we can really make a difference."

Seattle Transit Victory Sweet Triumph For Club

"You probably haven't heard of Mike O'Brien," wrote Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat shortly after Election Day. "But if there's anyone from the governor to the mayor to the special-interest purveyors who gets credit for being exactly right about Puget Sound's worst political mess—transportation—it is this guy."

O'Brien chairs the Sierra Club's Cascade Chapter. On November 4, even in the face of the economic slump, Seattle-area voters passed a $17.9 billion transit measure, Proposition 1, to expand light rail, commuter train, and bus service in the urbanized areas of King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties. And no group was more instrumental in its passage than the Sierra Club.

The resounding victory (58 percent of voters approved the measure) was sweet vindication for O'Brien. In 2007 he and the Sierra Club took heat when the Club stood practically alone among its traditional allies in opposing a transportation bill (also, somewhat confusingly, called Proposition 1) that would have funded light rail and highways in the region. The Club reasoned that roads already had ample funding; what the region needed was a better, greener transit plan.

"Last year, groups who are normally allied with us said that you cannot pass a transit-only measure—you need roads in the bill," O'Brien says. "We believed otherwise." The bill went down to defeat, prompting Times columnist Westneat to fire off an e-mail to O'Brien congratulating him for "joining the ranks of backward Seattleites who have denied the city rapid transit for generations."

 

O'Brien, pictured above at a 2007 rally in downtown Seattle to defeat last year's roads & transit bill, saved Westneat's e-mail to use as motivation.

Success At Kentucky Liquid Coal Conference

Recently the Midwest New Energy Future Committee of the Sierra Club organized a Coal to Liquids conference in Kentucky. Becki Clayborn, a Sierra Club Coal Campaign regional representative from Illinois said the conference was a great success, bringing together more than 50 volunteers around a major issue.

"The committee is volunteer-driven," said Clayborn. "They network with coal activists throughout the Midwest in order to increase effectiveness in challenging new coal-fired power plants in that region."

Clayborn said this was the conference's third year, with this one focusing specifically on liquid coal.

"They wanted volunteers to learn more details on liquid coal plants in order to determine the best way to challenge the proposed liquid coal plants in the Ohio River Valley," explained Clayborn.

The conference was a big success, she added, with volunteers leaving energized to fight liquid coal plants together.

"Folks learned a lot at this conference and were very excited to collaborate for future actions to stop liquid coal plants from being built. The biggest challenge is determining the best target for challenging such plants. Financing seems to be the key point of leverage for stopping liquid coal - specifically we need to prevent the federal government from putting money into liquid coal, whether through subsidies or long term contracts."

Photos courtesy of John Blair and Rick Clewett.

Club and Allies Prevail in North Carolina Coal Case

The Sierra Club notched another coal victory in its belt on December 2 when U.S. Circuit Judge Lacy Thornburg ruled that Duke Energy violated the Clean Air Act for starting construction of its new Cliffside Unit 6 coal plant in Rutherford County, North Carolina, without making adequate provisions to regulate toxic air pollution.

Sanjay Narayan, above, of the Sierra Club's Environmental Law Program, played a key role assisting the Southern Environmental Law Center on the case, as did Molly Diggins, director of the Club's North Carolina Chapter. "This decision establishes that coal-fired power plants are subject to the Clean Air Act's requirements to minimize emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants," Narayan says.

The court ruling does not halt construction, but it leaves open the possibility that construction could be stopped if Duke does not promptly address the plant's toxic emissions. The review process must begin within 10 days, and must result in controls that meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act within 60 days.

The ruling is the first time a new coal plant that received its permit and began construction before the Clean Air Mercury Rule was struck down must comply with Maximum Achievable Control Technology requirements of the Clean Air Act. The so-called Clean Air Mercury Rule, which paradoxically would have allowed dangerously high levels of mercury pollution, was ruled illegal by a Washington, D.C. Circuit Court in February.

Read more about the Sierra Club's work to stop the coal rush.

Cascade Chapter Celebrates With Wilderness Champion

 

When the Wild Sky Wilderness Act was signed into law in May of this year, it capped off a 20-year campaign by the Sierra Club's Cascade Chapter. And no elected official was more instrumental in Wild Sky's passage than Senator Patty Murray, pictured above at center with Sierra Club activists in Seattle earlier this month. Volunteers and staff celebrated passage of Wild Sky by honoring Murray at chapter headquarters on December 1.

Murray introduced the bill in the U.S. Senate in May 2002, not long after the Club and its allies presented her with their wilderness proposal. Representative Rick Larson, whose district includes Wild Sky, introduced the bill in the House of Representatives the same day, and Senator Maria Cantwell's strong support was critical in shepherding the bill through the Senate. Wild Sky passed the Senate three times before the final round af action after the 2006 elections.

Wild Sky's 106,000 acres, which include low-elevation forests and river systems as well as soaring peaks and pristine high-country lakes, is the first new designated wilderness in Washington State since 1984. Read more about the Sierra Club's work to protect America's wild legacy and build resilient habitats.

Photo by Judith Ryan.

Ohio Tour Shows Effects of Coal Mining

This is a guest post by Nachy Kanfer, a coal team organizer for the Ohio Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Twenty Sierra Club members and activists hit the high points of the coal life-cycle on a November 'Coal Tour' of southeast Ohio, from generation and sequestration to mining and remediation. Organized by long-time Club member Mary Beth Lohse, the tour's purpose was to help educate activists and further empower them to fight new coal-fired power plants in Ohio and the harmful effects of mining.

First off, the group toured AEP's Mountaineer coal-fired power plant just over the Ohio River in West Virginia. Mountaineer is one of the largest power plants in the region and the site of a much-touted AEP experiment in carbon capture and sequestration. The Sierra Club group surprised plant personnel with detailed questions about the plant's efficiency (better than most), operation of the scrubbers (full-time, with waste disposed off-site), and status of the carbon capture experiment (non-operational).

The following day, everyone got up early to hit the road and inspect various sites suffering from acid mine drainage. This phenomenon occurs when water reacts with exposed coal in old coal mines and then flows into streams and rivers, killing aquatic life and severely damaging the ecosystem. The first picture, which looks like a stream frozen solid, actually depicts running water that is so contaminated with aluminum as it exits the mouth of the mine that it has turned milky white. This next picture shows a small pool loaded with iron and sulfur compounds, which form a rusty reddish metallic film on the surface.

Neither waterway contains a speck of life. Southeastern Ohio is full of examples like these, the legacy of over a century of coal mining.

Finally, the group visited a strip-mining site, abandoned long ago as unprofitable, now proposed for a re-mining operation. Like many strip mines, the company left behind an enormous 'highwall', or a cliff of earth marking the spot where the mine ended. Dangerous as well as unsightly, these highwalls dominate the southeast Ohio landscape, depressing land values and disrupting flora and fauna.

The Sierra Club activists who attended the coal tour departed with a renewed sense of determination that we must do everything we can to not only defeat the coal rush in Ohio and block all new plants, but drastically reduce our current reliance on coal, as well. While many of us started thinking about coal as a key contributor to global warming, its impacts are local as well as global.

The people of southeast Ohio and other coal regions around the country deserve healthy streams and clean air, freedom from blasting and mine subsidence, and the economic opportunities that clean energy can bring. Sierra Club's coal activists in Ohio intend to fight for as long as it takes to bring about that future.

You can also read more about our coal tour in this blog post from another Sierra Club member.

Photos courtesy of John Lohse and Nachy Kanfer.

Longtime Club Activist Promotes Hawaii's "Moon Shot"

 

Former Hawaii Sierra Club organizer and longtime environmental mover-and-shaker Jeffrey Mikulina, above, made a prominent appearance on the New York Times' December 2 editorial page with his call to wean Hawaii from fossil fuels in 10 years. Currently Executive Director of the Honolulu-based Blue Planet Foundation, Mikulina jokes that the Aloha State is "one supertanker away from being Amish." But he is dead serious in his belief that "ending our fossil fuel addiction is the absolute priority for our state and the globe."

In January, the state approved a plan to reduce its reliance on foreign oil by 70 percent by 2030. Blue Planet, founded by software entrepreneur Henk Rogers in 2007 after a heart attack prompted him to reassess his life and career goals, favors much speedier action. Read the Times' editorial to learn how Blue Planet is promoting the state's transformation from blue to green.

Club Activists Among Kentucky Friendship Delegation to China

A five-woman delegation of community representatives from Owensboro, Kentucky, traveled to China in early November as guests of honor at the Wuxi Ecological Tourism Festival in the city of Wuxi. That's Sierra Club organizer Aloma Dew at left, volunteer activist Winny Lin, who organized the trip, at center, and fellow activist Carol Mark in front. Rounding out the group are Anne Padgett and Susan Vance.

Over ten days, the group met with environmental and government officials, citizen activists, and students in Wuxi, Shanghai, and Beijing. "Wuxi prides itself on being a clean, green city," Dew says. "Thre are recycling bins every other block, and they're planting trees everywhere."

Wuxi contains the third-largest freshwater lake in China—a major tourist draw—and a bad algae bloom several years ago caused by sewage and factory farm runoff hurt tourism badly. "They made the connection and moved most of the factory farms away from the area," says Dew, who focuses on clean water and factory farm issues for the Club. "We haven't fully made that connection back home, as Chesapeake Bay will attest."

Among the environmental leaders meeting with the Kentucky delegation in Beijing were Wen Bo, above left, codirector of Pacific Environment's China program, and Kaori Ohsawa, above right, of Mekong Watch. Bo, who is featured in the Nov/Dec issue of Sierra magazine, started the China Green Student Forum, the country's first network of student environmental organizations. He recently published an activist handbook to help Chinese citizens take action as Americans would under our Clean Water Act.

Above right, Wang Yongchen, a senior reporter with China National Radio who started a group called Green Earth Volunteers, receives a Sierra Club calendar from Dew. "She and Wen Bo are internationally recognized environmentalists, and very familiar with the Sierra Club," Dew says. "But many others we met knew of the Club as well, and while visiting schools or meeting with officials, we explained what the Club does, and that we're interested in working in China. I feel we've started a dialog we can build on."  

Sierra Club Lights It Up in Las Cruces

They say a picture's worth a thousand words. That's Las Cruces, New Mexico, Mayor Ken Miyagishima above, holding a compact fluorescent light bulb at City Hall, where he signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement on November 20. The photo ran in the Las Cruces Sun-News the following day.

Present at the ceremony was Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter organizer Dan Lorimer, who has been working with the chapter's Southern Group to help the city meet its goal for reducing CO2 emissions. "Thursday's signing helps Las Cruces get on a fast track for its clean energy commitments," Lorimer says. Mayor Miyagishima announced that starting early next year, El Paso Electric Co. and various Las Cruces retailers will exchange their incandescent light bulbs for CFLs.

Photo by Norm Detlaff, courtesy of Las Cruces Sun-News.

Volunteers Haul Tons of Trash From City Waterway

This fall, the Sierra Club teamed up with the City of Columbia, Missouri, and other local groups* to co-sponsor the fifth annual Hinkson Clean Sweep. In two hours, volunteers hauled a record 4,000 pounds of garbage, 200 pounds of recyclables, and 15 tires from the waterway, an arterial of the Missouri River.

"This is the biggest haul and the biggest number of volunteers we've had," says Sierra Club Water Sentinels Director Scott Dye. "The first year attracted fewer than 50 people—this year we had 230. It's a gritty event where we get down and dirty, muck around, and wade chest-deep in the water at five locations along the creek."

This year's Clean Sweep netted a greater haul than Dye anticipated. "I was worried the heavy summer rains might have carried most of the garbage downstream to the Missouri." Plastic is especially problematic, as it never biodegrades, and breaks up in the ocean into pieces the size of krill, a vital food source for marine mammals and seabirds. Cigarette butts are another culprit, taking up to 15 years to biodegrade.

The Hinkson Clean Sweep complements the spring Cleanup Columbia event, now in its 11th year, which regularly draws between 1,000 and 2,000 people. "When it draws 2,000 volunteers, that's one out of every 50 Columbians coming out the same day to clean up our streets, trails, parks, and roadsides," Dye enthuses. "In a way it's a shame that we have to do this, but it's great to see so many people turn out."

Photos by Leigh Claire, courtesy of the City of Columbia.

* Other sponsors of this year's Clean Sweep include Boone County Public Works, Missouri Stream Team Program, Columbians United for Hinkson Creek Stream Team, and CARP (Columbia Aquatic Restoration Project), with the support of AmeriCorps, Hinkson Creek Valley Neighborhood Association, Sierra Club Osage Group, Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Learn more about the Missouri Water Sentinels.