January 2008

The Newsletter of the Conservation Committees
of the Angeles Chapter, Sierra Club. Email items or articles to Editor: Robin Ives, Publisher/Webmaster: Lori Ives
The Conservation Committees provide forums for Club members to discuss impending conservation issues and to coordinate efforts of conservation subcommittees with groups and sections. They meet monthly every third Tuesday (Orange County) and third Wednesday (Angeles Chapter). Contact the Conservation Committee Chairs by the end of the previous month for a place on the agenda. Deadline for newsletter submissions is 16 days before the Chapter meeting.

We can’t simply build more generation assets to keep up. We’ve got to actually slow growth down in order to maintain low rates for everybody in the valley.

Not everywhere, but the Coleridge quote is one of the inspirations for a new Angeles Chapter Conservation subcommittee. Personal, political and water agency decisions can fuel sprawl or provide local rivers with reliable flows for wildlife. Decisions on water quality, conservation, re-use, and supplies often have impacts far beyond the boundaries of Los Angeles and Orange Counties. News articles have featured long term reductions in the snow pack of the Sierra Nevada, and changes in supplies from the Colorado River. Chapter members participating in the annual retreat in January had tuned in to this issue and identified it as the top issue that the chapter needed to work on. Several pieces of water related legislation are expected to be taken up in Sacramento during 2008.

Join us first as we kick off the organizing effort at the Conservation Committee March 19, when Dorothy Green, author of a new book on water management and founder of Heal the Bay, will speak on the topic.

Next, the first WATER COMMITTEE meets on March 24 at the Chapter office on Wilshire Blvd. at 7:30 pm. All Chapter members interested in working on water supply and water quality issues in Southern California are encouraged to attend either or both of these meetings. If you can’t make either, send a postcard with contact info to Conservation Committee Chair Judy Anderson at 3435 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles 90010 for further information or call the chapter office with your information.

Threatened Closure of State Parks
Parks Plan Intended to 'Rattle the Cage'
by Judy Lin

January 29, 2008 — Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he proposed closing 48 state parks to "rattle the cage" at the Capitol but fully expects lawmakers to come forward with alternatives — including higher fees — to keep parks open.

"The budget is always a proposal, that's why it's called a budget proposal. ... What I was doing with this budget is just say, 'Here's the reality,' and the reality will rattle the cage," Schwarzenegger said.

Last week, the governor released a $101 billion general fund spending plan that was balanced largely through government spending reductions. Closing 48 state parks would eliminate 136 positions and help the parks department save 8.9 percent of its budget — or $13.3 million.

Sutter's Fort, the Governor's Mansion and the Indian Heritage Museum — all in Sacramento — were among the parks on the chopping block. "Now people are going to get creative with the fees and all this stuff ... and to find ways of keeping the parks open, which I think they should be kept open," Schwarzenegger said.

The governor said he believed nongovernment groups would step in for the state. He cited parks like the Will Rogers State Park, which has an agreement with the cowboy movie star's family.

Jennifer Rogers Etcheverry, granddaughter of Will Rogers, has told a local newspaper that the Will Rogers Park in Pacific Palisades would revert back to the family if the state closed its doors. Etcheverry said part of the donation agreement included the state's responsibility to maintain the park.

While the governor said he wanted to "put everything on the table," his finance director, Mike Genest, said the Parks Department found fee increases won't necessarily solve the problem. He said higher fees would be likely to drive down attendance, further lowering revenues.

January 30, 2008 — The Assembly left town yesterday after deciding on the fate of its remaining bills that had not cleared the house last year. The Assembly went out with a whimper, failing to pass AB 493, Ira Ruskin's innovative proposal to give consumers discounts on cleaner vehicles, paid for by surcharges on the more polluting cars and trucks. With no Republican support at all, and with too many Democratic lawmakers unwilling to cast a vote against the powerful auto dealer lobby, the bill lacked the necessary votes, and was never even brought up on the floor.

January 24, 2008 — 4259 acres of California wildlife habitat will be saved at February State Wildlife Board Meeting.

Properties include: the Los Cerritos/Hellman Ranch Wetlands in Los Angeles, Ramona Grasslands in San Diego, Valley View in Humboldt County, Montgomery Woods in Mendocino County, wetlands in the Central Valley, Scott's Valley in Santa Cruz, Morro Bay, and Corral Canyon in Malibu.

February 4, 2008 (Sacramento) — Sierra Club California announced today the appointment of Bill Magavern as its new Director. Magavern has represented the group on pollution issues for eight years, and has led efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, improve air quality and remove toxins from consumer products.

“I’m honored to be entrusted with the leadership of Sierra Club California,” Magavern commented. “Our environmental voice in the State Capitol is more important than ever as people across the country and around the world look to our state to lead the fight against global warming and to preserve our glorious mountains, coastline and forests.”

Paul Mason, a Sierra Club California advocate for the last five years, will assume the duties of Deputy Director. “My priorities are to use both 21st century technology and old-fashioned person-to-person contact to better involve our members in environmental decision-making,” Mason said.

Magavern also announced the promotion of Jim Metropulos, who has represented Sierra Club California for six years, to the position of Senior Advocate.

Andy Sawyer, chair of Sierra Club California, stated “Our Executive Committee is pleased to pass the torch to experienced leaders who will bring both continuity and fresh thinking to our statewide work. We thank Bill Allayaud for his seven and one-half years of service, and we wish him well in his new role on the staff of Assemblymember Dave Jones.”

At the January 6, 2008 Executive Committee meeting, the following chapter officers were elected.

February 8, 2008 — The California Chamber of Commerce is pressuring both US Senator Dianne Feinstein and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to endorse its environmentally-devastating $11.69 billion water bond initiative.

The bond, which the Chamber hopes to place on the November 2008 ballot, is strongly opposed by environmental groups throughout California for its potential effects on the state's natural resources. The bond would:

The Chamber's push is seen by many as an end-run around the Governor's own Delta Vision process, which has brought together stakeholders from the environmental, business, water, agricultural, and Delta communities. The Governor-appointed Delta Vision Blue Ribbon Task Force just issued its Final Delta Vision and stakeholders are now developing a Vision implementation plan to restore the Delta and provide water for California's environment and economy.

The Chamber's initiative also threatens to deepen the fiscal crisis facing California. According to the California Attorney General, the initiative would strap California's General Fund and state taxpayers with an additional $760 million annually for the next three decades. The increased debt service would cripple already under-funded public safety, health, fire, and education services. (For comparison, in 2007 the state budget was held up for weeks over proposed cuts of $700 million.)

Many of California's top elected officials have demonstrated great leadership by rejecting the Chamber's bond and forwarding positive proposals. Last year, Senate President pro Tem Don Perata introduced a much more affordable water bond that focused on water recycling, water use efficiency, ecosystem restoration, and other local projects. Unfortunately, despite widespread support from water agencies, environmental organizations, and businesses, Senator Perata's initiative was killed by special interests seeking to advance the Chamber's mega-bond. Senator Perata has since announced his opposition to the Chamber's bond and has committed to stopping the Chamber's efforts to circumvent the Legislature.

The Planning and Conservation League and many others are urging both Senator Feinstein and the Governor to follow the leadership demonstrated by Senator Perata, and reject the Chamber's $11.69 billion bond.

February 6, 2008 — Next week, the Senate will consider an omnibus public lands bill package. The bill, entitled The National Forests, Parks, Public Land and Reclamation Project Authorization Act of 2007 (S 2483), contains a long list of Parks, Wilderness, and other public lands protections. The list includes the Wild Sky Wilderness and Cesar Chavez Park Study bills.

This bipartisan legislation includes several important measures that the conservation community is dedicated to supporting, such as the Wild Sky Wilderness Act of 2007 and the Cesar Chavez Study Act. Unfortunately, the bill is under attack. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is pulling out all the stops to kill this bill. His latest scheme is to try and attach an amendment which would allow concealed weapons to be carried into all Park Service Units.

To be clear, this amendment is merely an underhanded attempt to stop this bill, by muddying the waters and bringing an unrelated hot button issue into the debate. If Sen Coburn is successful, this could effectively stop any and all parks and wilderness bills from moving through the Senate this Congress.

The fabled Pacific Lumber redwood company is teetering in a billion-dollar bankruptcy in a Texas courtroom, some 1,800 miles from its foggy stands of primeval trees near Humboldt Bay. But the (bankruptcy) court proceedings may produce a remarkable result: a revival of logging on terms that both environmentalists and timber firms can accept. Jobs, thriving forests, regulatory precautions — all the issues that bedevil the timber industry and its critics — could be worked out in a new way.

One outside bid is headed by the Nature Conservancy, a blue-ribbon group that has lined up financial and lumber firms in a team that promises to preserve many of the oldest trees and cut the remaining stands over time. It would make permanent the timber cutting policies forced on Maxxam that now have a 42-year life.

The second bid is brought by the Mendocino Redwood Company, owned by the billionaire Fisher family, which founded the Gap clothing chain. This bid would unite the state's two biggest redwood companies, and its leaders pledge to follow careful tree-cutting practices.

With either bid, the potential is enormous for maintaining a forest that operates in harmony with environmental groups and timber economics. The bids would keep jobs, taxes, and business flowing in a region where the once-dominant lumber business is in decline. And it wouldn't call for the costly, unrealistic solutions of a massive government buyout or a logging ban.

"Nobody wants a 200,000-acre park," said Paul Mason, Deputy Director of the state Sierra Club."

Conservation Grants are due on February 15 at the end of business. Contact Jennifer Robinson, Conservation Coordinator.

The Grants Committee will meet on Tuesday, February 19 to discuss the grants. You are encouraged to attend to answer questions.

A new study indicates that fewer people are engaging in outdoor recreation than in previous years. Anyone who has ever tried to book a room near Yellowstone National Park in August knows that natural places can get very crowded. But biologist Oliver Pergams says those crowds can hide an important trend: Every year, a smaller percentage of Americans are fishing, camping or engaging in other nature-based activities. Since the late 1980s, the percentage of Americans taking part in such activities has declined at slightly more than 1 percent a year. The total effect, Pergams says, is that participation is down 18 percent to 25 percent from peak levels.

Pergams teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For several years now, he has been collecting outdoor head counts kept not only by national parks, but also by state and local parks, the U.S. Forest Service, the federal Bureau of Land Management and commercial polling firms.

"We've got data for hunting licenses, fishing licenses, three different data sources for camping and backpacking and hiking," Pergams says. All of these data sets go back at least 20 years, and they show that a few outdoor activities have remained popular. One in 10 Americans has gone hunting every year for the past several decades. And the overall number of backpackers, while relatively minuscule, has actually risen slightly.

But those are the exceptions, Pergams says. Participation in almost all other activities, like fishing and visiting parks, has headed sharply downward since the early 1990s. "It ends up all these things were very, very similar. The peaks in visitation ... were around the same time; the losses since the peaks have been about the same percentage. So they are all acting pretty much in the same way," Pergams says. He says environmentalists should be concerned by this broad change. He says that it's true, in part, that people who don't visit natural places might not fight so hard to protect them.

"It's perfectly possible to be in favor of something but not necessarily to support it fully," Pergams says. "You have polling on presidential issues, for instance, and though everybody says they support the environment, when you come down to it, almost all the other issues rank ahead of it if you ask people to compare them." The study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, speculates that the declines could have a variety of long-term causes, ranging from rising gas prices to increases in the amount of time spent in front of video games and TV screens. Mark Barrow, a Virginia Tech environmental historian, says the changes described in this paper are potentially historic. He says it's worth remembering that Americans have changed their attitudes toward nature many times over the centuries: It has been seen as evil, something to be tamed, a source of wealth, and as what Barrows calls a romantic playground. In that view, Barrow says, experiencing wilderness was "connecting with something divine, something that was primal and part of who you were as a culture." But Barrow says this study makes him wonder whether a new era may be dawning, one in which the wild is a place best seen at zoos or on plasma-screen TVs. He says there may not be a title for our current attitude toward the outdoors. But he suggests "the era of mediated nature." "It clearly seems to be the case that we seem to not need to experience the natural world in the ways that we did previously," Barrow says.

The new study says Americans might not be the only people changing in this way. Numbers from Japan show similar declines in things like park visits.

The Department of Energy very recently pulled support for FutureGen, a $1.8 billion prototypical "clean coal" power plant. Although the DOE has not publicly stated its future plans for the project, it has stated that inflating costs were a primary reason for putting the project on hold.

The FutureGen Alliance, composed of power and coal companies, announced it would construct the plant in Mattoon, Illinois, despite DOE concerns over costs and environmental impacts on the surrounding area. In an effort to encourage the DOE to move forward with the project, the Alliance offered to reduce DOE's share of the financial burden from over $1.3 billion down to $800 million. What a bargain! Yet despite this tempting offer, DOE is still not ready to take the plunge.

Many coal proponents tout the environmental benefits of "clean coal" as the best way to address global warming. Yet the science and technology behind carbon capture and storage is not yet well developed, and as demonstrated by the temporary collapse of FutureGen, is very costly. Instead of storing our carbon dioxide underground, we should harness the power of renewable and efficient energy to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions. Promoting truly clean energy is the fastest, cheapest, safest, and smartest way to curb global warming.

January 30, 2008 — Senate Bill (SB) 509 passed out of the Senate today on a vote of 21-16, and now moves to the Assembly.

The measure would require manufacturers of consumer products to publish on the Web a list of every substance in a product that makes up more than one-tenth of one percent of the whole. While previous laws have mandated disclosure of ingredients in food and cosmetics, no similar requirement exists for the thousands of consumer products that people buy and use every day.

The lack of information worries Bill Magavern, Advocacy Director of the Sierra Club California, which supports the bill. “Right now, Californians have no way of knowing what ingredients are in the products that are for sale in stores across the state,’’ he said, “and have no way of knowing whether those products are safe for their families.

January 30, 2008 — Starting Friday, the Sierra Club is co-sponsoring an eleven-city tour to promote Christian author Brian McLaren's newest book, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis and a Revolution of Hope. Focusing on creation care, global justice, and a concern for the poor, this book calls upon its readers to take action in a time of global crisis. How can people of faith usher in change in the face of unprecedented challenges: global warming, poverty and war?

Inspired by our shared values of environmental stewardship, global justice and care for our neighbors, the Sierra Club is proud to partner with Sojourners: Faith & Justice Churches, Emergent Village and others, in promoting this message of responsible stewardship.

A recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency has found that the cancer risk from coal ash is 900 times higher than what the Agency considers "acceptable." Each year burning coal creates over 129 million tons of coal ash. The ash, which is heavily contaminated with toxic metals such as arsenic and lead, has poisoned drinking water supplies around the nation, exposing millions of people to unsafe levels of these dangerous wastes.

The Natural Science Section of the Sierra Club will present its annual Nature Workshop on the weekend of June 13-15. Naturalists will share their expertise in bird and mammal identification, ecology, entomology, bats, botany and a variety of other subjects. The workshop will be held in a streamside camp in the San Bernardino Mountains.

To register: Send 2 large stamped self-addressed envelopes (or e-mail ), H & W phone numbers, names of ALL participants, and a check payable to “Sierra Club NSS” for $138 per person with Sierra Club Membership # or $158 for non-members to
Reservationist: Monica Donley, 5551 Mammoth Ave, Thousand Oaks CA 91401 (818) 988-7192.

Participants must be 13 years or older (under 18 accompanied by adult).

Leader: Liana Argento (310) 370-2950; lianaargento@hotmail.com
Asst Leaders: Cliff and Gabi McLean (626) 966-0580; gabi.mclean@verizon.net
NSS Website: angeles.sierraclub.org/nss Register early; space limited!

January 15, 2008, San Francisco — If a planet fried in a greenhouse, and no one came to the press conference, would it still sizzle? You have to wonder, watching the national political press ignore climate change even while candidates and voters bore in on it as one of their priority issues.

The world's scientific community has determined that global warming is a human-caused crisis that threatens our children's future, our economic prosperity, basic security and the environmental stability of our planet.

As for urgency, the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated: "What we do in the next two or three years will determine our future."

So how can it be that, out of 2,679 questions asked of the candidates since January 2007 by the national press, only three questions have mentioned global warming? Instead, hosts like Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, and Wolf Blitzer have asked ridiculous questions about UFOs, baseball, and even Chuck Norris! Do voters know better — absolutely.

In New Hampshire, the New York Times found voters complaining about inadequate coverage of energy and global warming, with one voter saying, "We need leadership — someone to say, 'This is what we need to be doing, so let’s all pull together.' I'm just not seeing it."

And the candidates are raising a ruckus with the issue. Here's Mitt Romney making John McCain's commitment to a modern auto industry the basis of his campaign appeal in Michigan, going after McCain for his support of higher fuel economy standards (which polls show 80% of Michigan voters favor), but you won't find that in the coverage.

Is it just me, or is that nuts? See for yourself how the media have let us down and then urge these hosts to stop covering the horse race and get back to the human race.

January 30, 2008, Washington DC — Now that the Florida primary is over, it's still not clear whom either party will nominate. It is clear how environmental issues are going to play out in both nomination fights — but not yet in the general election. The two leading Republican contenders — John McCain and Mitt Romney — are bitterly contesting the global-warming issue. Romney is going after McCain for his leadership, saying that the McCain-Lieberman bill isn't Republican and isn't conservative. McCain ripostes, in effect, that Romney as Governor of Massachusetts was "for cap and trade before he was against it," citing Romney's early support for the Northeast Regional Governor's global-warming initiative before he later, perhaps considering his Presidential ambitions, withdrew from it. (The legislature later put Massachusetts back in.)

At first blush, this positioning is odd. Why isn't McCain proudly talking about his leadership, instead of just going after Romney's flip-flopping? And why isn't Romney making energy one of the issues he can use as a proof point for his own moderate history, instead of pretending that he is a reactionary like Senator Inhofe? After all, polls show overwhelming public support for action on global warming, and it's pretty clear that this issue, unlike taxes or abortion, is not a hot button for either wing of the Republican right.

The answer, I think, lies back in Michigan. Romney thinks he won Michigan by attacking McCain for his support of auto fuel-efficiency standards as being "bad for Detroit." He knows that, outside of Michigan, fuel-efficiency standards are wildly popular among voters of both parties, so he needs a new version of that attack piece, and has decided that McCain's support for cap and trade is the trick. McCain is fearful that Romney did in fact win Michigan on the economics of fuel efficiency, and that his strong suit against Romney is authenticity, not leadership.

It's hard to tell if they're right — but in the narrow context of Republican primary voters they might be. The one segment of the American people that still remains skeptical about global warming is the strongly partisan Republicans. And that's because, on a complex issue like global warming, strong partisan voters take their cue from their political leaders, and the reactionary Republican establishment has spent the past decade blasting global warming as a liberal myth.

Michigan is revealing. More than 80 percent of the voters in that state — including more than 80 percent of auto workers — understand that better fuel-economy standards are actually good for the economics of the American automobile industry. And just yesterday Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm spent about a third of her State of the State address last night on alternative energy — with some excellent sound bites.... "Any time you pick up a newspaper from here on out and see the terms "climate change" or "global warming," just think: "jobs for Michigan." But the results of the Michigan Republican primary suggest that Republican primary voters were heavily drawn from the 20 percent that disagrees.

In Florida, however, the biter was bit. Governor Crist has made global warming his signature issue. He was not expected to endorse in the primary, but in the last week he came out for McCain, and his endorsement was almost certainly responsible for McCain's victory last night. California is a big prize on February 5, along with New York, which no longer belongs to Rudolph Giuliani — and the major Republican leaders in both states have also taken strong stands in favor of action on global warming. In New Jersey, another February 5 state, Republican leaders have also long taken the responsible view that climate change required action.

So McCain has a choice — try to break away from Romney by placing global warming in the center of his claim to being a "leader, not a manager." Or continue his wooing of the remaining segment of the American public that is still skeptical on global warming — the Inhofe wing of the Republican Party — by making global warming part of his attack on Romney as inauthentic. Conventional wisdom suggests that, since independents can't vote in the Republican primaries in most of the February 5 states, McCain should tack right and use global warming to attack Romney, not to define himself.

On the Democratic side, with John Edwards, who first took the issue seriously, out the two remaining candidates have the opportunity to grab global warming as a defining leadership issue. Let's note first that the Democratic electorate demonstrated in South Carolina a tremendous intolerance for negative primary campaigning from Democratic candidates. Candidly, the negativity that became so controversial from the Clinton campaign was tepid and feel-good compared to the kind of slash-and-burn that is happening between the Republicans. But Democratic voters clearly thought it was over the top.

So if you have to go positive, as Obama and Clinton do, how do you create momentum, to avoid a brokered convention? With the economy tanking, the linkage between global warming, clean energy, and green jobs offers a big opportunity — perhaps the largest unoccupied square on the chessboard. Edwards's departure frees up a block of job-oriented blue-collar voters. Both Clinton and Obama have made some use of the issue, but neither to date has focused on it for long enough or in a sustained enough way to take ownership and capitalize on it. They do a speech or two and run an ad, but since the media is choosing not to serve as an echo chamber, and since all the candidates seek that repeat validation, they tend to revert back to the issues that the political press wants to cover — and global warming clearly is not on that short list.

At the moment, Senator Clinton has positioned herself best to own the issue. She's running green jobs and energy ads in California. Obama has nothing equivalent yet, although it is a part of his stump speech. But even her investment is not yet at a scale that will make the issue a defining one — and both campaigns are unquestionably being influenced by the lethargy of the political press in covering what they do say about the issue. (Al Gore's and John Kerry's consultants also said during their campaigns that one reason they never talked about the environment was that when they did, the press wouldn't cover it.)

Because if McCain is the Republican nominee, the Democrats can be certain that he will tack back on global warming and energy, and try to position himself as the real leader on the issue, thus taking away one of the huge economic issues on which the Democratic nominee could go after him. And in the remaining primary states, both Democrats need a theme with national resonance, one that appeals to Edwards's blue-collar voting base, that projects a positive vision that doesn't require huge investments in retail politics — which they can't afford.

Nature abhors a vacuum. So should politics. Energy, jobs, and climate are a powerful combination that is still waiting for some candidate to saddle up and ride to the White House.

January 22, 2008, Washington DC — If George Bush were to cast himself as a Shakespearean character, I imagine he might choose Henry V, with his pre-sobriety life tracking the Falstaff period. But Iraq makes a perverse variant on Agincourt, so I'd pick Henry V's son, Henry VI, the feckless monarch whose "faith based" governance cost England the fruits of his father's overseas military success, and whose unpopularity was driven by a breakdown in law and order, corruption, the distribution of royal land to the king's court favorites, and the troubled state of the crown's finances, as well as losses overseas.

Henry VI also provides a nice avatar for the Vice-President, in Shakespeare's eponymous Dick the Butcher. Butcher Dick's most famous line is, "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." And the Administration has been acting out Vice-President Dick's affinity for lawlessness for the past two weeks, even though Cheney himself has remained behind the curtain. First, there was the refusal to observe the legal deadline on listing polar bears as an endangered species, while proceeding to lease, irrevocably, 30 million acres of prime polar bear habitat on the Chukchi Sea to the oil industry.

The Administration claims that it can't make a decision on the polar bear listing, as required by law, because it does not know enough. "It's not just making the decision, it's making it clear and why," Dale Hall, head of the Fish and Wildlife Service said. So let's see — there is a legal deadline for listing the polar bear, but the Department of the Interior is missing it because it doesn't have enough staff time to make its logic clear. Meanwhile it has had enough staff time to make a decision to go forward with the oil and gas leasing, which has no deadline.

And while it doesn't know enough yet to decide whether the polar bear is endangered or not, it does know enough to answer the much more complicated question — will or won't the oil and gas leasing be a problem for the bears? Get it? Was this a Cheney call? We can't be sure, but we do know from extensive media analysis that Cheney has handled the politics of oil and gas leasing all along for the Administration, even taking the lead on these issues from Karl Rove. And this certainly sounds like a line from Shakespeare's Butcher Dick.

And it's hard not to imagine the Vice-President's direct involvement in the latest development in the EPA's refusal to permit California to proceed with its clean car emission standards for carbon dioxide. When Administrator Stephen Johnson was first asked by Congress to provide the documentation for his decision, he assured lawmakers that the documents would be forthcoming.

Then, when Senator Barbara Boxer invited me to testify before the Senate Environment Committee on the waiver along with the EPA, neither the EPA nor any of its promised documents were forthcoming — she had an empty chair and an empty document box. Now the EPA has provided paper, but clearly one reason Johnson was too busy to attend the hearing was that he was feverishly using a black marker pen to ensure that there was nothing useful and readable in the documents — almost everything has been "redacted" in lawyer's terms — to laypeople like you and me "blacked out."

The EPA claimed that in withholding the information it was protecting its employees. "EPA is concerned about the chilling effect that would occur if agency employees believed their frank and honest opinions and analysis expressed as part of assessing California's waiver request were to be disclosed in a broad setting," the EPA's associate administrator, Christopher P. Bliley, wrote. This consideration would be more plausible if many of the documents redacted had not already been leaked to Boxer by the very same agency staff that had drafted them, and that were outraged that their frank and honest opinions were cavalierly ignored by the Administrator.

But in withholding these documents, the Administration was doing something beyond obstructing the ability of Congress to find out what really happened on the waiver. It was also making a breathtaking, and lawless, Cheneyesque expansion of the doctrine of Executive Privilege.

Here's why. Executive Privilege is defined by the Columbia Encyclopedia as "the exemption of the president from disclosing information to congressional inquiries or the judiciary. Claims of executive privilege are usually invoked to protect confidential military or diplomatic operations or to protect the private discussions and debates of the president with close aides."

But here, the privilege is being asserted for a PowerPoint presentation, one prepared as part of a formal regulatory process by EPA staff, and given not to the President or any other members of the White House, but to the Administrator of the EPA.

Worse, the EPA does not even claim that the advice offered is privileged — it is willing to let Boxer and her staff know what the Agency staff told Johnson: "EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar said Boxer and her aides were welcome to view and take notes on all the documents." What is "privileged" is the actual documents themselves, and the EPA admits they are claiming this privilege to avoid public disclosure — it is the American people who cannot know why the Agency made its decision, even though the only basis recognized by the Supreme Court for Executive Privilege is the separation of powers between the Congress and the President.

I cannot imagine that the EPA will win this battle. But it may succeed in running out the clock, and slowing judicial scrutiny of its decision. In Henry VI, Butcher Dick was leading a rebellion against the English constitution. Dick Cheney has been orchestrating a similar subversion of the U.S. Constitution. Shakespeare's Dick the Butcher comes to a bad end — and so does his Henry VI. Cheney and Bush will just get to retire. They're lucky they're not really characters in Shakespeare.

January 21, 2008, Santa Fe NM — A coalition of twelve environmental organizations in New Mexico has initiated a new strategy to help get American kids back outdoors. The Environmental Alliance of New Mexico is renewing its call for a one-percent sales tax on televisions and video games to fund outdoor education programs. The tax idea, initiated by the Sierra Club, would raise an estimated $4 million a year, to fund programs aimed at giving school kids an outdoors education. "We believe it is such a nominal tax that consumers won't feel it too much, especially if they are educated about where that money goes," said Michael Casaus, the New Mexico youth representative of the Sierra Club.

New Mexico's State Parks Division estimates that although 80 percent of New Mexico's students live within a half-hour of a state park, less than 10 percent have ever visited one. The state's under funded Outdoor Classroom program helps students visit state parks and assists teachers with using the hands-on parks experience for science, math, and other academic skills.

Casaus told the New Mexican that the "Leave No Child Inside" movement has grown tremendously during the past year in the state. More than 40 organizations have asked for more outdoor education, including Santa Fe and Bernalillo counties, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, the Hispano Round Table, the New Mexico Science Teachers Association, and health organizations.

Studies in the past five years have linked the increasing amount of time children spend watching television or playing video games to lower academic scores, obesity, and increased attention-deficit disorder. A study funded by the Sierra Club and carried out by the state of California found that one week of outdoor education had the same beneficial impact as six weeks of regular classroom time. According to state health and education reports, New Mexico students continue to lag behind their peers in most academic areas, and an increasing number are struggling with obesity.

February 6, 2008 — What’s behind a brand name? Less and less every day. When corporate America tied its future to globalism, it made a deal with the devil. The record profits reaped by outsourcing U.S. manufacturing abroad came at a high price: the risk to the good names of the country's biggest companies.

Last year nearly 4 million toys and pieces of costume jewelry were recalled after they were found to be contaminated with lead. Some were gumball-machine trinkets, but others bore top-of-the-line names. In addition to the nationwide recall, California filed suit against Mattel, Fisher-Price, Toys "R" Us, Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, and many other manufacturers, importers, and retailers under Proposition 65. That citizen initiative (which I co-authored 18 years ago) requires companies to warn customers about toxic products.

The defendants will doubtless argue that they had no way of knowing their products were toxic. Many are strongly motivated to keep lead paint out of their goods, having spent years cultivating reputations for safety and quality for their valuable brand names. It used to be that when I saw a Mattel toy, I presumed that Mattel made the toy in a factory the company built and manages, with workers it hired and supervises, and that it would not be so crass or dumb as to save a fraction of a penny on a $30 toy by using lead paint.

But Mattel and other businesses know something they are not willing to tell us: In today's globalized economy, top companies have lost control of the quality of the goods that display their logos. They are powerless to prevent a recurrence of the toxic-toy tragedy — and they are terrified that their brands could be dragged through the mud when the next epidemic of dangerous products strikes.

The problem is not China. The problem is a business model in which companies outsource manufacturing under short-term, low-cost contracts to the firm that will follow their design standards most cheaply. All that is really Fisher-Price about Dora the Explorer is the design — the product itself is made in a factory over which the company has almost no control. It doesn't manage the working conditions, environmental standards, or safety practices. As a result, it no longer controls the product itself.

I first encountered this problem in 2004 when trying to persuade the Gap to get its Mexican bluejeans factories to stop sending highly toxic effluent from their stone-washing facilities directly into streams, which they did to avoid the cost of sewage treatment. The company agreed that sewage treatment would add almost nothing to the cost of its jeans. But, it explained, to maintain flexibility and get the best prices from its contractors, the Gap has no long-term commitments with these factories and typically buys only a fraction of what any one manufacturer produces. Company officials explained to me that since they have no obligations to the manufacturers, they have correspondingly almost no control.

That’s exactly the source of the toxic-toy catastrophe. Fisher-Price didn't want lead used in its products. But it did want to drive the best bargain it could with toy manufacturers in China and to be able to shift to new suppliers if it found a lower price. Faced with this pressure and already located in the cheapest labor market in the world, subcontracting manufacturers realized the only way to cut costs was to cut corners, and lead is a cost-effective corner to cut.

So brands no longer mean what they used to: Globalism has turned brand-name manufacturing into a fraud. Many of the knockoff handbags and other luxury goods you can buy on the street in Shanghai — or even New York City — are actually made in the same factories as the real thing. We’re not really paying for quality goods anymore — we're paying for high-priced marketing and design combined with low-wage, exploited workers producing inferior products using shoddy safety and environmental standards. Often we have no choice — we can’t find products made under decent conditions by the companies that market them. Yet as long as we allow this business model to continue, we are complicit in a system whose ineluctable outcome is the poisoning of our children.

For all conservation campaigns and issues, the Executive Committee will designate a chapter entity as primary entity for the campaign or issue. This may be a regional group, a task force, a committee, a section or other entity as the Executive Committee deem appropriate.

Role of primary entity: The primary entity will have the responsibility to identify all of the other Chapter stakeholders and to ensure that all stakeholders are informed of significant issues and that all stakeholders have a reasonable opportunity to provide input on all significant issues. Only the primary entity may present resolutions, request grants, etc. for conducting the campaign or implementing any resolutions.

Griffith Park Expansion
Submitted by Central Group; approved Nov. 2007, Dec. 2007, Jan. 2008, as submitted and amended.

The original lease for the Autry in Griffith Park required annual reports to the City of Los Angeles. We have been unable to find documentation of compliance with this lease requirement. Therefore we respectfully request that all required audited annual reports be compiled and forwarded to the Sierra Club office located at 3435 Wilshire Blvd Ste 320, Los Angeles CA 90010-1904.

Newcomer/Member Information Events
Discover the Sierra Club… In your neighborhood!

Monday, March 17, 2008, 7:45 pm
Community Room, Burton Chace Park, 13650 Mindanao Way, Marina del Rey, 90292
Marina Fwy (90) to Mindanao Way, left on Mindanao past Lincoln and past Admiralty Way to its end.
Contact info: Joe Young, 310-822-9676, joengeri@ca.rr.com (www.angeles.sierraclub.org/airportmarina)

Monday, May 5, 2008 6:30-9 pm
Costa Mesa Neighborhood Community.Center, 1845 Park Avenue, Costa Mesa,
Contact info: Donna Specht, 714-963-6345, donnaspecht@juno.com (www.angeles.sierraclub.org/ocss)

Thursday, June 26, 2008, 6:30 pm
Los Angeles Zoo, (Grand Room) Griffith Park.
Park in zoo main parking lot. Enter at Security office, main entrance. Tell guard Sierra Club, follow signs.
Contact Info: Jeanne Karpenko, 818-244-0733, jkarpenko@earthlink.net (www.angeles.sierraclub.org/singles)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 7 pm
Peninsula Center Community Room, Palos Verdes Peninsula Library
701 Silver Spur Road, Rolling Hills Estates
Contact Info: Keith Martin, 310-530-1268, keithwmartin@sbcglobal.net, (www.angeles.sierraclub.org/pvsb)

Monday, August 11, 2008, 6:30-9 pm
Costa Mesa Neighborhood Community.Center, 1845 Park Avenue, Costa Mesa,
Contact info: Donna Specht, 714-963-6345, donnaspecht@juno.com, (www.angeles.sierraclub.org/ocss)

Saturday, September 13, 2008 1-4 pm
Eaton Canyon Nature Center, 1750 North Altadena Dr, Pasadena
Contact Info: Don Bremner, 626-794-2603, donbremner@earthlink.net, (www.angeles.sierraclub.org/pasadena)

Useful Information

Visit the Angeles Chapter's web site at http://www.angeles.sierraclub.org/

Sierra Club Legislative Hotline: (202) 675-2394
Sierra Club National: www.sierraclub.org (415) 977-5500
Sacramento Legislative Office: www.sierraclub.com (916) 557-1100; fax (916) 557-9669
Environmental News in Sacramento - Rough and Tumble www.rtumble.com
Desert Report Web Page www.desertreport.org

Sierra Club World Wide Web: http://www.sierraclub.org
Angeles Chapter site: http://angeles.sierraclub.org
Sierra Club California: http://www.sierraclub.org/ca/
Sierra Club Vote Watch Website: http://www.sierraclub.org/votewatch/
National Clubhouse activist resource site: http://clubhouse.sierraclub.org/

ACTION DIRECTORY
White House Comment Line: (202) 456-1111
White House Fax Line: (202) 456-2461
President George W Bush: president@whitehouse.gov
Vice President Dick Cheney: vice-president@whitehouse.gov
White House: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC 20500
US Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

To contact your senators: Senate Office Bldg, Washington DC 20510 http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index.cfm
Your representative: House Office Bldg, Washington DC 20515 - http://www.house.gov/writerep

California Capitol Switchboard: (916) 322-9900
Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger: governor@governor.ca.gov (916) 445-2841, fax (916) 445-4633;
State Capitol Bldg, Sacramento CA 95814
Need help contacting your US representatives?
Need help in finding out about legislation?
US House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/
US Senate: http://www.senate.gov/

California State Assembly: http://www.assembly.ca.gov/
California State Senate: http://www.sen.ca.gov/
California State: http://www.ca.gov/state/portal/myca_homepage.jsp
California Legislative Information: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/
California Secretary of State voter information: http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections.htm

The RedBook (California/Nevada Directory) is available online. It includes the GreenBook (Handbook of Sierra Club California Bylaws and Standing Rules) Email Lori Ives (lori.ives@angeles.sierraclub.org) for the online address and password. Send your membership number, your position in the Club, and your reason for needing the information. A paper edition ($25) is available on special order.

E-MAIL LISTS: There are four important discussion lists for Angeles environmental activists:

Angeles Chapter Conservation Newsletter Listserve Angeles Cons-News angeles-conservation@lists.sierraclub.org

Angeles-Alerts Listserve angeles-alerts@lists.sierraclub.org
California/Nevada Activists calif-activists@lists.sierraclub.org (moderated list for announcements)
California/Nevada Activist-Forum calif-activists-forum@lists.sierraclub.org (unmoderated discussion list)

Subscribe to California Activists: calif-activists-request@lists.sierraclub.org
Subscribe to California Activists Forum: calif-activists-request@lists.sierraclub.org
    For either list, send your name, email address, Sierra Club membership number, your position in the Club. Subscription is processed by one of the list owners, usually the same day.
    Subscribe to the listserve: send an email to listserv@lists.sierraclub.org with the message "subscribe angeles-conservation" or "subscribe calif-activists" or "subscribe angeles-alerts" Note: it's "listserv," not "listserve".
    To leave a list: send an e-mail to listserv@lists.sierraclub.org. In the text of your message (not the subject line), write: "signoff calif-activists" or "signoff angeles-conservation" or "signoff angeles-alerts"

Angeles Chapter Conservation

Management Committee
Chair/Policy/Judy Anderson
Vice Chair/Outreach: Marcia Hanscom
Newsletter Editor: Robin Ives
At Large: Carmelo Alvarez, Jay Matchett,
Lynne Plambeck, Virgil Shields, Rosemarie White
Not Voting: Cons Coord: Jennifer Robinson
Publisher/Webmaster/Circ: Lori Ives (909) 621-7148

Grants Committee
Bonnie Sharpe/Ch
Judy Anderson
Marcia Hanscom
Robin Ives
Jay Matchett
Virgil Shields
Rudy Vietmeier

The Chapter Conservation Committees
Motions should be submitted in advance, together with objective background material and supporting and opposing arguments, both to the Chapter Committee Chair and the Orange County Committee Chair and Newsletter Editor (Robin Ives), for distribution with the agenda. Other motions will be postponed for action at a later meeting unless the motion is submitted in writing and unless the Committee votes (by a two-thirds majority) an exception to the ordinary procedure. Motions needing further action by the Angeles Chapter ExComm or some higher level of the Sierra Club should start out: "The Angeles Chapter Conservation Committee recommends that the Sierra Club..."

Angeles Chapter Conservation Committee
3435 Wilshire Blvd Ste 320, Los Angeles CA 90010-1904

DRAFT AGENDA — February 20, 2008
Conference call access: (866) 501-6174, Conference Code: 1000400#
Chair: Judy Anderson <judyanderson@earthlink.net>

7:15 pm Introductions — Announcements — Approval of the Agenda
7:40 Rehearing of the Resolution Concerning the Los Angeles County Local Coastal Plan (LCP)

In December the Conservation Committee(CC) voted to oppose this plan. The Executive Committee took no action on it on January 6. In its January 27 meeting, after some discussion, the ExComm referred it back to the Conservation Committee so that County Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s representative could be heard on the issue. A representative of the Coastal Commission will also be invited. Following presentation and discussion, there will be an opportunity for the CC to reconsider its position. No draft language is available at this time.

Santa Monica Mountains LCP Resolution

Passed by Conservation Committee 12/17/07 - Vote: 10-1-0

The Conservation Committee of the Angeles Chapter Sierra Club recommends to the Executive Committee that the Sierra Club oppose the current County version of the Santa Monica Mountains unincorporated LCP (Local Coastal Program) and support a strong LCP comparable to or stronger than the Malibu LCP.

8:15 Break

8:25 Conservation Priorities

Presentation of the Issue cluster language as amended by the CMC (see below)
Presentation of the Standards agreed upon by the CMC for promoting a campaign to priority standards and the availability of staff time to support the priority campaign(s). (see below)

9:00 Reports (if any)

9:15 Adjourn

Next meeting March 20 - Dorothy Green, author of a new book on water management and founder of Heal the Bay, will speak on the topic.

Priority Issues Descriptions

Sprawl, Global Warming, Transportation [Energy Global Warming]
Progress on Global Warming clearly includes moving to non-hydrocarbon based fuels, but also local components which reduce use and protect habitat for species by concentrating urban development and stopping sprawl are another component. Transportation is one of the major users of hydrocarbons for fuel; seeking more efficient systems which reduce reliance on hydrocarbons is another element.
Species and habitat protection [America’s Wild Legacy]
Protecting lands from sprawl, preservation and restoration of forest land, wetlands and other important wildlands and urban open spaces, and encouraging use of native species will result in protected species and habitat. Passive recreation lands, and environmental education are components of the programWater Quality and Supply, and Air Quality [Safe and Healthy Communities]
Two committees are slated for development under the priority plan. Their mission statements and planned projects will be monitored for progress and direction. Pressures on habitats in other parts of California and the West, as a result of growing human population, weather patterns, drought and reduction in imported supplies are already being felt. To assure wise choices the chapter needs to be involved. The major and seemingly intractable site of truly degraded air, the Los Angles/ Long Beach Harbors, must be addressed.

Priority Campaign Standards

If a Committee or Task Force does not currently exist, it is not eligible to be promoted to the position of “Priority Campaign.”
The Committee or Task Force must fall under one of the issue priority clusters.
All Priority Campaign efforts must have an approved campaign plan in order to receive staff time.To be eligible to receive staff time for the campaign, it must
a. Be an effective use of staff time
b. Be a time sensitive effort
c. Have a specific substantial product for the campaign effort
d. Have at least 6 volunteers; staff may partner with only a few or all
Note: staff does not work “for” campaigns or volunteers, but “with” them. The volunteers must be knowledgeable on the goals and current status of the campaign and have been involved with the effort for more than 3 months.
e. There must be multiple tactics in the campaign and cannot devolve into use of a single technique.

Orange County Conservation Committee
Inn at the Park, 10 Marquette, Irvine. Take the 405 to Culver, go west towards the beach. Follow Culver past Michelson and University; turn right on Harvard. Take Harvard to Marquette; turn right. It's on the corner of Harvard and Marquette on the right hand side. http://angeles.sierraclub.org/ocosc/

DRAFT AGENDA — Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Chair: Patti Barnes <mezzohiker@msn.com>

7:00 pm Introductions and Announcements
7:15 Approval of Minutes-OCCC Meeting of January 15, 2008
7:20 Angeles Chapter Staff Report (?????)
7:25 Update on the latest work of The Friends of Coyote Hills/Coyote Hills Task Force (March 2006 DEIR) - Denny Bean

7:50 Sierra Club Cool Cities Campaign: "SanClementeGreen" and the launch of "Cool Cities" within the City of Fullerton -
Paul Carlton and Bob Siebert
8:15 Emergency Resolutions (if any) - Discussion, Voting, etc.
8:30 Adjourn (Next meeting: March 18)

Conservation Committees Calendar
If you have an upcoming meeting or event to be listed in this calendar:
In Los Angeles County, contact Lori Ives (ives@ivesico.net)
In Orange County, contact Patti Barnes (mezzohiker@msn.com)

FEBRUARY 2008

Fri Feb 15, End of Business Day, Conservation Grants Applications Due! (see article)

Tue Feb 19, 6 pm, before OCCC at The Inn at the Park - Open Spaces, Wild Places (OSWP) Robin Everett (949) 338-5356

Tue Feb 19, 7;30 pm, Grants Committee Meets, Chapter Office

Tue Feb 19, 3rd Tue, 7:00 pm, Inn at the Park, 10 Marquette, Irvine - OC Cons Comm Patti Barnes (714) 827-9744

Wed Feb 20, 3rd Wed monthly, 7:15 pm Chp Office - Chp Cons Comm Judy Anderson (818) 248-0402

Wed Feb 20, 3rd Wed, 7:30 pm - Banning Ranch Park and Preserve Task Force, Terry Welsh (949) 548-5635

Wed Feb 20, 3rd Wed, 6 pm, Carrow's, 2501 Via Campo - Montebello Hills TF, Linda Strong (323) 810-6278

Thu Feb 21, 3rd Thu, 7 pm, Chapter Office - Griffith Park Planning TF, Delphine Trowbridge delphinetr@sbcglobal.net

Sun Feb 24, 1 pm, Chapter Office - Chapter ExComm. Contact Mike Sappingfield mikesapp@cox.net

Mon Feb 25, 4th Mon, 6:30 pm - PV-SB Cons Comm, potluck, then mtg. Barry Holchin, Chair (310) 378-3780

Mon Feb 25, 4th Mon, 7 pm, 170 Copa de Oro Rd, Brea - Puente-Chino Hills TF, Eric Johnson (714) 524-7763

Wed Feb 27, 4th Wed monthly, 7:30 pm, Chapter Office - Liveable Cities Comm, Tom Politeo (310) 833-1421

Thu Feb 28, 4th Thu monthly, 7 pm, Chapter Office - Green Building Committee, Lore Pekrul (310) 306-2428

MARCH 2008

Sat Mar 1 (Weekly 8/15/22/29), 5:30 pm, 217 E Chapman Ave, Orange - Orange Hills TF, Eric Noble enoble@thecarlab.com

Mon Mar 3, Southern Sierran Deadline for April 2008

Mon Mar 3, 1st Mon monthly, 7 pm, Silverado Comm Ctr - Saddleback Cyns TF, Rich Gomez (949) 882-0071

Mon Mar 3, 1st Mon (Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec) Crystal Cove TF - Contact Chair: Murray Rosenthal (310) 391-7562

Thu Mar 6, 1st Thu monthly, 7 pm Chapter Office - Transportation Comm, Darrell Clarke (310) 453-1218

Sun Mar 9, 2nd Sun, 2:45 pm, San Pedro Public Library, 9th & Gaffey - Harbor Vision TF, Tom Politeo (310) 833-1421

Mon Mar 10, 2nd Mon, 7:30 pm - Santa Monica Mountains TF, Mary Ann Webster (310) 559-3126

Mon Mar 10, 2nd Mon, 7:30 pm, Chapter Office - LA Political Committee, Susana Reyes (818) 242-8589

Thu Mar 13, 2nd Thu, 7 pm, Chapter Office - Global Warming, Energy, Air Quality, Jim Stewart jim@earthdayla.org

Thu Mar 13, 2nd Thu odd months 7 pm, 658 Venice Bl, Venice - Ballona Wetlands, Marcia Hanscom (310) 821-9045

Sat Mar 15, 3rd Sat odd months, 10 am to 1 pm - LA River Comm, Roy van de Hoek (310) 821-9045

Sat Mar 15, 3rd Sat odd months, 3-5 pm, UU Church, Mission Viejo - Santa Ana Mtns TF, Jay Matchett (714) 730-7730

Tue Mar 18, 6 pm, before OCCC at The Inn at the Park - Open Spaces, Wild Places (OSWP) Robin Everett (949) 338-5356

Tue Mar 18, 3rd Tue, 7:00 pm, Inn at the Park, 10 Marquette, Irvine - OC Cons Comm Patti Barnes (714) 827-9744

Wed Mar 19, 3rd Wed, 7:15 pm Chp Office - Chp Cons Comm Judy Anderson (818) 248-0402

Wed Mar 19, 3rd Wed, 7:30 pm - Banning Ranch Park and Preserve Task Force, Terry Welsh (949) 548-5635

Wed Mar 19, 3rd Wed odd months, 7:00 pm - Friends of Foothills Steering Comm, Bill Holmes (949) 496-5323

Wed Mar 19, 3rd Wed, 6 pm, Carrow's, 2501 Via Campo - Montebello Hills TF, Linda Strong (323) 810-6278

Thu Mar 20, 3rd Thu, 7:15 pm, various places, OC Political Comm, Carole Mintzer (714) 288-2829

Thu Mar 20, 3rd Thu, 7 pm, Chapter Office - Griffith Park Planning TF, Delphine Trowbridge delphinetr@sbcglobal.net

Mon Mar 24, 4th Mon, 6:30 pm - PV-SB Cons Comm, potluck, then mtg. Barry Holchin, Chair (310) 378-3780

Mon Mar 24, 7:30 pm, Chapter Office - Water Committee Inauguration. Judy Anderson (818) 248-0402

Mon Mar 24, 4th Mon, 7 pm, 170 Copa de Oro Rd, Brea - Puente-Chino Hills TF, Eric Johnson (714) 524-7763

Wed Mar 26, 4th Wed odd months, 7:30 pm, Eaton Cyn Ctr (potluck) - Forest Comm, Don Bremner (626) 794-2603

Thu Mar 27, 4th Thu monthly, 7 pm, Chapter Office - Green Building Committee, Lore Pekrul (310) 306-2428

Sun Mar 30, 1 pm, Chapter Office - Chapter ExComm. Contact Mike Sappingfield mikesapp@cox.net

APRIL 2008

Tue Apr 1, Southern Sierran Deadline for May 2008

Wed Apr 2, 1st Wed, 6 pm, Carrow's, 2501 Via Campo - Montebello Hills TF, Linda Strong (323) 810-6278

Thu Apr 3, 1st Thu monthly, 7 pm Chapter Office - Transportation Comm, Darrell Clarke (310) 453-1218

Sat Apr 5 (Weekly 12/19/26), 5:30 pm, 217 E Chapman Ave, Orange - Orange Hills TF, Eric Noble enoble@thecarlab.com

Mon Apr 7, 1st Mon monthly, 7 pm, Silverado Comm Ctr - Saddleback Cyns TF, Rich Gomez (949) 882-0071

Tue Apr 8 (Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct), 7:30 pm Chp Office - GIS Committee, Lore Pekrul (310) 306-2428

Thu Apr 10, 2nd Thu, 7 pm, Chapter Office - Global Warming, Energy, Air Quality, Jim Stewart jim@earthdayla.org

Sun Apr 13, 2nd Sun, 2:45 pm, San Pedro Public Library, 9th & Gaffey - Harbor Vision TF, Tom Politeo (310) 833-1421

Mon Apr 14, 2nd Mon, 7:30 pm - Santa Monica Mountains TF, Mary Ann Webster (310) 559-3126

Mon Apr 14, 2nd Mon monthly, 7:30 pm, Chapter Office - LA Political Committee, Susana Reyes (818) 242-8589

Tue Apr 15, 6 pm, before OCCC at The Inn at the Park - Open Spaces, Wild Places (OSWP) Robin Everett (949) 338-5356

Tue Apr 15, 3rd Tue, 7:00 pm, Inn at the Park, 10 Marquette, Irvine - OC Cons Comm Patti Barnes (714) 827-9744

Wed Apr 16, 3rd Wed monthly, 7:15 pm Chp Office - Chp Cons Comm Judy Anderson (818) 248-0402

Wed Apr 16, 3rd Wed, 7:30 pm - Banning Ranch Park and Preserve Task Force, Terry Welsh (949) 548-5635

Wed Apr 16, 3rd Wed, 6 pm, Carrow's, 2501 Via Campo - Montebello Hills TF, Linda Strong (323) 810-6278

Thu Apr 17, 3rd Thu, 7 pm, Chapter Office - Griffith Park Planning TF, Delphine Trowbridge delphinetr@sbcglobal.net

Thu Apr 17, 3rd Thu, 7:15 pm, various places, OC Political Comm, Carole Mintzer (714) 288-2829

Thu Apr 24, 4th Thu monthly, 7 pm, Chapter Office - Green Building Committee, Lore Pekrul (310) 306-2428

Sun Apr 27, 1 pm, Chapter Office - Chapter ExComm. Contact Mike Sappingfield mikesapp@cox.net

Mon Apr 28, 4th Mon, 6:30 pm - PV-SB Cons Comm, potluck, then mtg. Barry Holchin, Chair (310) 378-3780

Mon Apr 28, 4th Mon, 7 pm, 170 Copa de Oro Rd, Brea - Puente-Chino Hills TF, Eric Johnson (714) 524-7763

IMPORTANT DATES

Sun, May 4, Chapter Awards Banquet - Lori Ives ives@ivesico.net

Sierra Club Angeles Chapter Conservation Committee
112 North Harvard Avenue PMB 297
Claremont CA 91711-4716

RETURN SERVICE REQUESTED

Americans Spending Less Time in Nature

Coburn Guns Amendment