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.

Quote of Note

People forget that the soil is our sustenance. It is a sacred trust. It is what has worked for us for centuries.
— César E Chávez (1927-1993)

Save Our Safeguards: Help Pass Prop 99 and Defeat Prop 98
by Tim Frank, Sierra Club California Advocate

Sierra Club California’s top priority for this June election is to defeat Prop 98 and to help pass Prop 99. The first of these, Prop 98, is a constitutional amendment generated by the same special-interest-funded “property rights” groups that have been working for years to wipe out environmental protections under the guise of “eminent domain reform.” (These groups sponsored the environmentally destructive Prop 90 in 2006, which Californians defeated.)

Apartment owners have provided much of the funding for Prop 98, so it is no surprise that the measure would ban many renters’ protections, such as a requirement for fair return of rental deposits. Public support for such renters’ protections is deep and cuts across all ideological and class boundaries, so the campaign to defeat Prop 98 will focus lots of attention on these.

But there is much more at stake.

Prop 98 would imbed in the constitution a provision which would allow a property owner to sue to obtain compensation for, and/or to invalidate, regulation that imposes costs on the owner—regardless of whether the regulated activity is a nuisance, a threat to public health or safety, or harmful to the environment—if the regulation would provide economic benefit to one or more persons. Since nearly all regulation provides an economic benefit to some private person, most regulation of property would be put at risk.

Ordinary zoning rules, such as restrictions on development of polluting industry or adult businesses, clearly provide economic benefits to area residents, and so would be put in jeopardy. Safeguards that protect coastal areas, forest land, farm land or cultural and historic sites would be put at risk too, and so would curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

Voting no on Prop 98 may be your most important contribution to the environment this June, but we would also ask you to vote for Prop 99—a real eminent domain reform measure that would protect home owners without the hidden agendas and adverse consequences of Prop 98. Prop 99 would limit the government’s ability to use eminent domain to take a home for transfer to a private developer. It would constitutionally protect homeowners without jeopardizing California’s environmental laws or renter protections, and would take away the excuse of extreme property rights advocates to run deceptive measures like Prop 98.

The Sierra Club is opposing Prop 98 and supporting Prop 99, and we need your help to spread the word. Go to http://www.no98yes99.com/ to find out more about these competing propositions and to learn how you can get involved.

The Los Angeles Apollo Alliance and the AD47 Environmental Commission present Green Economy Forum
with Assembly Speaker-Elect Karen Bass & DWP General Manager, H. David Nahai
& Los Angeles City Councilmember Herb Wesson

Saturday, April 12, 10:00 am-12:00 pm

DORSEY HIGH SCHOOL 3537 Farmdale Avenue, Los Angeles 90016 (East of La Brea, between Exposition and Rodeo)

A new Green Economy is emerging in California that will create thousands of jobs through new technologies to clean our communities and the environment. Join the State Lawmakers and Grassroots, Labor and Environmental Leaders to explore:

What is the Green Economy?

*How do we ensure South LA and other inner-city communities will benefit from these jobs and new technologies?

*What are best practices in legislation and programs to shape an equitable new economy?

For more information, or to RSVP, please call SCOPE at (323) 789-7920

Light Brown Apple Moth Spraying Policy
by Cal French, Chair, CNRCC

The following policy was adopted at the March meeting of the California Nevada Regional Conservation Committee. It is now the policy for all Sierra Club chapters in California.

POLICY ON AERIAL SPRAYING DESIGNED TO ERADICATE THE LIGHT BROWN APPLE MOTH (LBAM)

 

The California Nevada Regional Conservation Committee of the Sierra Club does not oppose the policy of APHIS and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to utilize nontoxic integrated pest management methods including aerial application of microencapsulate pheromones in an effort to eradicate LBAM from the United States. It is an essential part of the program in highly infested areas of significant size.

The California Nevada Regional Conservation Committee of the Sierra Club supports a moratorium on the spraying until the precautionary approach of an alternatives assessment to determine control strategies that do not compromise human and environmental health and that is sufficiently effective to manage the pest to the acceptable thresholds is completed. This assessment must be based upon a realistic assessment of the feasibility of eradication.

The California Nevada Regional Conservation Committee of the Sierra Club supports control strategies that adhere to Sierra Club policies on pest management, particularly the policy that says "There should be no public exposure through use of pesticides, pesticide residues, or byproducts of pesticides that cause cancer, birth defects, mutations, reproductive effects, or alter the immune system or behavior of non-target organisms."

The California Nevada Regional Conservation Committee of the Sierra Club supports disclosure of all ingredients to be sprayed and the informed consent of the residents affected by the spraying.

Arizona Trailblazing Bill

The Arizona House recently passed a bipartisan and widely-supported bill addressing ATV use on public lands. The bill would require ATV registration, and would use the fees from that registration to fund education, maintenance, and reclamation programs. The bill is now in the senate.

Consumer Products Threaten Aquatic Life

In a study of organic wastewater contaminants in streams across the United States the United States Geological Survey (USGS) found low concentrations of a broad range of chemicals downstream of cities and agricultural areas. The chemicals include human and veterinary drugs, natural and synthetic hormones, detergent metabolites, plasticizers, insecticides, and fire retardants. One or more of these chemicals were found in 80 percent of the streams sampled. (1) (See "For more information at end of article.)

Treating waste at a sewage treatment plant does not completely eliminate threats to the health of our waters. Because current wastewater treatment systems were designed before these contaminants were known to be harmful at such low concentrations, treatment does not effectively remove them and they persist in effluent. Other pollution sources include failing septic systems and agricultural runoff, which may contain antibiotics and other medications fed to livestock. These contaminants are difficult to identify before the waste enters streams, rivers, and lakes. Reuse of treated sewage effluent on landscaping, golf courses, and agricultural fields can contribute to the problem. Such reuse of septage, the material pumped from septic tanks, is also a concern.

Impacts on Wildlife. Biologists, over the last 10 to 15 years have reported a variety of abnormalities in wildlife that include fish with both male and female characteristics, a characteristic known as intersex, and low male to female sex ratios. USGS studies in Nevada found significant decreases in sperm counts in carp, largemouth bass and the endangered razorback sucker. A combined lab and field study of leopard frogs implicated the herbicide atrazine in widespread feminization of males during tadpole development and metamorphosis, confirming earlier findings from the African clawed toad where extremely low levels of atrazine caused significant gonadal abnormalities in male frogs. Atrazine at very low levels damages the immune system of wood frogs, impairing their ability to resist infection by parasites. Several common antidepressants have been found to cause development problems in fish and metamorphosis delays in frogs. Population declines in Florida alligators are linked to pesticides in agricultural runoff. (2)

According to researchers, these adverse effects may be linked to tiny amounts of chemical compounds coming from our pharmaceuticals and personal care products entering our water through effluents from sewage treatment plants, runoff, and leaks in sewage systems. Nonylphenol, used in some detergents and as an "inert ingredient" in pesticides, is associated with the production of egg protein in males, as well as disrupting the hormonal control of Atlantic salmon's ability to adjust to salt water during migration to the sea. Wildlife other than fish have also been affected by low levels of these water pollutants. A single exposure to nonylphenol during larval development of oysters causes disruption of sexual development, lowers survival of offspring in the next generation, and alters the sex ratio. (3)

Endocrine Disrupting Compounds (Edcs):

All animals, including humans, rely on hormones secreted by endocrine glands to guide normal development from embryo to adulthood. Endocrine disruptors can be either synthetic or naturally occurring chemicals that block or interfere with these hormonal processes. Early life stages of aquatic species are especially vulnerable to endocrine disruption. Many of the chemicals recently found in our waters have been linked to developmental, reproductive, neural, immunological and other major problems.

This is particularly true for bisphenol A (BPA) which is also linked to chromosome damage. Some changes showed up in adulthood after animals were exposed to BPA in the womb. There is concern about the additive effects of mixtures of these chemicals; sometimes combinations of chemicals create more intense reactions. Scientific research continues to identify more of these endocrine disruptors and their adverse effects. (4)

Endocrine disrupting compounds are just some of the contaminants shown to cause harm to fish, shellfish, crustaceans, and other aquatic wildlife by interrupting normal growth, reproduction, and development as well as long term genetic changes. The insect repellant DEET is acutely toxic to some organisms. Pesticides are acutely toxic to many early stages, such as treefrog tadpoles. Antibiotics and antibacterials like triclosan in sewage effluent can increase the populations of antibiotic resistant bacteria in the surface waters. We do not know a lot about how low-levels of medications other than hormones affect aquatic life, but concerns about this have prompted the European government to propose ecotoxicity screening before new drugs are approved. Scientific research is ongoing to identify additional types of emerging contaminants and to adequately understand and quantify their long and short-term effects on human health and wildlife. For precautionary reasons, the release of these compounds into the environment should be limited or eliminated.

What Products Are Causing These Problems?

All products that are taken internally, applied, or put "down the drain" have the potential to enter sewage systems or become runoff into streams, lakes, and the ocean. Everyday products such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, laundry detergents, and pesticides contain EDCs and other contaminants. This brochure provides guidance on how to keep them from entering waterways. Maintaining clean water, both fresh and saline, is critical to protecting not only wildlife but also human health as it is the source of our fresh drinking water. Design and construction of sewage systems to treat even some EDCs will be complicated, costly and take years, so pollution prevention is the real and immediate answer.

Pharmaceuticals: Some of the following medications, prescription and non-prescription, contain endocrine disruptors: antidepressants, psychiatric drugs, replacement hormones and steroids. With the exception of over-the-counter ones, you have little or no control in choosing which medications are prescribed for you although you can ask for products that will have a minimal adverse impacts on the environment, so this list is given only as small example of medications known or suspected to be endocrine disruptors.

Personal Care Products: Personal care products including shampoos, toothpastes, soaps, lotions, cosmetics, and sunscreens may contain endocrine disrupting compounds in both their active and inert ingredients. Known endocrine disruptors are phthalates used in many cosmetics, synthetic musks as fragrances, parabens (chemical preservatives), nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPE), antibacterial disinfectants, insect repellants, and some chemical compounds that block or screen out ultraviolet in sunscreens (5).

Household Products: Products found in our homes may contain endocrine disruptors and other contaminants: NPE in laundry detergents and cleaners; synthetic musk fragrances; antibacterial disinfectants in hand cleaners and dishwashing tergents; phthalates in plastic packaging and items like shower curtains and baby toys; fire retardant fabrics; inert and active compounds in pesticides; and bisphenol A (BPA), found in polycarbonate products: sports bottles, baby bottles, and 3- and 5-gallon refillable water containers. BPA was found by CDC in urine samples in more than 95 percent of people studied, so it is not surprising that it is found in sewage effluent and streams.

What You Can Do to Minimize Your Impact

1. Be an informed consumer.
2. Avoid products containing the contaminants found in our waters by carefully reading the labels on the products.
3. Choose fragrance-free products.
4. Purchase only the quantity you can use in a reasonable amount of time to minimize your need to dispose of unused or out-dated products.
5. Dispose of expired/unused pharmaceuticals safely. Never put unused pharmaceuticals, personal care products and over-the-counter medicines in sinks or toilets.
6. Contact your local government to find "manufacturer take back" programs or law enforcement facilities that will accept unwanted medications and "controlled substances". If they do not exist, work with your community to establish such
   programs. The Product Stewardship Insitute is working with many stakeholders to establish convenient, consistent, legal, and safe ways to dispose of unwanted pharmaceuticals. (6)
7. Contact your local government to find the nearest household hazardous waste disposal program, and then use it.

For More Information

1. USGS basic information on recent studies:
   http://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/FS-027-02/index.html
2. Information about impacts on wildlife:
   http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/newscience/wildlife/wildlife.htm
3. Sierra Club SHC website:
   http://www.sierraclub.org/healthycommunities/toxics/
4. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Endocrine Disruptors: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/oc/factsheets/pdf/endocrine.pdf
5. Toxic Free Legacy Coalition - Safe Cosmetics Campaign in Washington State:
   http://www.toxicfreelegacy.org/safecosmetics.html
6. Product Stewardship Institute:
   http://www.productstewardship.us/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=181

Wild and Wonderful West Virginia

A bill currently before the US House of Representatives could permanently protect some of West Virginia’s last great wild places. The Wild Monongahela Act will ensure that West Virginia's Monongahela National Forest remains wild and wonderful for many generations to come by designating seven new or expanded wilderness areas, totaling more than 47,000 acres within the Monongahela National Forest.

Save California State Parks

The Sierra Club vehemently opposes Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal to squeeze some meager and probably illusory savings out of the state budget by closing 48 State Parks, reducing the number of lifeguards at 14 State Beaches, and eliminating the jobs of 136 permanent park system employees, including park rangers, maintenance workers, scientists and tour guides. Net annual savings of about $9 million are projected, compared to this year’s total deficit of $13 billion!

The effects of this shortsighted action would devastate the millions of Californians who rely on our parks for recreational and educational opportunities, put many unique biological, geological, and cultural resources at risk, and do untold damage to neighboring communities.

With honest accounting, the skimpy savings from closing these parks probably wouldn't even result in a net gain to the state budget after deducting direct losses from diminished Transient Occupancy and sales tax revenues generated by park visitors. Potential costs to the people of California from deterioration of public property, increased legal liabilities, and diminished prosperity are incalculable.

Help prevent park closures:

Write the Governor with the message to Save Our State Parks!

Lawsuit to Protect Roadless Areas

March 5, 2008— Last week, Gov. Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Brown took a critically-important step in defense of ecologically important roadless areas in southern California's four national forests. The two filed a lawsuit against the US Forest Service challenging its management plans for the Angeles, Cleveland, San Bernardino, and Los Padres national forests for failing to protect over one million acres of pristine roadless forest lands. Those plans, if implemented, would open the door for harmful new roads, oil and gas development, power corridors, and other damaging projects in sensitive roadless lands.

Southern California's roadless lands are an important refuge for the eight million visitors a year who come to the forests to enjoy the outdoors and escape the pressure of the surrounding cities. These unroaded forests are the source of clean drinking water for many southern Californians and they are home to over 470 imperiled plant and animal species. Roadless forests are also less prone than roaded forests to the large, devastating wildfires that have threatened southern California.

This lawsuit is the most recent in an important series of actions taken by the Governor and Attorney General to guarantee the long term protection of California's magnificent remaining roadless forests. It is essential that our elected officials hear from us when they have taken the initiative to protect our wild places. Please take a moment now to thank them.

State Scrambles to Fund Global Warming Fight

March 4, 2008—"California's landmark legislation to fight global warming has been on the books for more than a year, but it still lacks stable, long-term funding to help meet its ambitious goal to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Gov. Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal calls for a stopgap, two-year effort that relies on borrowing money from a state beverage container recycling fund to run the program."

"We've got refineries, power plants and cement plants that are emitting greenhouse gases now," said Bill Magavern, Director of Sierra Club California. "So let's start charging those polluters now, instead of borrowing from (another fund) that would have to be paid back with interest later.

Crash of the Clydesdales

Fall Run Chinook Joins Plummeting Salmon Populations
Water Agencies Claim No Impact

The Central Valley fall run Chinook salmon, long considered the healthy "workhorse" of the state's salmon populations, dropped to drastically low numbers according to recent counts by fisheries biologists. This fall, scientists counted only 2,000 “jacks”, which are early returning salmon that are indicators of the health of the population. Usually, the jack-count averages 40,000 and has never dipped lower than 10,000.

California salmon populations have been dramatically declining since the major dam building era. Yet the Central Valley fall run has historically been as reliable as Clydesdales on Superbowl Sunday, consistently returning in high numbers. In fact, it is the only California salmon run not listed on the Federal Endangered Species List. 2007 marks the second consecutive year of drastically low returns of fall run Chinook. The Pacific Fisheries Management Council, who decides if and when salmon fishermen will cast their rods and nets this year, meets later this month to decide how to respond to the latest bad news.

The Central Valley fall run Chinook rely on the watersheds that flow into the Bay Delta Estuary. Unfortunately, the salmon situation is remarkably similar to the collapse of fish that live year round in the Delta, now entering its eighth consecutive year. Scientists have determined that increased exports from northern California and the Delta are a primary contributor to the decline of those Delta fish. It is too soon to tell what is causing the low salmon returns, however the cocktail of declining ocean health and the impacts of climate change mixed with declining conditions in the Delta and its watersheds cannot be helping the struggling populations.

Despite the critical condition of the salmon and the continuing collapse of Delta fish, five northern California water districts are proposing to export another 162,000 acre-feet of Sacramento River water through the Delta pumps. While the Environmental Impact Reports for these proposed additional water exports proclaim that these further increases in exports will not have negative impacts, the struggling salmon may have a different view. We will not know how the salmon respond to this additional stressor until we see how many Chinook are able to make their way through the Delta and into the Sacramento River this coming fall.

Conservation Groups Challenge Shrinking Habitat
for Rare Plant on Algodones Dunes

March 6, 2008, Los Angeles— In response to the Bush administration slashing protected habitat for the federally and state-protected Peirson’s milk-vetch, the Center for Biological Diversity, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), Desert Survivors, and the Sierra Club have filed notice of a lawsuit challenging the systematic reductions in critical habitat for this imperiled species.

The Peirson’s milk-vetch is found nowhere in the United States save on a small portion of southern California’s Algodones Dunes, where it ekes out life amongst the abrasive shifting sands. It has purple-pink, pea-like flowers and produces large, inflated pods, which blow off the plant, shedding seeds. The Algodones Dunes, also known as the Imperial Dunes, are a hub for off-road vehicle enthusiasts, who tear over the shifting sands at high speeds, killing the plants and animals that live in this fragile ecosystem.

“Because the Bush administration seems bent on driving this plant closer to extinction,” says Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, “our only option is to challenge the critical habitat determination in court, where science will prevail. Shame on the federal government for wasting tax dollars doing junk science.”

Reduced from an original proposal of 52,780 acres just four years ago, the meager 12,105 protected acres is a 77-percent decrease in protection on the Algodones Dunes, where hundreds of thousands of off-road vehicles create a Mad Max scenario between October and May, threatening the rare Peirson’s milk-vetch in the only place it exists in the United States. Furthermore, the protected acreage is bisected by an off-road open-riding area that is likely to result in the extermination of the plants that currently occupy that portion of the shifting sand dunes.

"The Interior Department's determination to continue to sacrifice the amount of protected habitat defies the recommendations of local biologists with the best knowledge of what the milk-vetch needs to survive millions of menacing knobby tires," said Karen Schambach of PEER. "Clearly, the Bush administration is continuing its shoddy practice of allowing political considerations to trump science.” Elden Hughes, honorary vice president of the Sierra Club, noted: "This administration fails to act on endangered species until the species is right at the abyss of extinction, and then its action consists of pushing the species over the cliff."

Located in the Sonoran Desert of southeastern California’s Imperial County, the scenic and remote Algodones Dunes are the largest dune ecosystem in the United States and spill over into Mexico on its southern end. The dunes harbor at least 160 different animal and plant species, many of which are found nowhere else in the world. The dunes are heavily damaged by as many as 240,000 off-roaders on some weekends, who destroy vegetation and wildlife habitat, pollute the air, create criminal problems that stress law enforcement, burden local emergency services, and often tragically cause human death. The free-play areas on the southern end of the dunes along the border are also a conduit for illegal drug and human smuggling. Smugglers blend in with off-road vehicle riders and make their illegal beeline to Interstate 8, much to the frustration of homeland security and border patrol.

Major Blue-Green Victory in Port of Los Angeles
by Tom Politeo

Wilmington. We had a major victory in the Port of Los Angeles on Thursday, March 20, 2008. We were finally able to accomplish some long-term objectives by working in a blue-green alliance with labor and other environmental groups: a concession model for port trucking with an employee mandate for trucking. Neither labor nor environmental groups stood a chance of accomplishing this alone.

To my recollection, we had four Sierra Club members, Dr. John Miller, Carrie Scoville, Jesse Marquez and myself testifying. Noel Park, mentioned below, is a another long-term Sierra Club member, and former San Pedro Homeowner's President who has spent countless hours testifying before the L.A. Harbor Commission. His initial remarks almost a decade ago helped set the stage.

Dr. John Miller, an emergency room physician from San Pedro and Sierra Club Life member, called on the ports to end a "later day sharecropping system." Like Harbor Commission President S. David Freeman, Miller is a Tennessee native. He likened industry's threats of ruin to those scare tactics used to prop up slavery, saying we wouldn't have the cotton we needed to clothes Americans if slavery were brought to an end. Since last year, Miller provided expert medical testimony to US Senate hearings on ship emissions, both at a recess hearing here in San Pedro, and again in Washington DC. Dr. Miller coined the phrase, "diesel death zone" to describe goods movement corridors.

Though the model differs from a plan offered by Long Beach, economic consultants used by the Port of Los Angeles suggest that the LA plan is economically superior to Long Beach's, since it better utilizes capital and labor resources and may be able to move more cargo with less effort and provides more financial incentives to shippers to better the environment. It should also help improve trucker's wages, helping relieve an admitted burden on local governments with medical and other subsidies. They expect Los Angeles to be able to weather some punitive cargo reductions which shippers may impose on Los Angeles in retaliation. (It is actually the economic modelling that led to the selection of LA's plan instead of one more like Long Beach's.)

Below are my comments to the Harbor Commission.

We have had and will have our difference with staff recommendations.

But we are here today to underscore agreement.

It didn't happen over night. And it's not just two way.

In the late 1990s, Noel Park first asked the port to use its landlord rights to bring unruly tenants in line. It's just like asking a tenant to turn down a stereo late at night.

It may surprise some that Sierra Club members first asked the port to reclassify drivers as employees as part of a concession contract system in almost the same breath, nearly ten years ago.

Six years ago, Sierra Club members and Teamsters first met in San Pedro to discuss port trucking problems. It led to a site tour of impacted neighborhoods and a visit to a local non-profit that helped underpaid driver families make ends meet. There have been some who have tried to paint the cooperation between labor and environmental groups over port trucking as an "marriage of convenience" or an "unholy alliance." Though we are short of our golden anniversary, we have already come a lot farther than a Vegas wedding.

Our alliance is based on the common recognition that, if we are to uplift downtrodden communities and build livable and sustainable cities, we need to bring workers to livable wages and we need to clean up pollution, noise and blight. It includes the recognition that we have failed to do this working separately but that we may succeed if only we join hands.

If recognizing this makes us an unholy alliance, then I am its proudest member.

As a life member of the Sierra Club, I am proud to stand side by side with the Teamsters and Change to Win and with other unions willing to join our hands.

It is ironic. Once, we were criticized for being special interests that acted only on our own issues without considering others. Now, we are demonized for reaching out to deal with broader human aspirations and confronting corporate irresponsibility in a new coalition.

Could it be that the very idea of our cooperation unnerves Wal-Mart? Could it be that big retailers rather we fought each other than unite to face the common problem of corporate greed that afflicts the common communities we serve?

In fact, we would not be here today, if it weren't for the effort of dozens of labor, environmental and faith-based groups.

And, despite our best collective efforts, we would not be here today without the unwavering support we've had from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Harbor Commission, Janice Hahn, Tonia Reyes Uranga and their respective staffs.

For this, we cannot thank you all enough.

Correction in March Conservation Newsletter

The March Conservation Newsletter reported an incorrect version of the ExComm’s Feb 24 resolution on the LCP. The Feb 24 LCP resolution stated: “The Angeles Chapter ExComm concurs with the Conservation Committee that the Chapter signs on to the group letter going to the County, through Supervisor Yaraslovsky expressing our 'concerns' about a number of items.” THERE WAS NO VOTE TO APPROVE THE ACTION ON THE LCP.

It's 10 am—Do You Know Where Your Employees Are,
Mr. Administrator?
by Carl Pope

March 6, 2008, Washington, DC—This was the scene at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday:

Griller: California Senator Dianne Feinstein

Grillee: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson

Topic: The EPA's compliance with a US Supreme Court order that it issue regulations limiting emissions of carbon dioxide to protect the climate.

Senator Feinstein: "Is anyone working on this at the present time, Mr. Johnson? How many members of your staff are working on this?"

Administrator Johnson: "I don't know the answer to that."

When Feinstein said he was stonewalling, Johnson denied it, then remarked, " I know we have staff working on a myriad of issues...."

Johnson makes it sound like his agency is very loosely run—all those career civil servants and he just can't keep track of them. But the reality is a little different. Johnson has interfered with the EPA career staff in their efforts to carry out environmental laws so often that career employees have officially severed a cooperation agreement they had with the political appointees who run the EPA. Nineteen EPA union local presidents, representing 10,000 of Johnson's employees, wrote to him that he had engaged in "abuses of our good nature and trust."

EPA staff are as upset at what Johnson has instructed them to do as they are at what he has failed to do. For example, although federal law clearly allows states to set air pollution standards that are tougher than the EPA's, and although the Bush administration's own proposal for regulating mercury was ruled illegal by the federal courts, internal agency documents reveal that for the past two years the EPA has been threatening states that, if they persisted in moving ahead with effective mercury-abatement programs, the EPA would take away their authority over air pollution. But again, Johnson claims he just can't keep track of these shenanigans.

Back to the hearing. Griller this time: Senator Patrick Leahy.

Senator Leahy: "Has anyone at EPA ever pressured any state against instituting more restrictive mercury regulation?"

Administrator Johnson: "I don't recall having any firsthand knowledge of that. I don't know if they have, no I don't."

And Johnson has found the staff time to carry out a number of other little projects that continue the "let's see how often we can ignore—not enforce—the law" theme. One proposal would allow factory feedlots to emit unlimited amounts of toxic air pollutants without even having to inform their neighbors of the releases. Another would make it official EPA policy that wetlands—widely recognized as a major natural resource for cleaning up polluted water—are, in Florida, actually a source of pollution—so developers get environmental points for destroying as many as they can. Here's the "sanitized" technical evaluation (which Johnson ignored) of that gem: "EPA Region 4 cannot verify the conclusions.... This could result in inaccurate analyses, poor project designs ....and degraded water quality." I wonder what the original analysis read like?

Johnson's political deputy in the southeast, Jimmy Palmer, who implemented the new "wetlands pollute" policy, actually has testified against his own agency in a criminal case against a developer (is that actually allowed?) and in another case told his staff that a lobbyist for a controversial development "is a friend of mine who is connected into some VERY high places."

I think it's time for someone to intervene—Administrator Johnson has gone over the top.

Push 'Em Back, Push 'Em Back, Way Back!
by Carl Pope

March 7, 2008, San Francisco—Although the reactionary ideologues appointed by the Bush administration to privatize public lands are still up to mischief and will still damage our heritage in their remaining ten months, you can sense that the resistance is growing in effectiveness.

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey avoided going to jail for his agency's refusal to comply with federal court orders on evaluating the safety of fire retardants, but he was forced to stand before Judge Donald Malloy and admit, "We’re beyond the point of making excuses and there’s no way to put a positive face on the fact that we dropped the ball.”

Rey also had to drop his proposed massive restructuring of the Forest Service, one that would have pulled almost all the biologists and other resource specialists out of the national forests and placed them into six regional offices where they could be more closely monitored for sticking to the headquarters' political line even at the expense of the science. On February 20, Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimball announced that the Agency would abandon that plan in order to "avoid additional disruption and confusion." Then the Agency found itself being sued by America's most popular Republican, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, for proposing to open up four National Forests in southern California to roads and oil drilling. California Attorney General Jerry Brown, representing the Governor, said that "the Bush administration is just operating with reckless disregard for the public trust."

Meanwhile, over at the Interior Department, the ride keeps getting rougher. When the Fish and Wildlife Service tried to back out of an agreement to decide whether or not the sage grouse required protection under the Endangered Species Act, the federal courts slapped the Agency down and said, "Comply."

And when Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne decided to "flush" the Grand Canyon with a simulated springtime flood, the rest of the Department publicly called the idea ill timed and poorly planned—Kempthorne went ahead anyway, but what he had hoped would be a feather in his cap turned into a PR nightmare.

Enough—He Must Go
by Carl Pope

March 17, 2008, Washington DC—EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has finally gone over the top. Not only has he ignored the scientific findings of his official Science Advisory Council that to protect the public health he needed to set an air-quality standard for ozone of no greater than 70 parts per million, he has also ignored the clear language of the Clean Air Act and instead followed the political advice of the White House by refusing at all to set a new standard to protect crops and forests.

The Washington Post reported that although Johnson was already recommending—on his own—a standard less protective than the science required, even his watered-down proposal was overturned on direct intervention from the White House. The Post reported that Bush's intervention left EPA lawyers scrambling to figure out how to give Johnson's decision a veneer of legality.

"Solicitor General Paul D. Clement warned administration officials late Tuesday night that the rules contradicted the EPA's past submissions to the Supreme Court, according to sources familiar with the conversation. As a consequence, administration lawyers hustled to craft new legal justifications for the weakened standard."

Now it's important to remember that this is the same Steve Johnson who is claiming that his decision not to allow California to implement its clean car standards was not influenced by the White House—but is simultaneously refusing to release documents on those conversations.

Time and time again, Steve Johnson has showed that, whatever his personal views, and regardless of his oath of office to uphold "the law," he is entirely a creature of the whim of the President, the Vice-President, and other White House officials. The EPA was deliberately created by Richard Nixon with substantial autonomy as an "independent" agency. Steve Johnson has so fundamentally violated his duty that he simply needs to resign—now.

TIME Gets It Way Wrong
by Carl Pope

March 20, 2008, San Francisco—Human hubris is a powerful force. Even TIME magazine, which is usually very responsible and enlightened on environmental and global warming issues, made a major blooper this week, featuring geoengineering as one of its "10 Ideas That Are Changing The World." Geoengineering is the idea that instead of solving global warming by kicking our addiction to carbon, and protecting and restoring the biological processes that sequester carbon naturally and safely—forests, grasslands, and oceans—we can engineer the earth's climate back to stability by such techniques as "releasing vast amounts of sulfurous debris into the atmosphere to create a haze that would keep the planet cool" or "using orbital mirrors to bounce sunlight back into space." TIME concedes that "Worsening air pollution is a risk. We'd have to keep geoengineering indefinitely to balance out continued greenhouse-gas emissions, and the motivation to decarbonize might disappear if we believed we had an insurance policy. And those are just the consequences we know about," but still suggests that we might have to resort to such a "Hail Mary pass."

It's hard even to list all the things that are wrong with this concept. As Sierra Club Director Bernie Zaleha put it, do we really think we can save ourselves by making our planet more like Venus? Putting more sulfur into the air would exacerbate the problem of oceanic acidity and would even further destabilize world rainfall patterns, which would devastate agriculture ... but an even longer listing is not really the point. The one thing the climate skeptics are right about is that our current atmospheric models can't tell us enough about the changes we already are inflicting on the climate—much less what would happen if we simply tossed more variables into the equation in the hope that they would somehow cancel things out.

It's too bad TIME fell for this, especially in an issue that opened with a really wonderful first idea, by Jeffrey Sachs, that we need to start thinking about wealth as something the whole globe shares.

One point from the geoengineering article is worth repeating, however: We need to do big things, and fast. Some modest forms of geoengineering, such as white, reflective roofs that actually help reduce demand for fossil fuels, do make sense. And big ideas to solve global warming by working with natural cycles (rather than undermining them) don't necessarily come with a daunting price tag, as TIME and others would have us believe.

Take buildings. They account for about 40 percent of our economy's CO2, mostly in the form of heat leaked and wasted into the great outdoors. There are about 100 million residences, and 5 million commercial buildings, in the US Every year we retrofit only 3 percent of these, so even if the retrofits were all low-carbon and energy-optimal, (which they aren't), it would take us 33 years to stop squandering the hundreds of billions of dollars each year on coal, oil, and natural gas that we wouldn't need if our buildings didn't leak.

Rather than watch as our economy heads for the bottom, we could jump-start it, reduce our trade deficit, and start solving global warming fast. We simply need to double or triple the rate at which we retrofit. If we tripled our pace, we could turn our entire building stock into high-performance, low-carbon winners in just 11 years. And these retrofits are very good investments, paying for themselves much faster than most investment opportunities out there and then turning an automatic profit in lowered utility bills year after year. Even better, for every homeowner in danger of foreclosure because there mortgage is going up $150 or $200 a month, there are probably five or six at risk because there utility bills are going up at least that much.

Impossibly bold? Look at Toronto. The city has already established a goal of retrofitting all of its buildings. Nationally, Jack Layton, head of Canada's New Democratic Party, has gotten his party to adopt this goal as part of its platform. So let TIME know how much you appreciate their overall wonderful coverage of global warming—but chide them gently for being fooled into thinking that more geoengineering might be the right solution to global warming—a problem created by too much geoengineering already.

The Greening of Bombay
by Carl Pope

March 25, 2008, Bombay—It's fascinating how quickly things are changing here. On the way in from the airport, we notice that Merrill-Lynch has billboards up almost everywhere trumpeting its new investment fund in natural resources and "new energy." The two images flanking the copy are of a wind turbine and of three coal miners. All the forms of energy are viewed as essential here, but it's fascinating that wind has caught up with coal in media imagery if not yet in actual capacity. And the Hindustan Times, one of the major and highly competitive English language papers here, has its own set of billboards trumpeting a new strategy to "Keep Mumbai Clean." The strategy? Use your cell phone to take a picture of anyone littering and then turn them into the authorities!

But the greening goes beyond advertising—India Today, the local version of TIME—just held a conference on 21st Century Leadership, and the keynote was delivered by Al Gore on climate change. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a US Congressional delegation heavily drawn from the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming are here for a few days. At a reception last night hosted by the US Consul, members of the delegation remarked on how differently energy and climate issues play out here. In the US our problems are old habits, vested interests, and resistance to change.

Here in India, the issue is which technology can get you electricity fastest—almost nothing else matters in a nation with 300,000 villages lacking any power at all. That's a challenge. One of India's top industrial leaders said to me this morning, "Unlike in your country, this is not a political issue. Everyone agrees we should do it right—not the way you did it. But doing it right is all about execution, and execution is not our national strength." He's right— green energy is more sustainable, probably cheaper, and more reliable in a nation that lacks its own fossil-fuel and uranium resources except for a modest quantity of relatively poor-quality coal. But it does require more organizational energy to build 1,000 wind turbines than to construct a single coal-fired or nuclear power plant.

The Sierra Club's priority in India is to figure out whether our model of grassroots advocacy can help overcome that organizational challenge and put India on a high-growth, low-carbon pathway. We still have a lot to learn.

India's Carbon Future
by Carl Pope

March 26, 2008—Although the increase in oil prices has affected the US economy, it is devastating India, which depends on imported oil for even more of its consumption. And what oil India does import is used for high-priority purposes such as lighting homes, cooking food, and keeping trucks moving.

When I met yesterday with the Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the first words out of his mouth were about the costs of oil subsidies. This week the biggest private gasoline retailer in India, Reliance Industries, shut down its gas pumps. The company found it could no longer compete with subsidized public oil outlets, which have kept their prices stable (even low by American standards) in spite of oil at more than $100 per barrel. But these subsidies are hitting the government's budget hard, and disrupting the market.

This morning's papers were full of news on climate change. The most spectacular was a study by a professor at Indian Institute of Technology Chennai, one of India's most prestigous universities, of the impact of 4 to 5 degrees of global warming on South Asia. Professor S. Chella Rajan predicted that 125 million residents of low lying areas in India and Bangladesh would be forced to migrate by flooding, salinization of soils, and shrinking fresh water supplies. The headlines vary, with the Hindustan Times proclaiming on the front page that "75 Million Bangladeshis may inundate India," but the message is pretty clear—this country needs a low-carbon future for both climatic and economic reasons.

Cool Panchayats
by Carl Pope

March 28, 2008, Delhi—This afternoon there is a major public health seminar here on the health impacts of climate change for India, warning that tropical diseases like dengue fever and chikungunya currently associated with Africa and a few parts of South India will become countrywide plagues as a result of global warming. But the big news is that Government of India is appointing a climate change coordinator for every village panchayat (council) in the country.

According to the renowned Indian agricultural scientist who will head the program, M S Swaminathan, the program is aimed at meeting the challenges of climate change and sustainable development. "People at the grassroots will be the first to bear the brunt of climate change. So, we have decided to train people in villages to be climate managers."

This is stunningly large commitment—India has hundreds of thousands of villages, and to train a climate coordinator for each is an enormous educational endeavor. Like most things here, the devil will be in the details of the execution. Clearly a large part of what is driving this initiative is government concern over the need to cope with crop failures, floods, heat waves, and other climate change impacts. But if you come close to training someone in every Indian village about these impacts and about climate change, then you have unleashed a truly enormous constituent force to help India adopt a low-carbon growth strategy. So this strategy works both in terms of prevention (cutting carbon emissions) and in terms of preparation (learning to survive the inevitable consequences of climate change that are already occurring).

India, like the US, is a very bottom-up, decentralized society. Perhaps also like the US the big initiatives to help reduce global warming pollution will percolate up from the grassroots. Look at our Cool Cities program if you want to see a good example of progress being driven from the bottom up.

The Missing Pieces
by Carl Pope

April 3, 2008, Pune-Bombay, Aboard the Deccan Queen—India reminds me of a jigsaw puzzle, one in which some tricksters have hidden many of the pieces under the sofa or behind dusty volumes on the bookshelf. (Perhaps the tricksters are the ever-present monkeys, like those running along the railroad track as our train heads down the Western Ghats?) Once again, for the umpteenth time on this journey, I have had to reset my frame of reference. India's megalopolises, Bombay and Delhi, exude a breathless sense of scale—scale and change that seem to be in charge of people. There are opportunities as never before; people seize them with energy and opportunity; and if enough of them are green, then this country might leapfrog directly into the low-carbon 21st century. But it's all so big that you can't really grasp it.

Pune is a university and army town—several million people strong and growing even faster than Bombay. Its road system was designed when the population was 300,000, so it's choking on traffic alone. The University of Pune has more than 500,000 students—putting Ohio State to shame. Yet its civic leadership still feels, and acts, like it's in charge. The hills surrounding the city are both dearly beloved and threatened by developers, and local environmental activists are responding and perhaps winning.

The Pune edition of the Times of India has a dozen stories related to global warming and energy. One is a report on my speech to the University, but another reports that the city has required senior officers to leave their cars and scooters at home one day a week and walk, bicycle, or use mass transit. The predictable result is a sudden awareness of how bad the transit system is—but a local scooter manufacturer may fight efforts to build light rail. The dynamics are familiar US ones—civic leaders and environmental groups trying to get ahead of the curve and prepare for the future, while special interests like developers and vehicle manufacturers fight back. It's like being at a Sierra Club meeting in the US.

So India is not all breathless Bombay and Delhi. But it's not all Pune either. The newspaper reports on Mohri, a small village near Pune—27 very poor shepherd families. A local company, Aar-em Electronics, has installed solar panels in the village, giving each family two LED-powered lights. Solar streetlamps and a communal television set. Solar-powered clean drinking water is next. But the irony of this story is that Mohri, I suspect, now has a more technologically advanced, if still small-scale, lighting system than anyplace in the US. That's what we mean by "leapfrog into the 21st century."

Proposed Resolution:

Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach

The Sierra Club Angeles Chapter supports the efforts of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to improve air quality, by replacing and/or retrofitting heavy duty vehicles in the port drayage industry.

Background:

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have been working collaboratively to create a “Clean Truck Program”, with the intent to eliminate polluting diesel trucks servicing the ports. Newer technology has resulted in vastly cleaner fuel burning trucks. By October 1st Pre-1989 trucks are banned from both ports and by 2012 all trucks must meet 2007 standards or better.

There are a number of other components incorporated into the “Clean Truck Program", some of which are described as “A Work in Progress”. Recently the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have split over the issue of truck ownership and driver status. The plan originally called for the trucks to be purchased and maintained by the ( Licensed Motor Carriers), and for the drivers to be employees.

The Port of Long Beach, fearing a protracted lawsuit resulting in holding up implementation of the program, decided against this requirement. The Port of Los Angeles steadfastly denies this problem will arise. Currently the ports have two different plans. The media coverage of the dispute consistently portrays union members and environmentalists as being in favor of the Los Angeles plan.

Argument for:

The Sierra Club has not taken a position on either plan, nor should they! We should make that clear. Both plans seek the same objective, improving the quality of the air. The dispute is over the nuances of implementation. Which is the better plan should be left to the respective ports to decide. As stated earlier many of the details are a work in progress.

Argument against:

The “Clean Truck Program”, began as a collaborative effort and several environmental groups were involved from the start. So it’s not surprising they would harbor some resentment when Long Beach backed out. They see Long Beach as sabotaging the plan. They take the position that only an employee based system will ensure a sustainable drayage industry. Private contractors will not be able to purchase and maintain the trucks adequately.

Environmental Resolutions Passed by ExComm (3/30/08)

Elsmere Canyon: The Sierra Club Angeles Chapter is pleased that Senator George Runner has introduced SB 1180 to add Elsmere Canyon to the Rim of the Valley Trail Corridor; it supports the legislation in this form and urges the CLC to give it a high priority, including allocation of staff time.

Camp Bloomfield Oaks: The Sierra Club Angeles Chapter opposes plans of Camp Bloomfield Oaks on a neighboring parcel to remove 25 oaks and encroach on 56 more in an oak and riparian Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area and fill portions of a steelhead spawning stream in order to widen the road serving Camp Bloomfield Oaks in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Opposition to Governor Schwarzenegger’s Proposal Close 48 State Parks: The Angeles Chapter opposes Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal to squeeze meager and probably illusory savings out of the state budget by closing 48 state parks. The Chapter’s Executive Committee agrees with the position of the State Parks Foundation and encourages every member to visit the foundation’s website (www. savestateparks.org) and add your name to the endorsement list.

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

• Come and learn all about the Sierra Club and the many activities and adventure outings available.
• Meet the leaders of LA & OC Sierra Singles, Sierra Sage, OC Group, Wilderness Travel, 20’s/30’s, Natural Science, Hundred Peaks, Mule Pack and many others.
• Table Displays, Exhibits, Refreshments, Free Drawing.
• Join the Sierra Club at the $25 Introductory rate. Receive a free gift!
• Chapter Membership Co-Chairs: Mary Morales & Donna Specht
• Bring a friend!

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 N Altadena Dr, Pasadena
Contact Info: Don Bremner, 626-794-2603, donbremner@earthlink.net, (www.angeles.sierraclub.org/pasadena)