Colorado Rallies for Clean Air

Send your praises to Sierra Club Beyond Coal Organizer Roger Singer and the many great people of the Beyond Coal Campaign in Colorado. The team - including the Campus Beyond Coal organizers from the University of Colorado at Boulder - turned out more than 200 clean energy advocates and allies to a rally and a Public Utilities Commission hearing about the Clean Air Clean Jobs Act that involves retiring more than 900 megawatts of existing coal power in the state.

Singer said the supporters included a broad coalition of conservation groups, health community groups, renewable energy businesses and natural gas companies.


Singer added coal industry activists were present too, holding a smaller rally of their own just across the street, and then even unsuccessfully trying to crash the clean energy rally. Thankfully, he said, the clean energy folks had the mic and drowned out those few pro-coal yahoos.


At the hearing, more than 40 folks testified supporting the plan that the state should retire the 903 MW of coal even sooner, build one less gas plant than proposed and put more emphasis on renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Nice job, Colorado!

Appalachia Rising - No More MTR

Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Mary Anne Hitt rallies against mountaintop removal coal mining with her baby Hazel. Photo courtesy of Appalachia Rising.

Yesterday's massive Appalachia Rising rally and march was a big success - with more than 2,000 activists taking to the streets in DC to call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining.


For some great recaps, be sure to check the Appalachia Rising website, these two posts from our campus coal organizers, and these two posts from Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard.


If you're unfamiliar with mountaintop removal coal mining, it is a destructive practice where coal companies blow up mountains to get at a seam of coal beneath. They then push all the dirt - much of which now includes toxins - into nearby valleys, which then poisons watersheds.

Take action against this practice right now.


The photos with this post (excluding the first one) were all taken by Jay Mallin and show the march, along with some folks getting arrested in front of the White House (the Sierra Club was not part of the civil disobedience).

Water Sentinels Pitch In on Serve Outdoors

By Scott Dye

The Sierra Club's Water Sentinels program turned out in force on September 11 for Serve Outdoors, a National Day of Service and Remembrance. Overall, Sierra Club hosted over 100 projects in 36 states during the weekend, with a focus on involving America’s youth.

Fifteen staff and volunteer-led Water Sentinels project sites contributed on a variety of events including stream and community litter cleanups, youth fishing, water-quality monitoring, electronics recycling, invasive weed removal, and working farmers markets.

Here’s just one of the inspiring stories, from Boulder Valley Inner City Outings & Water Sentinels. BVICO is one of Sierra Club's 50 Inner City Outings programs.  BVICO combines Water Sentinels' youth fishing opportunities and water quality monitoring with ICO's core mission of providing free nature outings and adventures to youth who would otherwise not have such opportunities.

Thanks to Dave Schneider of BVICO for the blog piece and the photos.

Gorgeous weekend to encourage youth to explore, enjoy and protect the great outdoors at Lake Pueblo

 
Our group gets ready to roll.

Boulder Valley Inner City Outings organized a weekend trip to the shores of Lake Pueblo in south-central Colorado. The area lived up to its reputation of great weather to enjoy a myriad of outdoor activities. Our outing focused on learning the basics of mountain biking and low-impact camping, and included a service activity of picking up trash along the trails and around the campground. In partnership with the Trips for Kids organization, we stressed responsible mountain biking - staying on designated trails, minimizing actions that cause erosion and yielding to other trail users. We had rides for all levels, ranging from paved bike paths to gnarly, technical singletrack. The more advanced riders did almost 20 miles of riding over the two days. Although we chose the most primitive walk-in tent campsites in the park, the youth loved the camping experience. For many it was their first time camping. We organized a trash collection around the campground so that the area was left cleaner than we found it.

 
Moises bags trash collected by a happy camper.

We had a diverse group of eleven youth from low-income families in Boulder County, eleven other youth from Casey Middle School, one Casey teacher (and former pro bike racer), one set of parents, one Trips for Kids staff member, and three ICO volunteers. We talked about the community coming together in light of the recent devastating Fourmile Canyon fire that hit close to home, and how this trip is a small example that exemplifies building community. The ICO volunteers organized the trip from top to bottom, the Casey teacher led recruitment and group cheers, while Trips for Kids provided bikes, ride guiding, and took care of mechanical issues. Sierra Club’s Building Bridges to the Outdoors and Water Sentinels sponsored the outing, and some additional financial contributions were made by Casey parents and ICO volunteers.

 
Kyra celebrates being outside and making it up another hill.

Family Farmer KO's CAFOs

Official White House photo by Pete Souza

Six months ago, Michigan family farmer Lynn Henning had boarded an airplane only once in her life. That changed in April, when she was flown to San Francisco to receive the prestigious Goldman Prize, awarded each year to six grassroots environmental activists—one each from Africa, Asia, Europe, Island Nations, North America, and South America.

As the photo above attests, winning the Goldman has opened a few doors for Henning, including the door to the Oval Office. Below, the six 2010 Goldman Prize winners at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., where Henning met with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson (at center in pink dress, below).

A longtime clean water activist and now an organizer with the Sierra Club's Water Sentinels Program, Henning was awarded the Goldman for exposing "the egregious polluting practices of livestock factory farms in rural Michigan, gaining the attention of the federal EPA, and prompting state regulators to issue hundreds of citations for water quality violations."

"Lynn is a singular force of nature," says Water Sentinels national director Scott Dye. "I can think of no one more deserving of such worldwide recognition. Lynn has used her life experiences, her expertise, her organizing talents, and her perseverance to save literally dozens of rural communities from the plague of factory farms."

Below, Henning takes water samples near a factory farm operation in southern Michigan.

Photo by Tom Dusenbury

Winning the Goldman, which comes with a $150,000 cash award, has not lined Henning's pockets; she is giving the money to the Sierra Club and Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan, which she co-founded ten years ago to fight the expansion of factory farms in her neck of the woods.

It has, however, given her a bigger megaphone. This Earth Day, she addressed 200,000 people on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and she has been interviewed by USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, E Magazine, National Public Radio, NBC News, and the London (UK) Daily Mail, to name just a few of the media outlets that have come a-calling.

In September, Henning was one of 20 women chosen for the "2010 O Power List" in O, The Oprah Magazine, for exemplifying "the power of one voice." Below, Henning (hint: think crimson) with some of her fellow movers-and-shakers.

Photo by Christian Witkin, courtesy of O Magazine

Reviving the Battle on Blair Mountain

Locals gather to discuss the fate of Blair Mountain. Photo credit: Jessica Yarnall.

Imagine a mini-mall paved over Gettysburg. Or a nuclear waste dump in the middle of the Delaware River where General George Washington led his soldiers.

The coal industry knows no boundaries, and the preservation of American history and heritage is no exception. That's why Blair Mountain, site of the country's biggest, most violent open class post-Civil War battle, was delisted by the National Register of Historic Places, which protects and preserves such landmark places.

In 1921, a time of horrible work conditions in Appalachia, 10,000 armed coal miners, law enforcement officers, and hired strike breakers clashed at Blair Mountain in Logan County over the right to unionize in southern West Virginia. Around an estimated 100 people were killed and many more injured.

Kenny King finds shell casings leftover from the famous battle in 1921. Photo credit: Jessica Yarnall.

Since the site of the battle was listed as a historic place in April 2009 by the National Register of Historic Places -- which is run by the National Park Service -- historians and archeologists have combed and studied the area. But the National Register made an abrupt and inexplicable about-face, taking Blair Mountain off the list in December and exposing it to profiteering Big Coal executives.

Coal companies have targeted Blair for surface mining and mountaintop removal, the practice of blowing off mountaintops. It would dismember the entire area. If something like that were to happen, it would further erase its significance. It'd be the ultimate quashing of the historic labor movement of West Virginia.

Serve Outdoors Through the Lens

While 9/11 is a day to mourn the tragic events of that day in 2001, it's also National Day of Service and Remembrance. Sierra Club members and friends led in organizing more than 100 Serve Outdoors events that connected our youth with the outdoors and benefited the community and the planet.

Watch our awesome Serve Outdoors video by clicking here.

Sierra Club media assistant Kyle Boelte, who was at the San Francisco event, reported, "Events, each with over 100 participants, took place in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C., and featured –- in addition to lots of young people –- guests like Mayor Michael McGinn of Seattle (a former Sierra Club volunteer leader) and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. At events across the country, volunteers cleaned up beaches, worked in community gardens, created outdoor classrooms, performed trail maintenance, organized bike-a-thons, and other creative projects."

In Los Angeles, hundreds of young volunteers worked on the Stanford-Avalon farm in the heart of South Los Angeles. The mayor, L.A. firefighters, Los Angeles Conservation Corps, National Corporation for National & Community Service, and other local groups appeared for a dedication of a plaque in memory of 9/11.

In Albuquerque at Nuestros Valores Charter School, students, teachers, and Sierra Club staff and friends transformed a courtyard into a garden.

Also, in New Mexico, volunteers spent six hours repairing trails at Santa Barbara Canyon in Penasco.

Water Sentinels, Great Outdoors University Team Up

James Baker, longtime clean water activist and volunteer coordinator of the Tennessee Water Sentinels in Memphis, had a dental appointment in late July. And, as many of us are wont to do after a good drilling, he engaged the receptionist in friendly conversation on his way out of the office.

"We got to talking, and I commented on the trains that pass close to the dentist's office," says Baker, below center at a Water Sentinels training. "We talked about coal trains—how one coal train is about one day's supply of coal at most TVA coal-fired power plants. One thing led to another, and she told me that she's a volunteer with Great Outdoors University."

With a "hold that thought," Baker stepped outside and called Scott Dye, national Director of the Sierra Club's Water Sentinels Program. In turn, Dye called up Kate Friedman, the Memphis-area Coordinator for Great Outdoors University (GOU). Soon, two dozen Zebco 33 Automatic rod/reel combinations arrived at Friedman's office, courtesy of the Water Sentinels, for use on an August 14 GOU fishing trip. That's Dye below, with a box of Zebco rod-reel combos.