Activist With a Mission Helps Bag Big Victory in the Aloha State

As reported last month in this blog, on May 10 Hawai'i became the first state in the union to ban plastic bags at point of sale. The ban is already in effect in two of Hawai'i's four counties, and will be phased in over the next couple years in the remaining two.

The Sierra Club's Hawai'i Chapter and Surfrider Foundation Oahu were the main grassroots movers-and-shakers on the multi-year campaign to pass the bag ban.

"Being the first state to pass this is tremendous," says Hawai'i Chapter Director Robert Harris, the Club's staff leader in the effort. "It will have a huge impact. We estimate that 450 million bags each year will be kept out of the waste stream in the state."

Most of the activists pushing the bag ban, however, were volunteers (in the time-honored Sierra Club tradition). A great many of them deserve a shout-out, but none more than Leilei Shih, a third-year PhD student in the Department of Oceanocraphy at the University of Hawai'i.

Shih, co-captain and blogger for the Hawai'i Chapter's Capitol Watch program and captain of its "Opala" section, which monitors and advocates for bills that will reduce Hawai'i's growing waste problem, began working more than two years ago to get Honolulu County and the state legislature to pass a plastic bag ban.

"Given our geographic location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and the fact that each of our roughly 1.4 million residents generates more than six pounds of trash every day, the bag ban seemed essential and inevitable," Shih says. "Still, at times it seemed as though the local governments were adamantly opposed to the concept."

In 2011, a statewide ban passed multiple committees in the Hawai'i Legislature and began garnering attention in the local press, opening the door for Shih, Robert Harris, and Surfrider Foundation Oahu coordinator Stuart Coleman to meet with legislators and explain to them why the bill was so important. (Shih also serves on the executive committee of Surfrider Foundation Oahu.)

Sadly, the bill never made it to a vote. "Having identified no obvious opponents to our bill, and having found strong support in the legislature, the death of the bag bill last year was shocking and deflating," Shih says.

But it is not in this determined activist's DNA to give up the fight. "Knowing that good environmental bills can take years to pass, I felt resolute in preparing for a victory in 2012," Shih says.

Don't Frack the Hoback

More than 350 people turned out recently in Jackson, Wyoming, for the "Don't Frack the Hoback" Wild & Scenic Film Festival.

The Sierra Club took the lead in organizing the event and recruiting other conservation partners to join in and raise awareness about a proposed natural gas field in the middle of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, just 35 miles from Grand Teton National Park.

The area targeted for drilling is the Upper Hoback Basin, below, part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—the largest intact temperate ecosystem in the northern hemisphere. But if Texas-based Plains Exploration and Production Company (PXP) has its way, the basin will be subjected to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The project would involve 136 wells, 17 well pads, pipelines, waste treatment plants, and 30 miles of industrial roads.

Photo by Dan Heilig, courtesy of the Wyoming Outdoor Council

The "Don't Frack the Hoback" Wild & Scenic Film Festival featured an array of adventure- and conservation-oriented films and a powerful lineup of community leaders who spoke out against PXP's proposal. That's Republican state legislator Keith Gingrey, below at left, talking with a local outfitter.

The event garnered media coverage in the Jackson Hole Weekly, Teton Valley News, The Mountain Pulse, and on Jackson Hole Radio.

"It was a very inspiring evening, a great way to get our message out there," says Sierra Club organizer Zack Waterman. "I'm confident that when they get the call, many of the attendees will join us at public hearings that will take place in the Jackson area later this spring."

Water Sentinel Lynn Henning Wins Planet Defender Award

Photo by Tom Dusenbury

On April 20, Sierra Club Water Sentinel and Michigan family farmer Lynn Henning received a 2012 Planet Defender Award from Rock the Earth, a Colorado-based environmental advocacy organization that works closely with the music industry.

Then that evening, she appeared on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher.

"My favorite part of the interview was at the end with Bill telling her she was 'a real American hero,'" observed Water Sentinels national director Scott Dye. "Truer words were never spoken—and Bill Maher doesn't hand out that kind of praise like candy."

Rock the Earth presents three Planet Defender awards each year. Henning was the 2012 winner in the Grassroots Activist category, while singer Willie Nelson won in the Music category, and scientist, writer, and Rocky Mountain Institute Chairman Amory Lovins won in the Community Leader category.

Henning was honored "for her extraordinary commitment and focus on water quality, fighting pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)."

Her activism over the last decade has exposed the egregious polluting practices of CAFOs, gaining the attention of the federal EPA and prompting state regulators to issue hundreds of citations for water quality violations.

On Real Time, Maher, who performed at the Sierra Club's national convention in 2005, asked Henning about the sewage "lagoons" associated with CAFOs.

"I find the term 'lagoon' misleading," he said. "When I think of a lagoon, I think of a young Brooke Shields and beautiful, clear water, "not a pool of s***."

Taking it in stride, Henning said there are 12 CAFOs and 60 lagoons containing more than 400 million gallons of antibiotic-laden animal waste within a 10-mile radius of her home. "People need to start looking at what they're eating and where their food is coming from and get to know their local farmers because the way they're producing food now has to stop," she said.

Sierra Club Spearheads Largest-Ever Reforestation of Abandoned Mine Lands in Kentucky

Over two March weekends in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, hundreds of volunteers including a large Sierra Club contingent launched the largest reforestation project on abandoned mine lands in the state's history.

Nearly 350,000 trees—all native hardwood species—will be planted over the next three years on 250 acres that had been strip-mined in the Fishtrap Lake watershed in Pike County. The project is being funded by a settlement from a Sierra Club lawsuit against an illegal mountaintop removal operation.

Lane Boldman, a Kentuckian who serves on the Sierra Club's board of directors, joined Kentucky Sierra Club organizer Alex DeSha and about 200 volunteers from around the state in planting more than 7,000 seedlings on March 17, and more than 300 people—including 100 Boy Scouts—turned out the following weekend.

"This is really a bright spot of activity for a part of Kentucky that has been ravaged by mining," Boldman says. "The area where we were planting had been totally scalped."

The March 17 tree-planting was organized by Mary Miller, below at right, a volunteer with the Club's Bluegrass Group who works closely with the faith community.

"Mary coordinated the participation of at least 50 Sierra Clubbers and several faith groups," Boldman says. "Quite a few people came up from Tennessee, and we planted seven or eight varieties of bare-root seedlings using Dibble bars."

Larry Ridenour, also of the Bluegrass Group, led the second tree-planting, on March 24. "Larry is a Boy Scout troop leader and he brought several troops out for the occasion," Boldman says. "Mary and Larry did so much to make this whole thing happen. They're real go-getter-type activists who gave a lot of their time and sweat to this."

The roots of the reforestation project can be traced back to 2008, when newly-hired Kentucky Sierra Club organizer John Cleveland, at right, discovered an illegal valley fill while doing water-quality testing near mountaintop removal mine sites in eastern Kentucky.

Valley fillls are comprised of what mine companies refer to as "overburden"—essentially the blasted-off mountaintops—which is then dumped in adjacent valleys.

Club Helps Preserve Strong Florida Fertilizer Regs

On February 3 in St. Petersburg, the Florida Sierra Club held its fifth press conference in 11 days to protest a bill in the state legislature that would have scuttled local fertilizer regulations during the torrential rainy season, June through September. That's Sierra Club organizer Cris Costello, above, speaking to the media.

Three days later, the Senate Committee on Environmental Preservation and Conservation killed the bill, prompting the House to table HB 421, its version of the measure. Asked if it was dead, the bill's chief sponsor replied, "In three letters, yes."

Longtime Sierra Club staffer Frank Jackalone calls the victory against Big Fertilizer, Big Pest Control, and Big Turf a true grassroots success story.

At the St. Petersburg press conference, Club activists rallied behind Costello, holding signs and displaying photographs taken by Pinellas County staff showing lawn care companies applying fertilizer while it was raining—a recipe for runoff pollution.

Photo courtesy of WTSP Channel 10 News

"Despite the provisions of the local ordinance and despite basic common sense, these companies sent employees to apply fertilizer during a rainstorm," Costello told WTSP-TV News, the local CBS affiliate. "The rainy season ban is the backbone of meaningful fertilizer management."

The St. Petersburg rally followed similar media events on January 23 in Sarasota, Fort Myers, Clearwater, and Stuart. That's Club organizer Katie Parrish, below, speaking in Fort Myers.

Club Mobilizes Public to Block Bryce Boondoggle

Photo by Niles Urry, courtesy of EnviroNews

The last Friday in January, the Sierra Club held a rally and press conference outside the Bureau of Land Management's office in Salt Lake City and hand-delivered sample copies of 210,126 email comments to the BLM state director's office. That's Club organizer Tim Wagner, below, delivering the comments.

The comments were in opposition to a proposal by Alton Coal Development to expand its operations by leasing and strip-mining more than 3,500 acres of federal land a mere 10 miles from Bryce Canyon National Park, below, which many consider to be among the U.S. Park Service's crown jewels.

Photo by Jean-Christophe Benoist

"The mine expansion would effectively turn this region—arguably the prettiest part of Utah—into an industrial zone," Wagner says. "Bryce Canyon is one of America's great beauty icons, and a strip mine right outside the park is not what Utahns or the rest of the nation wants to see."

Dan Mayhew, conservation chair for the Sierra Club's Utah Chapter, points to the heavy truck traffic the mine expansion would bring—more than 300 trucks a day when round-trips are factored in.

The Club's Resilient Habitats and Water Sentinels programs have trained local activists to test streams in the area to expose the coal industry's assertion that strip mining won't affect water quality.

"We want to see the U.S. move away from coal," Wagner says. "Allowing a 20-to-35-year strip mine to occur is a huge displacement of clean energy opportunities."

NY Natural Gas Activists Rally for Better Drilling Safeguards

Rally go-ers at in Albany, NY. Photo by Jessica Riehl.

On January 23, 2012, more than 800 New Yorkers descended on the New York State Capitol for the 2012 Hydro-Fracking Day of Action organized by the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club.

The event was organized to call on elected officials to safeguard vital water resources, air quality, public health, and the environment from industrial gas drilling by means of high volume hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." Fracking uses high-pressure injection of water, sand, and unknown chemicals to free natural gas from shale deposits.

"Sierra Club's Atlantic Chapter joined many other folks from across the state last week in standing up for New York's clean water and clean air,” said Deb Nardone, Sierra Club Natural Gas Reform Campaign Director. "Right now, the natural gas industry is fracking across the country with few safeguards in place to protect the communities living with it."

For the rally, the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter garnered the support of nearly 50 other grass roots organizations, and more than 200 members of the Atlantic Chapter attended the rally as well.  Activists from every quarter of the State blanketed the Capital in Albany and spoke to nearly all members of the Legislature. 

The rally landed multiple media hits, and here’s video of some of the rally’s attendees telling why it was important for them to be there.

 
"New York is determined to not become the next fracking victim, and they showed that at the rally,” said Nardone.

Congrats to the following Sierra Club staffers and volunteers for their hard work organizing the rally: Chapter Conservation Organizer Roger Down; Chapter Conservation Associate Caitlin Pixley; Chapter Conservation Associate and volunteers Gusti Swartz and Kate Bartholomew; Arthur Kuypers, Assistant Conservation Chair; Chris Burger, Zero Waste Chair; Executive Committee members Hal Bauer, Jane Fasullo, Susan Leifer, Art Kline; and many more.

You can learn more about the natural gas fight in New York in this column by Sierra Club Conservation Director Sarah Hodgdon.

-- Cross-posted on Sierra Club's Compass blog.

Minnesotans Say 'Thanks!' to EPA

Minnesotans gathered outside of the Environmental Protection Agency office in Duluth today to thank the agency for issuing strong new mercury pollution safeguards. They presented a large thank you card signed by local Duluthians and a banner made by Girl Scout Troop 12965. In December, the EPA finalized strong public health safeguards to limit mercury and other toxic pollution from coal power plants.

“The Sierra Club, and parents like me across Minnesota, applaud the President and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for their courage and resolve in protecting Minnesota families – particularly women and children – from this dangerous toxin and for standing up to polluters’ attempts to weaken this life-saving protection,” said John Doberstein (pictured above), local dad and Sierra Club member.

Mercury is a dangerous brain poison that poses a particular threat to prenatal babies and young children. Exposure in the bloodstreams of pregnant and nursing women can result in birth defects like learning disabilities, lowered IQ, deafness, blindness and cerebral palsy.

“There are many coal plants across Minnesota that release dangerous levels of mercury,” said Kate Mensing (pictured above), University of Minnesota-Duluth student. “We thank President Obama and the EPA for the peace of mind that now these plants will not polluting our water and air with this dangerous poison anymore.”

Volunteers Clean Up Park for MLK Day

Sierra Club and a coalition of groups are reporting that Monday's 6th Annual MLK Day Clean-Up of Pope Branch Park in the Ward 7 neighborhood of Washington, DC, was a great success.

Irv Sheffey, Sierra Club Environmental Justice Associate Field Organizer in DC, (pictured below in the center) says more than 80 volunteers turned out to remove trash and debris from the park and surrounding neighborhood - and they removed more than 6,000 pounds of trash. He's pleased with how popular and effective the clean-up has become.

"Each year we see more and more improvement in the cleanliness of the park and I attribute it to the quality of care demonstrated at (the MLK Day event) and one we hold in the spring," Irv says. "The community and the river are the direct beneficiaries of that effort." The Pope Branch Creek near the park is a tributary of the Anacostia River.

Irv says he's also happy at how many more volunteers turn out at every clean-up event, despite cold weather or distance for them to the neighborhood.

"These were 82 volunteers from all around the neighborhood, city, and region. I'm always amazed at the volunteers who come out to help in polishing this little gem of a park in southeast (DC). These are people, some coming from afar, who could have chosen to be home, spending time with their families, watching TV, and generally keeping warm. They chose to be out in our community making a difference in the spirit of Dr. King, proving his legacy lives on."

Photos by Dolly Davis

Big New Jersey Rally Demands Fracking Ban in Delaware River Basin

An estimated 1,000 people rallied outside the Statehouse in Trenton, New Jersey, to demand a ban on fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, in the Delaware River watershed. Public pressure prompted the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to postpone a vote on whether to allow the practice.

The New Jersey Sierra Club and Delaware Riverkeeper were the primary organizers of the rally. Above, New Jersey Sierra Club organizers Kate Millsaps and Nicole Dallara flank actor/director Mark Ruffalo, founder of WaterDefense.org, at the demonstration.

The Sierra Club has been working since 2008 to stop fracking, which injects water and chemicals into bedrock under enormous pressure and poses threats to groundwater, drinking water, and air quality, among other risks. Residents who live near fracking sites have experienced health problems, foul-smelling air, and there are several documented cases of residential tap water catching fire.

Click here or on the photo above to hear Ruffalo's speech at the Trenton rally; click here or on the photo below to see residential tap water igniting.

The Trenton rally was planned to coincide with a DRBC meeting at the Statehouse to vote on fracking. But the commission—comprised of the governors of the four states that drain into the Delaware River and an Army Corps of Engineers representative—pulled back from its drilling plans and postponed the meeting. The rally went on as planned, with a decidedly jubilant tone.

"Today's rally is a kick-off of a campaign to ban fracking in the Delaware River Basin," New Jersey Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel, below, told the crowd. "This is a rally for the future of our river and to protect the water supply for 15 million people. We cannot trust the politicians or the DRBC to protect that water from fracking; we must get them to ban fracking."

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed a bill last summer that would have imposed a statewide ban on fracking, instead recommending a one-year moratorium. The New Jersey Legislature officially accepted the one-year ban on January 10.