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The Delta Chapter is the Sierra Club in the State of Louisiana.
FEMA trailer resident gives birth to severly handicapped babyThe Delta Chapter and the Sierra Club Gulf Coast Restoration Taskforce continue to advocate for residents of
Formaldehyde prone Toxic FEMA trailers, here is one mother's nightmare experience... WBRZ News Channel2 in Baton Rouge shows how to recycle Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFL's)Follow this link to see a recent news article produced by WBRZ 2 in Baton Rouge about how to recycle Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs. The Sierra Club is represented by our very own Jeffery Dubinsky who discusses why we don't want to throw these bulbs into the trash. http://media.swagit.com/s/wbrz/The_Advocate/07222008-51.html Taking the tops off mountains at the flip of a switchby Jea Yoon Lee Everyone knows that electricity comes from power plants. Some know
that 40% of the electricity in the U.S. comes from coal-fired plants.
Fewer know that an estimated 7-10% of the country’s total coal
production comes from mountaintop removal (MTR) mines in Appalachia.
Unfortunately, many Louisiana consumers are linked to MTR through their
utility companies which use MTR coal. The tragedy of MTR is not just the abstract notion of “losing” mountains, forests, and streams, however. For West Virginians, Virginians, Kentuckians, and Tennesseans living near the mines, it means undrinkable, rash-inducing water full of arsenic and mercury, flying boulders and earthquakes caused by the blasting, and dramatic depreciation of property value. They also live in the shadow of impoundments -- dams which hold back the wastewater created by washing the debris off coal. Eight years ago in Kentucky, one broke and released a torrent of over 300 million gallons of thick, toxic sludge which destroyed homes, farmlands, and 100 miles of waterways. For the rest of us, more MTR leads to burning more coal, which diverts resources away from alternative energy sources and greater reliance on coal-powered plants, which leads to even more MTR. That means dirtier air, more acid rain, and more global warming emissions. According to some estimates, about 4.8% of the coal used in Louisiana power plants may come from MTR mines. Utilities such as Cleco Power LLC, Entergy Louisiana, and Southwestern Electric Power are all connected to MTR mining because some of their plants purchase coal from companies that operate MTR mines in Appalachia. (For more information on your community’s connection to MTR, visit www.ilovemountains.org/myconnection.) Rising gas prices opens the prospect of a coal-to-liquid industry which would lead to an even greater reliance on coal. The coal industry is peddling the false solution of converting coal into liquid fuel, but the reality is worse than being topless in Appalachia. Not only does it take one ton of coal to produce just two barrels of fuel, but burning liquid coal also releases double the global warming emissions per gallon as regular gasoline. Replacing 10% of our nation’s transportation fuels with liquid coal would require increasing coal mining by over 40%. Coal is not the solution! Currently there are plans for constructing 87 new coal power plants, each with an expected lifespan of 50 years. Is an additional 50 years of reliance on coal even a viable option for our planet? Let us oppose the irreversible, irremediable practice of MTR, and instead invest in solar, wind, and geothermal power. MTR requires filling valleys with vast quantities of mining waste. Filling streams with waste was illegal under the Clean Water Act, and advocacy groups used the law to protect the mountains and streams. Rising to the defense of coal companies, the Bush Administration changed the rules, effectively legalizing the filling of streams with waste. Sierra Club and other groups are urging Congress to enact the Clean Water Protection Act, which would reverse the rule change, once again prohibiting the filling of streams with MTR waste. Please join our efforts by asking your utility company not to use MTR coal and urging your Representative to co-sponsor the bill. For more information on how you can help, visit http://www.sierraclub.org/cleanwater/mtr/. Jea Yoon Lee is an apprentice with the national coal campaign in Washington,
DC. Morgan Freeman partners with Sierra Club on Storm Readiness Public Service Announcements!Be sure and check out the web page. A majority of the materials were provided by the Delta Chapter and it's partners. At the beginning of June, Morgan shot these in a partnership with Sierra Club and the non profit hurricane preparedness organization he founded, PLAN!TNOW. While I know everyone is familiar with Morgan's work in films like Shawshank Redemption, Million Dollar Baby and Driving Miss Daisy, you should also know that Morgan is considered one of the very top celebrity names for advertising and marketing purposes. An article in last Sunday's New York Times on celebrity advertising trends, identified Morgan as the 4th most valuable celebrity endorser - only behind Tom Hanks, Will Smith and Michael Jordan. The video piece will be distributed to almost 350 television channels throughout the gulf coast region and along the eastern seaboard as well as to environmental and celebrity websites and blogs, where it will be available for air until November 30th, (the official end of the 2008 hurricane season). The print piece pictured here will be distributed broadly to national and regional magazines for the same time frame. There will be a second print and video combination which we will edit to be available after this. These pieces have been designed to play a part of the early stages of the Climate Recovery Campaign and our work to build Climate Strong Communities. This project was a true team effort and we wish to thank everyone in Media/Communications and Advancement who helped bring this project to fruition. http://www.sierraclub.org/getprepared/ If you think it's difficult to convince people that environmental degredation is real now, just wait until this happens:The following links take you to the Delta Chapter blog posts regarding the bill recently passed by the Louisiana Legislature that allows the teaching of creationism and any manner of other un-scientifically provable "theories" in our public schools. Why is this an environmental issue? Because it is hard enough to convince certain people that environmental issues are real, even when faced with literal mountains of evidence, think global warming. Imagine how much more difficult it will be to educate and convince citizens of Louisiana that an environmental issue is real, when they can be taught in our public schools nearly anything that anyone with any agenda can dream up. Not exactly a scary environmental issue - but scary nonetheless More "Louisiana is doomed" blog posts from badastronomy.com The Louisiana Environmental Briefing Book is now available.The Louisiana Environmental Briefing Book has just been released. It was produced to educate Louisiana legislators on environmental issues in our state that affect us all. Even if you are not in the Louisiana legislature, it is worth reading because it is chock full of timely information about environmental issues in our state that every concerned citizen needs to be aware of. The Environmental Briefing book was produced by:
Read the Louisiana Environmental Briefing Book at the Louisiana Environmental Briefing Book Website: http://labriefingbook.org/ or download the large PDF file (2.89 Mb). It's a huge file but well worth the download time, only a couple of seconds on a broadband connection. Louisiana's Mulch MadnessCypress forests are the state's best defense against hurricanes. So why are loggers clear-cutting the last trees? Dean Wilson slams forward the throttle on his 18-foot aluminum bateau—a flat-bottom skiff that he welded together himself—and catapults us downriver. It's April and I'm in the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest swamp—1.4 million acres (roughly 10 times the size of Chicago) wedged between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico in southern Louisiana... Read More>> So begins an article featured in the March/April issue of Mother Jones magazine. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/03/louisianas-mulch-madness.htmlGot You Tube?The Sierra Club does. Check out the Club's You Tube page. You might even learn a thing or two; like how to install a programmable thermostat, or a low flow shower head or how to compost in your own backyard. Good stuff just in time for Earth Day. The Save Our Cypress Coalition website has a whole new look!
Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the website and to all who are part of the Save Our Cypress campaign. The Save Our Cypress Coalition is comprised of over 160 conservation groups, religious organizations, businesses, gardening clubs, and civic organizations. The Delta Chapter is a proud member of the coalition. Act now to help expand Jean Lafitte National ParkRead this fact sheet and contact our U. S. Senators as well as Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts to ask them to support the expansion of Jean Lafitte National Park. Thank you. Welcome to our new Senior Regional RepresentativeSierra Club Friends – On behalf of the staff of the Sierra Club’s Southeast Office, I would like to welcome Jill Mastrototaro as our new Senior Regional Representative – Manager (Northern Gulf Coast). Jill will manage the delivery of our programs within the states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. She will begin her service to the Sierra Club effective March 10 and will be based in New Orleans, LA. Our office in Baton Rouge, LA will then be closed. A native of Connecticut, Jill has also spent the past decade residing in the New Orleans, LA area. Over the past eight and a half years Jill has led advocacy and outreach efforts for the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation in southeast Louisiana’s 10,000-square mile watershed. Jill’s experience includes monitoring and lobbying state and federal laws including the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, spearheading a coalition to protect cypress forests, launching a campaign on sprawl using multiple media outlets, leading the state’s first effort to quantify wetland loss from unplanned development, and creating and implementing regional strategic conservation plans. Her successes include leading a broadly based coalition in getting Wal-Mart to stop the purchase and sale of cypress mulch harvested or manufactured in Louisiana, thwarting proposals such as cell towers, subdivisions, or a 10,000-acre airport in ecologically sensitive areas, protecting already stressed waterways from receiving millions of gallons of wastewater effluent, and mobilizing hundreds of volunteers to protect natural resources. Jill has authored a myriad of resources such as, A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Wetlands in the Pontchartrain Basin, and more recently, Growing Smarter: Guidelines for Low Impact Development in the Pontchartrain Basin, which have engaged and trained thousands of citizens. Jill is the founding Vice-President of the Land Trust for Southeast Louisiana, the only grassroots-based, land conservation group active in the state, and she chairs the Land Committee, negotiating land acquisitions and to-date securing $100,000 in endowment funds. She also is working to create a regional Gulf Coast network of land conservation groups. Jill serves on the board of Smart Growth for Louisiana, a non-profit working to encourage responsible land use throughout the state. She holds a Masters Degree in Environmental Policy from the State University of New York – College of Environmental Science and Forestry (Syracuse, NY) and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Environmental Science from the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY). We hope that you will join us in welcoming Jill to the Sierra Club family. Thanks! Regards – Jim Price, Southeast Staff Director, Sierra Club
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To
learn more about sustainable alternatives to cypress mulch, to see the
complete list of coalition members, to ask Lowe's, Home Depot, and Wal-Mart
to stop selling cypress mulch, and much more, visit www.saveourcypress.org.
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