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Dale Stocking

Stockton, California
Chair, Outings leader
Delta-Sierra Group

"I was raised in a hunting and fishing family," says avid backpacker Dale Stocking, "so we generally stayed below 8,000 feet. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve really started going to higher elevations."

The 64-year-old orthodontist summited 14,162’ Mt. Shasta in 1997 and has done so twice since. He also counts Mts. Langley, Tyndall, and Whitney in the Sierra Nevada among the California "fourteeners" he has summited. "I met a 76-year-old guy on Forester Pass [13,200’] recently who was hiking the John Muir Trail solo," Stocking says. "Now that’s inspiring!"

A member of the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, Stocking’s Sierra Club activism centers on water issues. "Water will be the environmental and public health issue of the 21st century," he says. He has lately been involved with the issue of water privatization, currently a hot topic in Stockton. The mayor and a majority of the city council favor contracting out municipal services to a private company for the next 20 years. Stocking opposes the scheme, and has been working with community groups to demand that the public be allowed to vote on the proposal.

Stocking recently helped develop the Sierra Club’s policy on water privatization and commodification as a member of the Club’s national Water Privatization Task Force. He advises people facing privatization of their water systems to organize and get active when they first hear about it. "Water is a human necessity and not a commodity for for-profit trading," he says. "Once you dismantle a functioning public system, it’s not so easy putting Humpty Dumpty back together again."

Stocking is featured in a new documentary film, "Thirst," that will premiere on PBS July 13; check your local listings for time.

Published: November 5, 2007