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Gordon Nipp

Bakersfield, California
Vice Chair
Kern-Kaweah Chapter

Raised on an Iowa farm, 40-year Sierra Club member Gordon Nipp has spent most of his life working to protecting California.

Nipp got involved with the Club while earning a PhD in mathematics at USC. An avid hiker, he joined the 100-Peak Section, sometimes climbing several peaks in a day. In the 1970s the group went to court to stop a development in the Santa Monica Mountains, and the settlement helped created the Quercus Fund to preserve land there.

On retiring from Cal State Bakersfield in 2002, Nipp and his wife Eva, a high school teacher, immersed themselves in land and air quality issues. "Bakersfield is growing so fast," he says. "We have to be concerned with the effects of this growth. People are getting sick and work days are being lost because of our dirty air."

On discovering that developers were filing flawed environmental documents, Nipp hired a lawyer to address the situation. "It's amazing what one person with a good lawyer can accomplish," he says. Recent settlements have compelled developers to contribute $1,200 per house to a fund to reduce air pollution; install solar panels in model homes and offer them to prospective buyers; revegetate land with native plants; pay $2,000 per acre to purchase agricultural land for preservation; and contribute to a fund protecting wildlife habitat.

A French horn player and classical music lover, Nipp stopped performing after college because he couldn't afford his own horn. But decades later he saw one for sale in the want ads and has immersed himself in the instrument ever since. He and Eva recently built a cabin in the mountains above Bakersfield, doing much of the carpentry themselves.

Published: April 24, 2007