Chapter Chair's Column

by Andy Sawyer - Many environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, are experiencing funding shortfalls. This has led some other environmental organizations to focus a few high visibility areas, especially climate change, while cutting back in in other areas, including habitat protection. This trend is understandable—climate change is our most important environmental challenge—but unfortunate.

Cosumnes River Treasure

By Elaine Gorman - When Motherlode Chapter outings leader Martin asked me to help co-lead a group of Sierra Club hikers at Cosumnes River Preserve, I was a bit hesitant. Since my teaching days, herding 25+ people around isn’t something that I normally look forward to doing. But Cosumnes River Preserve is such a unique area that includes wintering migrant birds, diverse habitats, and hiking trails, that I agreed.

Boatworks Redevelopment Project

News from the Tahoe Area Group - As reported in our newsletter about a year ago, Placer County Planning Commission and the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) have released the Notice of Preparation (NOP) of an Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS) for the "Boatworks at Lake Tahoe" Project, a redevelopment project at the Boatworks Mall in Tahoe City. For more information, see the Placer County website.The Sierra Club's Tahoe Area Group has provided comments on the NOP by the deadline.

Big news from the Blue Oak Group

by Grace M. Marvin, Conservation Chair of the Blue Oak Group - The Blue Oak Group of the Sierra Club and Chico's Smart Growth Advocates are very proud to announce that we have won the referendum against the development called Valley’s Edge. Since the March 5 vote, we no longer have to worry about a 1448-acre sprawl housing development project with some 2700 proposed housing units. That land would have had to be annexed from Butte County to Chico, while County citizens living next to the area to be annexed were not allowed to vote on this Chico project.

Save Our Farmland

Stanislaus County residents, we have many things to be concerned about today. In today’s world we have to be very careful about who we listen to, and what we believe. There are too many people in the world who are dishonest, untrustworthy and unethical. They live in a dream world; they worship money, power and pleasure.