Another year of exploring, enjoying, and protecting our environment has come and gone, and we are looking forward to the coming year of opportunities to continue our work.

The Santa Cruz Group Executive Committee voted to take action on a number of local issues, such as the city’s vegetation removal along the San Lorenzo River originally scheduled to take place during bird nesting season; a moratorium on fracking; the San Vicente redwoods plan; the failure to protect an iconic Santa Cruz heritage tree under the Heritage Tree Ordinance; addressing the problem of uncovered garbage cans on Main Beach; calling on the county to conduct an EIR for the Mount Herman proposed project; presenting concerns over the Castle Rock entrance project to the Board of Supervisors; and contributed input to the State Wildlife Action Plan which garnered state level Sierra Club support. Some of our position letters are now posted on our website, and more will be posted soon.

Sierra Club Executive Committee members are representatives to the city’s Water Supply Advisory Committee (WSAC) as well as the Cowell Beach Water Quality Working Group.

The Political Committee and our Executive Committee supported Bruce Jaffe and Rick Meyer for Soquel Creek Water District Board, and both were elected. We also supported Maria Marsilio for this board, as well as Leonie Sherman and Bruce Van Allen for Santa Cruz City Council, but they were unfortunately not elected.

Santa Cruz City Council Candidates Forum hosted by the Santa Cruz Sierra Club and other partnering organizations

We engaged with the community at many events in the community and at UC Santa Cruz. This spring, we hired Melissa Ott to become our Outreach Coordinator, supporting our social media, website, MeetUp, and community presence. We have been connecting with students at UC Santa Cruz through internships.

Melissa Ott, Outreach Coordinator, tabling at the UC Santa Cruz Fall Festival with Gillian Greensite, Executive Committee member & Conservation Committee Chair

The Events Committee organized many evening environmental presentations, including a couple film screenings, Remembering the Ventana, a couple travel events, an Upper Campus World Café, and more! Find our events here: https://www.sierraclub.org/ventana/santa-cruz/outings-and-events

Kevin Collins speaks about forestry issues in Santa Cruz during our Save Upper Campus World Cafe at UC Santa Cruz.

The Conservation Committee initiated much of the aforementioned environmental issues, which were forwarded to the Executive Committee for discussion and vote. It continues to track a variety of countywide issues, including forestry and large-scale developments and needs more members to take an active role.

We hope you’ve been enjoying our recent rainy weather—however, the drought is not over yet, so please keep up the awesome water conservation efforts!