Comments from the Chair

1. Strategic Planning: Our local Sierra Club Group is planning a Strategic Planning event in the near future, probably on a Saturday in June. We are developing agenda topics and looking at dates and locations. We wish to develop new leadership, new engagement, new ideas, new strategies of involvement, new priorities. Please submit your thoughts to me or any other ExCom members. Please plan to participate! YOU ARE NEEDED! YOU MAKE THE DIFFERENCE! We want everyone to get involved!
2. Local Leadership: We have recently lost the dedicated help of two of our long time trusted leaders: Olivia Eisenhauer passed away recently. Olivia contributed a lot to our Group and especially to its Political Committee. Gay Wright is dealing with serious illness. Gay has been vital to our outreach tabling efforts at various events in our area for a number of years; she has helped also in many ways on Conservation and Political Committees. We are very thankful for her many years of work for our local environment, and hoping for her speedy return to good health.
3. Texas Legislature: Please check Lone Star Chapter resources on bills we are tracking (https://www.sierraclub.org/texas/lobby-team-resources). May is the last full month of the 2019 Texas Legislature. Our environment and local communities are at high risk. Texas politicians--predominately Republicans in recent years--are working hard to destroy our rural lands and our urban centers with their “NO REGULATIONS IN TEXAS” signs welcoming every polluter wishing to despoil our state. National home builder corporations are encouraged to scrape landscapes bare to put up cookie cutter developments with no regard for those living down hill and down stream. Oil and gas drilling are encouraged in every neighborhood, with no concerns for local risks of explosion, fire, fumes etc. Pipelines are placed anywhere and everywhere. Landowners better take what they are offered or they will simply lose everything through eminent domain. Our Legislature is concerned that the keeper of our nuclear wastes is forced to pay fees--HORRORS. If Waste Control Specialists (WCS) ever goes bankrupt and leaves the nearly eternal radioactive waste for us to clean up, the money for that can come from somewhere else! Cement quarries and aggregate mining plants pop up all around the Hill Country, and neighbors can complain about noise, dust, air pollution, traffic safety, but it won’t do them a bit of good. Our Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and our Texas Railroad Commission (regulating pipelines and oil and gas) fill office space. Legislation may ban “subsidies” to renewable energy that place oil, gas, coal and nuclear at “unfair” disadvantage. The history of $400B+ (NOT COUNTING THE DEFENSE DEPT) spent supporting these old industries is to be ignored. Worst, and probably not finally our Legislature wishes to make any protest of any kind--and any group such as Sierra Club--speaking in support of any protest against any so called “critical infrastructure” subject to fines and imprisonment such that anyone convicted would certainly be removed from civic life for the rest of their mortal life.
4. City of San Antonio (COSA) Municipal elections: I write this prior to election results. We have endorsed several local candidates (https://www.turntexasgreen.org). Some that were endorsed previously were not endorsed this time due to their failure to respond to our efforts to communicate with them. San Antonio has many environmental and social justice problems that require GOVERNMENT attention and will NOT be addressed by wishful thinking for private sector intervention. We need a City Council that will provide leadership on these issues, some of the most important of which are discussed below.
5. CLIMATE ACTION AND ADAPTATION PLAN (CAAP): Many progressive local organizations, including Sierra Club, spent many hours helping to develop the City’s draft CAAP. We were very disappointed, but not at all surprised when, after the release of the draft CAAP, the business “community”--invited and encouraged to participate in the CAAP process from the very beginning--suddenly spoke out publicly in opposition to the CAAP, declaring its goals too ambitious, its implementation too costly. How nice it must be to have the money and power to come in at the last minute and veto an 18 month public engagement effort. While dozens of cities around the country--large and small, in all geographic regions--already have and are implementing their CAAP, we are stopped on the threshold by THE POWERS THAT BE! Only some small business groups and the West SA Chamber of Commerce have spoken in favor of CAAP. Large groups like the other area Chambers, the SA Chamber, Natural Gas Association and the SA Manufacturers Association have shown remarkable ignorance as well as deceit in their public statements. The Mayor apparently was wise to delay the CAAP vote from this spring to next fall, because HE DID NOT HAVE THE VOTES to pass CAAP. Our Council once again wavers before THE POWERS THAT BE. We must hope we get a Mayor and City Council that can pass CAAP this fall, and we must REDOUBLE OUR EFFORTS to overcome blind, selfish, short sighted opposition. The COST OF BUSINESS AS USUAL WILL BE FAR GREATER THAN CAAP!!!
6. SAWS: SAWS should have a new Board of Trustee (BOT) appointment this month, as Chairman Berto Guerra’s second term expires. Mr. Guerra, however, chooses to remain in place, apparently until the Vista Ridge (VR) water flows, a year from now, making SA truly ‘WATERFUL”! SAWS is also in Austin again this legislative session, lobbying for water permit changes to ensure its control over VR water regardless of the needs of the local residents and their Groundwater Conservation District (GCD) (again violating earlier made promises to not do this...). SAWS is also seeking Austin help in changing the rules for our own Edwards Aquifer (EA) so that SAWS would be allowed to export EA water beyond the limits of the Edwards Aquifer Authority (EAA). Thus SAWS continues its policy course (without citizen or City Council input) of growing into a regional water purveyor throughout the Hill Country and IH-35 corridor.
7. CPS ENERGY: CPS remains conspicuously absent from the CAAP plans, and CEO Paula Gold-Williams (also this year’s Chair of the SA Chamber of Commerce!) continues to promote CPS use of coal and natural gas for decades to come. CPS continues to promote a now mythic past leadership in renewable energy and energy efficiency, which is becoming more and more remote from current reality. CPS promotes its “Flexible Path” of NOT committing to ANY near term future improvements in energy efficiency, demand management, or renewable energy. CPS continues also to stall on releasing any cost analysis data for implications of closing the Spruce coal plants, data originally promised to CAAP committees in November 2018, then in January 2019, and now, who knows?
8. Mobility: We have had many opportunities, and many plans to address our mobility challenges in San Antonio. Groups like the Koch brothers, the anti-toll and anti-rail folks, the auto dealers association and their local billionaires--these have all had a hand in helping us achieve gridlock. We continue to have roadway envy for our neighbors in Houston and Dallas. We love the look of asphalt and concrete, and our local aggregates and highway construction operations certainly love the profits from endless road work. Even better than Houston and Dallas, we have successfully kept our highways FREE, free from tolls, subsidized by the vast majority who never travel these “free”ways. Our legislature, instead of increasing the decades old gas tax that no longer begins to fund our “free”ways, also seeks to penalize those driving highly efficient and electric vehicles for not buying more gas. Our bus system VIA gets half the funds as other Texas transit systems, and we are as sprawled as Houston and Dallas, our vehicle miles traveled, and single occupancy rates as bad as our neighbors. This situation not only produces gridlock, it also produces bad air quality. Our economic segregation keeps our poor out of vehicles, or at least out of clean burning newer, more fuel efficient vehicles. Our poor are forced to depend on our inadequate bus system, and also tend to live closest to our coal and gas plants, and our gridlocked freeways, and suffer most from our worsening air quality. Our latest “plan” attempting to address these problems is “ConnectSA”, a collaboration of COSA, Bexar County and VIA. I wish I could be optimistic that this plan will result in a real change in our decades long reality (a “plan” by any other name) of endless sprawl, total dependence on roadways for single person occupied vehicles, leading to the paving of the Hill Country, the pollution (soon) of our main and best water source (EA) resulting in future billion dollar treatment costs, and of course the exciting merger of SA and Austin into one big megalopolis, or “metroplex” as we like to say here, aspiring to grow up to big D, as in DFW status. THE POWERS THAT BE see this very bright future for us. Pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users always come in last.
9. IMAGINE: It may be time finally for San Antonio citizens to imagine a different future than that dished out to us by THE POWERS THAT BE. If we can’t imagine anything different it is unlikely we will achieve anything different than what we have been creating for the last several decades. Some are VERY happy with this result, having profited greatly. The large majority of SA citizens left in economic stagnation and segregation are used to being ignored and suppressed. The struggle to achieve a more equitable, environmentally and socially just and sustainable future begins again every day. Climate change brings new urgency to solving these old, old problems. THE TIME FOR ACTION IS NOW. OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE DEMANDS IT!
10. Check out information about our annual Lone Star Chapter awards for environmental service in Texas. Our own long time Austin LSC ExCom Rep Hector Gonzalez has served for decades as LSC Treasurer and was recognized for his long dedication and service. https://www.sierraclub.org/texas/blog/2019/04/meet-our-2019-environmental-award-winners
11. National SC election results can be found here: https://www.sierraclub.org/board/election
12. Lone Star Lobby Day Part Two: Wed, May 15, 2019  11:30 PM  - 5:00 PM. Please get to Austin for this! Training and issue orientation will be provided, directions and everything to make it a fairly easy, interesting and even enjoyable experience. Meeting with elected officials and staff has a BIG impact. Car pooling will be available. For details and sign up: https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7010Z000001aGPFQA2.

A Few Colorado Pictures

The Maroon Bells seen from Maroon Lake, Maroon Bells Wilderness in White River National Forest, near Aspen. Said to be one of the most photographed views in Colorado. July 2013.

In the area above, you can hike the 27-mile Four Pass Loop trail (across West Maroon, Frigid Air, Trail Rider and Buckskin passes), which begins at Maroon Lake. The loop continues to the left of North Maroon Peak (14,014', right center), and Maroon Peak (14,081', center), towards West Maroon Pass.

I was planning on doing the loop in 4 days, but bailed at the base of the Bells due to a gear error (never mind what). The Bells are also known as The Deadly Bells due to the unusually challenging nature of the rock for technical climbing. However, no climbing is required on the loop trail. Because of its popularity a permit is required; you must take a shuttle from town and carry a bear canister (provided).

The Green and Yampa rivers in Dinosaur National Monument, northwestern Colorado. The confluence is behind Steamboat Rock, which is the fin extending to the right from left center. The Green arrives from the left (north) and the Yampa from upper center (east). Taken at Observation Point, an easy 2.5 mi RT hike from the end of Harper's Corner road. October 2015.

The picture above better shows the location of a proposed Green River dam than one in the article Blast From the Past: The Plan for a Dam at Dinosaur National Monument (February, 2019) . You can see it would have been at the bottom left of this image by correlating with a map from this Wikipedia article.

Engineer Mountain, 12,927', San Juan National Forest. When I took this picture there were a few hikers coming down the ridge center. This was on a pleasant 6 mi out-and-back to a meadow past the peak from Coal Bank Pass. North of Durango. October 2015.

A view from Mt. Democrat, 14,148', Pike National Forest. Here's a panoramic view from the summit. A moderate (excepting for the altitude) 6 mi loop includes two additional 14ers, Mts. Lincoln and Bross, from Kite Lake campground. South of Dillon. July 2013.

Calleta Moth Cocoon

Four rattles the color of bone
dangle by single loops of silk
on twigs of Texas silverleaf.

It is winter.
The government is closed.
Garbage piles at National Parks.
Families huddle at the border.

Yet this morning
I can still be held spellbound
by a two-inch pendant,
the gray-pearl cocoon
of a calleta silk moth.

The ghosts of my hands
slip into her sleeping vessel.
She is curled and pulsing.
A trellis of insect bone
holds the black rose
she is becoming.
Molecules paint a stripe
of moonlight across her
developing wings,
scatter sapphires,
circle her plush body
with a bright red collar.

I tuck my human frailty
inside of her, knowing there is
nothing too small to adore.

Some night she will awaken.
The spread of her black wings
will be soft as petals,
her nuptial flight will shift
the season and shake the stars.

Come, she will say.
It is not too late.
Come, resurrect the world.

Outings: The Call of the Wild

Visit the Alamo Sierra Club Outings page on Meetup for detailed information about all of our upcoming Sierra Club Outings.

The Alamo Sierran Newsletter

Richard Alles, Editor
Published by The Alamo Group of the Sierra Club, P.O. Box 6443, San Antonio, TX 78209, AlamoSierraClub.org.
The Alamo Group is one of 13 regional groups within the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club.

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