Comments from the Chair
Charter amendments will reform our public utilities
Our local San Antonio area (Alamo) Sierra Club group has joined with other like-minded groups, in two separate coalitions, to Put the “Public” Back in our Public Utilities. Please visit the SAWS Accountability Act website for a City charter amendment proposal to reform SAWS. In addition, you can visit the group's Facebook page. Vista Ridge may be a “done deal” but its poisons continue to pollute our local governance.
This amendment is a call to reform SAWS Governance by:
- cutting CEO salary to something reasonable,
- enforcing term limits on Board members,
- establishing ethics and lobbying rules for SAWS, and
- establishing independent audit requirements for huge projects like Vista Ridge.
We have joined with the like-minded Our Power Coalition to overhaul CPS management, removing the Board of Trustees and putting power directly in the hands of City Council, with an Advisory Commission providing technical and policy assistance on all aspects of CPS operations.
We must rein in mismanagement and climate denial at CPS. We can no longer tolerate CPS polluting our air, harming our health and destroying our climate. The time to act to regain control of our public utilities is now. 20,000 signatures, by registered San Antonio voters, are needed to put each amendment on our SA Municipal elections ballot in May, 2021. Let’s “Put the Public Back in Our Public Utilities!”
Texas nuke waste dump returns
This issue is back again. Waste Control Specialists (WCS) (now calling themselves Interim Storage Partners (ISP) in partnership with Orano, another nuclear company) wants to transport nuclear waste across the country and store it in West Texas and/or Eastern New Mexico.
We oppose this “interim storage” of nuclear waste. If waste gets shipped there for “interim storage”, there is a high risk that it will become de facto permanent storage.
But the site will not be designed for thousands of years of required permanent isolation from the human and natural environment like proper permanent storage. Once “out of site and out of mind” Congress will have little inclination to spend the billions of dollars required to develop a truly permanent geologic storage site, and to fund thousands of loads transporting this extremely hazardous material around the country a second time
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) needs to hear that we millions, living along the transport routes for this “Mobile Fukushima”, do not consent.
Send your comments opposing nuke waste dump
Comments in opposition to this dangerous, expensive, and unnecessary proposal are needed by November 3rd. Go online to quickly and easily send a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Alternatively, email your comments to WCS_CISF_EIS@nrc.gov. Reference Docket ID NRC-2016-0231 in your message.
I encourage you to read the full-length Draft Environmental Impact Statement or the 20-page overview. Also, see the Federal Register posting, Interim Storage Partners Consolidated Interim Storage Facility Project, and check out the No Nuclear Waste! website.
Please participate and speak out at NRC webinars and public meetings
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold meetings regarding the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for WCS' application to store deadly nuclear waste in Texas. Full meeting info is available from these links or go to the No Nuclear Waste! website.
There is great recent media coverage in this Ft. Worth Star-Telegram article: Nuclear waste could travel through Dallas-Fort Worth if West Texas plan is approved. Yay! Thanks Lon Burnam and Susybelle Gosslee! Contact Karen Hadden SEED Coalition, 512-797-8481, for further information.
by Terry Burns, M.D., Alamo Group ChairAn Evening with Celina Montoya, Democratic Candidate for Texas House District 121
Celina Montoya knows that climate change is happening, and the implications are significant. As she says, “This is not a partisan issue and we have to fight against such characterizations. Texas is a leader in wind and solar energy, and we can remain an energy leader in the 21st century by investing in renewable energies and creating green jobs. If we want clean air and water for our children to breathe and drink, it means we must be serious about regulating emissions and holding corporations and individuals accountable with real penalties when they pollute our environment. We must take climate change into account as we plan for the future and engage with scientists who are studying the effects of climate change and the human activities that lead to it.”
Tuesday, October 20th
6:00 pm
Zoom teleconference
About our Speaker
This is Celina’s second race against Steve Allison, to whom she lost in in 2018 by only a small margin. Celina is a graduate of Alamo Heights High School, and Northwest University where she earned a degree in journalism.
She has been a reporter for Texas Public Radio, and started Literacy San Antonio, one of many nonprofits with which she has been involved. As VP of Community and Government Relations at a local business, she has experience negotiating with state and local governments for small business legislation. Issues of importance to her include fully funding public education, helping small businesses with long term strategic growth, investing in work force and infrastructure growth, and especially expanding health care for uninsured Texans, veterans, and special needs children.
Please join us and Celina Montoya on ZOOM (complete details are below)
Informal meet and greet: 6:00 - 6:15 pm
Announcements: 6:15 - 6:30 pm
Program: 6:30 - 8:00 pm
Zoom link: https://sierraclub.zoom.us/j/93300351100?pwd=QjdRd0syQlZQdjVRdFdHaWVCbzluUT09
Meeting ID: 933 0035 1100
Passcode: 875772
As always, this meeting is free and open to the public. A printable PDF version of this announcement is here. We look forward to seeing you on October 20th!
Additional Zoom meeting details
Zoom link: https://sierraclub.zoom.us/j/93300351100?pwd=QjdRd0syQlZQdjVRdFdHaWVCbzluUT09
Meeting ID: 933 0035 1100
Passcode: 875772
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A Return Trip to Mount Rainier National Park
On my way back from Olympic National Park in August, 2019 I did a few more hikes in Mount Rainier National Park.
At Mowich Lake campground, I talked to a guy older than myself who said he had done everything on the east side of the Canadian Rockies, and then did the west. He was going to day hike the Spray Park loop, 15 miles from Mowich Lake and back, with a total elevation gain of 5800'. This goes from Mowich Lake across Spray Park down to the Carbon River and around over Ipsut Pass.
Instead I did the hike to Tolmie Peak, which is pictured below. My excuse not to do the former, though I had planned to, was I had already done the southern half of the loop twice, on the Wonderland Trail. Actually I was rather tired and wasn't looking forward to that much of a challenge.
There was some discussion and pictures about the Wonderland Trail (a 92-mile loop, total elevation gain 22,000') in the June, 2017 and August, 2019 issues of this newsletter. Here is the detailed park map on which these places can be located. Mowich Lake is to the northwest; Comet Falls (below) is to the southwest.
Another popular route is the Northern Loop Trail, a 41 mile hike from Mowich Lake east across Berkeley Park and back. This is nicely done as a figure-eight, crossing Carbon River in the middle, and includes the Spray Park Loop mentioned above.
If you instead start and end at Sunrise to the east, this is 48 mile hike. The latter option includes 22 miles of the Wonderland Trail.
The hike to Comet Falls is very popular (2nd picture). Most of the traffic is only to Comet Falls, though the trail continues to Van Trump Park (3rd picture; unfortunate name) and further to Mildred Point (4th picture). The trailhead is not far west of Paradise, the most popular part of the park.
The Pandemic of Climate Change
If you think the current COVID-19 pandemic is frightening, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You should consider COVID-19 a dress rehearsal for the big one: Climate Change.
How is Climate Change like COVID-19? Four big ways.
- Like COVID-19, Climate Change is going to kill a lot of us. Not all of us, but a lot of us and more of the poor, the old, the health-compromised, people of color. How? A warming climate brings with it a host of assassins. First, there’s the heat itself. On our current path, by 2100, San Antonio will experience 100-degree temperatures from 55-100 days each year. Many days will be above 110. Think people won’t die? Over the past three (warming) decades, heat has caused more U.S. deaths that any weather-related hazard. In the past century, the hot season in Phoenix has expanded by six weeks.
A warming climate also brings new bugs. They migrate up from the tropics. In San Antonio, this means increases in insect-borne diseases, such as Zika virus, which can result in severe birth defects, and dengue fever, which kills 40,000 people each year worldwide. In recent years, both diseases have migrated north to make appearances in San Antonio.
And, with a hotter climate, wildfires will increase, as we have seen recently in California, where more than 200 people have died in wildfires in the last three years. Seventy miles east of San Antonio, the Bastrop fire in 2011 killed four people. Recent wildfires in Australia killed an estimated 1 billion animals. This will only get worse. - Like COVID-19, Climate Change is an invisible killer. You can see its effects, but you can’t see IT. You can see a Hurricane Katrina. You can see that it killed over 1,800 people. But you can’t see the cause. You can see a Camp Fire and know that it killed over 80 people. But you can’t see the cause. You can know that a 2010 heat wave in Russia (Russia!) killed an estimated 56,000 people, but you can’t see the cause. But scientists tell us that hurricanes and fires and heat waves such as these will become ever more severe and frequent because of climate change. The cause may be invisible, but we KNOW what it is.
- Like COVID-19, Climate Change gets worse if you ignore it. Allowing CO2 to build up in our atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is like allowing a virus to spread unchecked among the world’s population. By the time it creates enough of a problem to scare you, it’s too late. You can’t reverse it. Like the frog that stays too long in a pot of warming water, you’re already cooked – literally.
- Like COVID-19, Climate Change takes a group effort to defeat it. In order to kill this “virus,” all the nations of the world must chip in and stop burning coal, natural gas, and oil products. Unfortunately, the United States should be leading this effort and setting the example, but we’re not. We’re relaxing environmental standards, we’ve withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accords, and our oil companies have been drilling as if there is no tomorrow – which will become a self-fulfilling prophesy if they don’t stop.
Climate change is a slow-moving, virtually invisible, world-wide pandemic that will be more lethal than COVID-19. But unlike COVID-19, we have the cure for this virus and we don’t need to develop a vaccine. It will take a massive effort, but we can do it, the world can do it. We must work together to stop burning fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy.
Scientists tell us - if we want to keep this pandemic in check -- we have until the end of this decade to cut our fossil fuel emissions by 50 percent, and that’s just a good start. The question is – as it is with the COVID-19 pandemic – do we have the discipline, the determination, the willingness to sacrifice for the common good, and the patience that will be needed to meet this challenge.
by Wendell Fuqua, Alamo Group member
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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