Comments from the Chair

I'm retiring as Alamo Group Chair

I am completing my second three year term as Chair of the SA (Alamo) Group. My self-imposed term limits say this is long enough and it is time for others to step forward, so I did not run for reelection to the Executive Committee (ExCOM).

It has been an honor to lead this organization of about three thousand members who care about the local and regional environment. It has been a privilege to work with the other ExCOM members and volunteers who help in other capacities. They are all dedicated to improving our local quality of life, caring about and working on the full gamut of issues ranging from endangered species to environmental justice, clean air to transit, climate change to housing and mobility, utility rates to water and energy conservation, and the list goes on. I am so glad to have gotten to know these wonderful people in our city.

I know our local volunteers will continue to work to improve life here in SA and surrounding areas, helping to build a sustainably healthy and equitable San Antonio. We have generally worked through strong consensus and I am confident that, although directions may change as the challenges change, our leadership will represent us all proudly, honestly, and with strong science.

Vote in Alamo Group elections before Jan. 7th

Please be sure to vote before January 7th! Our ExCOM has four candidates for three positions. All are excellent choices, and I am confident our leadership will find great volunteer opportunities for all.

The Lone Star Chapter ExCOM also has elections. Both ballots are tied together on the same electronic message. This saves us all thousands of dollars in paper ballot expenses. Your vote is vital! Please find your ballot or post card and do your part for Sierra Club.

You can vote in both Chapter and Group elections using this webpage. Problems? Please email the Lone Star Chapter or call us at 512-477-1729.

New year calls for new club leadership

Our local group depends on its volunteers for almost everything it does. Volunteers keep up our website and social media. Volunteers run our Conservation Committee, which coordinates all of our local environmental education and policy work to protect and improve our community, and also surrounding areas like the extensive quarry developments along Hwy 46, and protection of our Edwards Aquifer (EA).

Volunteers enable us to work with like minded coalitions to reform our water and energy utilities (see below). Volunteers will in January begin work in our Political Committee to review City Council and Mayoral candidates, research their records, formulate questions and interview these candidates, leading to endorsement decisions and campaign work during the spring to help achieve our goals. May 1st, 2021 is Municipal Election Day. We need good candidates elected who will support more Climate Change Action, more utility accountability, fair utility rate structures, EA protection, safe mobility choices and shutting down Spruce coal plants before the end of this decade.

Covid in 2020 largely shut down our outings programs. This was especially damaging to our well-developed youth outings program. It is very important to expose young people to the natural world around us, for their own understanding, joy, health and spirit. It is also essential so the next generation will recognize our connectedness and work to preserve it from the forces of greed, exploitation and waste that are currently so rampant in our society. Our youth outings program leaders have retired. We need new youth outings leadership so we are ready to go whenever Covid restrictions finally ease.

We are eager to restart our adult outings programs then too, which I hope to have more time to enjoy! Volunteers also run our Speaker Programs which we have done virtually but will benefit from in person meetings again in 2021, hopefully.

Step up to reform your public utilities

We are members of SAWS Accountability Act coalition and Our Power Coalition seeking to reform our publicly owned water and energy utilities. Our coalition volunteers have spoken to thousands of area residents about our unfair, unresponsive utilities. Many thousands of signatures on our petitions are a strong sign of civic frustration and unhappiness with our utilities, despite self serving “survey” results promulgated especially by CPS.

There is still no indication that CPS or SAWS is willing to make serious changes to address these issues. The Chambers of Commerce and like business powers are out in force lobbying against our efforts.

Our “homegrown petition drive” to place the SAWS Accountability Act on the May, 2021 ballot received word on Christmas eve that SAWS is taking legal action to squash our petition even before it’s filed! SAWS filed the action on December 10th, but delayed posting legal notice until the very last moment on December 23. Luckily, a friend to all who care about San Antonio’s growing poverty rate, Fernando Centeno, reads legal notices and alerted us to SAWS’ action. SAWS was clearly hoping this would slip by in Austin without any notice in San Antonio.

A hearing is scheduled on Monday, January 4th, before the 345th District Court in Travis County. We believe we are the only case on the docket.

Read this San Antonio Report article entitled, “In court filing on bond issues, SAWS takes aim at petition drive” by ace environmental writer, Brendan Gibbons.

The article teases out the most salient facts as to why SAWS uses our ratepayer dollars to hire big name international law firms to squash little us in our efforts to get some public accountability. We "the group launched a petition drive that would cap the SAWS CEO’s pay at 10 times that of the lowest-paid SAWS employee, ban lobbying by SAWS, and enforce existing term limits for SAWS board members”. Apparently our reasonable efforts are seen as a fundamental threat to status quo, which SAWS lawyers argue gives the Board authority to do virtually anything without regard for the public (the rightful owners of SAWS!). The petition also calls for an audit of Vista Ridge $3B pipeline. Are the big moneys worried something might show up??

This is why we need this charter amendment. They act like they own us, and go to such lengths to slap us down!

We need City Council and the Mayor to stand up for citizens and ratepayers, instead of the powerful business interests. We need them to show courage in this time of Covid crisis when our inequities are more glaring than ever. Our climate crisis cannot wait. We need real action from our city government and our utilities now. These will surely be major campaign issues during the spring elections. Council and Mayoral Candidates will have to take a position in support of--or against--real change. “Business as usual” is unacceptable. Leadership commitment is needed now. Our local Sierra Club will continue to be there speaking forcefully in support of climate and environmental justice and equity.

Our group needs your help!

1. Circulate the SAWS Act Petition. It’s all on our home page. Get them turned in to us BY MLK Day, January 18th.
2. Watch the hearing on Monday, January 4, at 10 am. We'll post a link on our website. (note: SAWS may be able to prevent streaming of this hearing in another slap at the public!)
3. Call the Mayor and City Council members and tell them: 1) to get SAWS to pull their legal action against this petition, 2 ) Pass as ordinance the provisions in the Charter Amendment NOW!, and 3) to put the SAWS Accountability Act on the ballot in May.

The sheer arrogance of SAWS toward its ratepayers and this city has to stop now!

Here comes the Texas Legislature

The Legislature begins its biannual meeting in January and ends by June. Budget shortfalls will put tremendous pressure on environmental issues, including our badly underfunded State Parks and wildlife protections.

Efforts are again expected that attack our tree protection ordinance. Every session tries to override local control ordinances preventing national builders from scraping out a lunar landscape to build on. They hate to bother preserving dozens of giant oaks and other trees that have been with us for over a century.

Efforts will also be made to further prop up our already heavily subsidized fossil fuel industries. Attacks are announced on electric vehicles also. TxDOT’s endless agenda of highway expansion is supposed to need still more money. Meanwhile funds for transit and non-highway options, already tiny in comparison, are under threat to get even smaller.

We also need a statewide plastic bag ban to save our oceans.

Local leaders failed to act on air pollution

It was gratifying that the very conservative federal 5th Court of Appeals rejected the Texas argument against the EPA, in which our Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) claimed that Bexar County air would be ozone compliant “but for” bad “foreign” air blowing over us from Mexico and elsewhere.

Our local Alamo Area Council of Governments (AACOG) and Alamo Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (AAMPO) joined in this Texas effort to protect business and oppose good health. Note this was the Trump EPA that was sued.

It is also evident that our failure to take real, rather than court, action on ozone in 2020 has resulted in our third year of non-compliance. So it is likely that the Biden EPA will be no more lenient than the Trump EPA, and that Bexar County will go into moderate non-compliance in 2021. This will invoke a whole new set of costly compliance rules and 20 years of reporting requirements. An unfortunate but necessary result, due to the endless stalling and politicking by local and state “leaders”.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Revisited

In January 2019 I was in Sevierville, Tennessee visiting an aunt under hospice care. My mother's family had grown up in the area and my grandfather had surveyed some of the roads near the park. A favorite outing for the family was to Cades Cove in the park. The trails in these pictures can be located on the park map, and here is the park website.

This visit was during a government shutdown, so I felt a little guilt wondering who was dealing with my impact on the park; unpaid volunteering staff? If there was an emergency, who would deal with it, unpaid rangers? There was a shutdown in 2018 with serious problems resulting at Joshua Tree National Park, as discussed in this newsletter May 2020.

This visit Cades Cove campground was open; the restrooms were heated and clean. I hauled out my trash along with what little micro-litter I could find. I waved at a ranger, who didn't wave back as they usually do. He likely was unpaid and just driving to his residence.

The first two pictures are on the Rich Mountain Loop Trail, 10.2 miles total north from Cades Cove campground. This is in the northwest corner of the park.

You can tell which way the wind was blowing when the snow fell the previous day.

The Rich Mountain Loop trail was likely a logging road prior to establishment of the park. This morning was an idyllic hike, no wind and not too cold.

The third picture is on the Albright Grove Loop Trail, about 5 miles total from the Madron Bald trailhead on the north side of the park. Albright Grove is one of the few bits of old growth forest in the park, as most of it had been logged off before creation of the park. In the June 2018 issue of this newsletter there were a couple early summer pictures in the park including one on this same trail.

A little impediment on the Albright Grove Loop trail. Must have fallen quite recently; it was about 4.5' diameter.

The last two pictures are from a hike south up to the Appalachian Trail from Cades Cove campground.

On the Anthony Creek Trail, so this should be Anthony Creek. A dip might be rather bracing.

On the Appalachian Trail looking southwest from Rocky Top. South on the trail towards Georgia is to the right, north towards Maine is behind and to the left. 12.8 miles round trip from Cades Cove campground on Anthony Creek Trail.

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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