I have to give big kudo's to Richard Noss, Jacob Griscom and RailBridge Cellars for hosting this event. The facility is fantastic for groups and the wine was surprisingly good. I say surprisingly, because being a bit of a wine snob, I wound have never thought I would like a wine our of Sacramento. I did. As for the featured speaker, Cecilia Jensen, I have nothing positive to say. She stated many things, that I’m sure in hindsight, she probably wishes she did not say.

Here are the top four tidbits I picked out:

A: She was hired as the sustainability manager for the County despite, not having any experience in sustainability.

B: She has no staff and no authority within the County to do ANYTHING.

C: She admitted that for the County, "the bottom line is ALWAYS about money." Meaning that in the end, revenue and taxation will always be more important to the County than environmental issues or sustainability. (Also meaning that urban sprawl, and the revenue raised by building cheap tract houses, is more important than the negative effects it creates on the environment)

D: That she and the County fought the federal government on NPDES enforcement. NPDES stands for National Pollution Discharge Elimination System. It is a list of federal regulations that regulate storm water runoff. Storm water, you know the stuff that mostly falls from the sky, and goes through industrial sites, falls on roadways, or is simply drained into the storm water system after being used for industrial or commercial purposes, and which also carries toxic metals like mercury and lead, as well as a myriad of toxic petrochemicals into the drains…which all lead directly to the Sacramento River, which then feeds the Delta ecosystem. Yeah that storm water… Well, the federal government actually does some good occasionally, and enforcing NPDES is one of the good things they do. Well, in Sacramento, the local government wants to pollute our waterways, and they don’t want the federal government breathing down their neck while they do it.

Now after hearing Ms. Jensen drearily blather on for what seemed like an eternity, and thinking I would much rather be having a colonoscopy than having to listen to her, members of the audience had a chance to pose some questions. I was excited to hear these questions; I had high expectations from this crowd, after all they were all active and involved environmentalists weren’t they?... No they weren’t, or at least as could have been told by the questions that were asked… In fact, not one person asked a question on sustainability.

Well I waited until the very end to ask my two questions, after hearing the pointless questions and vapid and virtually unresponsive responses, I started to feel like my questions were going to go over as well as me taking a steaming dump in the middle of someone’s Christmas dinner table…

Question One: ( Asked mostly as a statement, but a question at the end..paraphrased…) “I see that the County hired you as the sustainability manager, yet gave you no staff and no authority to do anything…How can you as the sustainability manager defend the County as it annexes tens of thousands of acres of land, promotes urban sprawl, and continues to harm the environment by building tract houses and strip malls. I went ahead with my second questions and asked her to respond to both…

Question Two: ‘I find it offensive that the County would actually fight the federal government on enforcement of NPDES violations…NPDES was designed to protect the Sacramento river and the Delta…How can you defend wanting less enforcement of environmental laws… She stared into the crowd for at least ten seconds….blank stare…

I stated .. Don’t you have any responses to my questions? She offered nothing, I believe it was Richard Noss who stated…”You didn’t ask a question.”  Well I believe I had, but regardless, I repeated my questions just to make sure she got it…

As for Urban Sprawl… She had NO RESPONSE AT ALL. She mumbled something about staff reports and sending them to the Supervisors…and then said…I have no response… As for wanting to reduce NPDES enforcement..she stated that the “ the NPDES laws were designed for cities like Los Angeles, and we felt it was unfair to enforce them in Sacramento, like they would in LA….” Well, she was completely wrong… NPDES was designed for EVERY community in America…pollution affects every watershed and every river and everyone’s groundwater equally…but it especially affects watersheds like the California Delta…and Sacramento sits on the banks of this watershed…. It was clear that Sacramento County just did not want to impose strict regulations on businesses…AKA the folks who donate to Supervisors campaigns…

All in all, I got the exact answers I expected from a County bureaucrat; mealy mouth and meaningless. I could not have asked for better responses actually…she was as honest as she could be….”I have no response” to we want fewer environmental rules in Sacramento.

While I applaud Richard Noss and Jacob Griscom for organizing and hosting the Sustainability forums, I have some constructive criticisms of their efforts. The single biggest hurdle to protecting the environment in Sacramento is the inability of environmentalists to organize in Sacramento. As one persona stated last month at the forum… “The lack of effectiveness of the environmental movement in Sacramento.” Is the biggest hurdle to overcome.

Noss & Griscom, started the Sustainability forum as an independent movement…this was a mistake; they should have organized it with ECOS. We need a united front in Sacramento, not a number of fractured and ineffective groups…mostly fighting for the same cause. Organization is always the most important part of any effort. I suggest rethinking your strategy, if you have one, and bring as many likeminded organizations and people together under one united umbrella.

Don’t allow Trojan horses to be involved with your efforts. There are many people, companies and/or special interests that will call themselves environmentalists, which will infiltrate your organization and control the agenda. They already have started; you are now apparently partners with the Sacramento Tree Foundation, the largest environmental Trojan horse in Sacramento. STF was started and is controlled completely by developers. Ray Tretheway, a City Councilman, a self proclaimed environmentalist, Executive Director of STF, is one of the most strident leaders of urban sprawl in Sacramento. Tretheway got into office by suing over environmental efforts, then dropping the lawsuit, only to become close friends with all of the developers, which put him into office and pays his Tree Foundation salary …He is the perfect Trojan horse, but he is just one of many in Sacramento…many of the others attend your Sustainability forums, and they will infiltrate your organization if they haven’t not already and control your entire agenda…if they haven’t already.

Finally, Richard Noss stated to me he is not interested in becoming politically active with his environmental group… My only response is…Then why are you doing this? To drum up business for yourself and Griscom? It appears that both of you are in businesses that make money off trying to appear Green… The ONLY avenue for environmentalists to make any change is through political pressure and activism, there is simply no other way…politicians only perform under two circumstances…out of greed or fear..Nothing else motivates them. You can’t buy them, they are already owned by developers…but you can make them fear you at the ballot box. So get active, get political or get out of the way. We don’t need another Trojan horse distracting those that truly care about the environment.