We welcome all members and non-members to join us on Monday as we welcome Andrew Bargy, Owner of Seven Cities Rickshaws discussing rickshaws and the environment in Hampton Roads and Susan French, Extension Agent, Agriculture and Natural Resources Horticulture, Virginia Tech discussing Conservation in Belize.

Please join the Chesapeake Bay Group Sierra Club at the Meyera Oberndorf Library (former Central Library) next Wednesday, Sept 2, 2009 @ 7:00 p.m.** We will be welcoming three stand up delegate candidates to our meeting to discuss where they stand on environmental issues! It is crucial to all local residents to be informed on the delegates that we elect, so come on by and see what they have to say to us!
Topic: A night to get to know the local candidates environmental stances.

Joe Bouchard- Delegate Joe Bouchard is running for re-election to Virginia’s House of Delegates, 83rd District. He is one of Virginia’s true environmental heroes and one of 14 House candidates that the Sierra Club has “fast tracked” with its early endorsement. We in the environmental community have come to know and depend on Joe as one of Virginia’s top environmental champions. We must do everything we can to help return him to Virginia’s General Assembly.http://www.delegatebouchard.com

Peter Schmidt – Peter Schmidt is running for the Virginia House of Delegates, 82nd District. He was first elected to office in 2002 as an At-Large Councilman on the Virginia Beach City Council. During that time council unanimously passed the Schmidt Ordinance, a budgeting process to keep government spending and property tax increases under control. http://schmidtfordelegate.com/

Bobby Mathieson – Delegate Bobby Mathieson is running for re-election as our delegate for the 21st House District. Bobby began his career in Virginia Beach and served 27 years on the police force, working street patrol, vice and narcotics. He even served as the school resource officer at his sons’ middle school, enhancing community relations. http://www.bobby21.com/

**Please note the change in date from the first Monday of each month to the first Wednesday in September. Wednesday is not our normal meeting night.**

Please pass around to any interested parties! See you next Wednesday night!

Come support our fellow environmental organizations–The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and The Nature Conservancy.  All Sierrans are welcome to join our group on Saturday for the annual Clean the Bay Day! We will be meeting at the Trails Center at First Landing State Park on Saturday, June 6th at 8:45 a.m.  You will need to email ctbd@cbf.org to register.   For more information click on the link below.

cbf.org/clean

In addition, the Nature Conservancy is looking for snorkeling or scuba diving volunteers for the Worlds Largest Seagras Restoration!  They will be collecting seagrass through June 11, 2009.  For more information please email Jennifer Rich at jrich@tnc.org. or visit the link below:

www.nature.org/seagrassrestoration

This week, Democratic leadership in Congress will offer a compromise energy package that will include both clean energy investments and some expanded drilling measures. It absolutely must pass!

Folks, we are seriously caught between a rock and a hard place here!  As Al Gore points out, “[W]e face a stark choice: subsidize old, dirty energy or invest in new, clean energy. This should be easy, but the influence of the oil lobby is deep — they’ve already spent more than $100 million in lobbying and advertising this year.”

Unfortunately, that “Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less.” stupidity is winning over too many voters and too many vulnerable and Blue Dog Democrats in Congress.  Democratic leadership has thus far been able to reject all the Big Oil driven “drill only” energy proposals, that focused too much on dirty energy resources that helps the oil industry but does nothing to lower gas prices, protect consumers, or solve our energy crisis and only provided lip service to clean renewable energy.

But now our backs are up against a wall.

The moratorium on offshore drilling expires on September 30!!!

Let me repeat… The moratorium on offshore drilling expires on September 30!!!

Read the rest of this entry »

“The sky is falling”, proclaimed the City of Newport News in 1997 projecting that Newport News Waterworks users would be pulling 61.2 million gallons per day from the Peninsula’s water system by 2010. Thus they hatched a plot to built the King William Reservoir.

Never mind that the King William Reservoir would destroy 1,526 acres of a highly diverse wetland system including more than 400 acres of forested wetlands - the single greatest wetlands impact on the East Coast since 1972, when federal restrictions were imposed. The reservoir would destroy animal habitat including a 17-nest great blue heron rookery and disturb two federally listed threatened plant species. The massive water withdrawals from the Mattaponi River would change the river’s salinity, threatening spawning of fish like shad and the river’s basic ecology.

And never mind that Native American Rights would be harmed. The reservoir would fall within a three mile buffer zone, violating a 1677 treaty with Virginia Native American tribes and would disturb over 100 documented Native American archeological sites. The annual shad spawning run, which been a part of their tribal culture for over 15,000 years, would be finished.

The King William Reservoir is now costing over $300 million — current ratepayers throughout the entire area would be saddled with that cost. On Tuesday, Newport News City Council will vote on borrowing $20 million more to continue buying land for the reservoir. They do so just as other localities, like King William County that signed onto to the agreement to build the reservoir and share in the costs of acquiring the land, are one-by-one backing out of the agreement, citing concern with the “uncertainty” surrounding the reservoir.

That uncertainty has now grown to include evidence that the water use projections are completely off… a whopping 40% off to be exact. From the Daily Press:

Two reports from the Alliance to Save the Mattaponi show that the region’s water use has stayed stable, and slightly declined, over the past 15 years, and remains about 17.7 million gallons per day lower than the 2010 estimate.

“Newport News really missed the mark,” said Glen Besa, the Virginia director of the Sierra Club who coordinated the release of the reports Thursday.

“They’re really significantly off the mark,” Besa said. “That’s a 40% error.”

Ouch! Perhaps it is now this new certainty surrounding the King William Reservoir that will finally kill plans to obliterate the Mattaponi. Nothing is more certain than not wanting to pay a whole lot of money for something that’s not needed in the first place, eh?!

So let’s be frank here, Mayor Frank… why do you really want this monstrous reservoir built? So far it’s obvious that the Mattaponi is expendable as is the money otherwise still in your constituents’ wallets. For who’s interest does the King William Reservoir serve? Anybody want to take a wild guess here?

Click here and learn how you can help save the Mattaponi once and for all.

Peter Galuszka in today’s issue of Bacon’s Rebellion provides a transcript from his luncheon meeting last week with Mr. Big Oil, or MBO as he calls him.

“Mr. Big Oil spilled the beans: Offshore oil drilling means bupkis for Virginia. He ginned up the flap here in the Old Dominion to win support for opening up California, Alaska and the Gulf where the big barrels are.”

Read the rest here.