Sustainactive

Download

sustainactive@sfgreens.org

April 2009

1 participants
2 discussions

Fox News Biodiesel Report Mentions Greens Opposition
by Eric Brooks 22 Apr '09

22 Apr '09

Hi all, We just got our first mention on Fox News (national) on our opposition to the Darling International biodiesel plant. (Apparently the reason a local issue in SF actually got national attention is that it is Earth Day, and the subject is controversial.) The reporter said that many environmentalists were strongly opposed to the plant because its type of biodiesel production could do more harm than good to the environment, and raised concerns about genetically engineered animals being produced for fuels. The 'Green Party' and PETA were specifically named as opponents, and the report finished up stating that opponents intend to pass legislation to require that biodiesel production remain strictly local and run by nonprofits. There were no clips of either opponents or proponents speaking, but the reporter who generated the piece that he is working to get a longer report on later today. If you want to watch for repeats of the report, Fox news is on SF cable channel 59. I'll keep you posted on new developments. cheers Eric Brooks -- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara

1 0

Taskforce Nails SF Utilities Commission For Email Cover-Up
by Eric Brooks 01 Apr '09

01 Apr '09

Hi all, We just got some big added leverage with which to pressure the City to stop waiting for the SF Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) and get going now on Clean Power SF. Joshua Arce and I filed a Sunshine Ordinance complaint against Barbara Hale and other SFPUC staff which won last week by an 8-0 vote of the Sunshine Ordinance Taskforce. The Sunshine Ordinance Taskforce has found the SFPUC staff guilty of purposely deleting emails, and then covering up those deletions by claiming the emails never existed; emails that Joshua and I called for under a strict Sunshine public records request involving the SFPUC staff's unreal promotion of a new polluting power plant in the Bayview Hunters Point. (The plant has has since been canceled due to great work by Our City, Brightline Defense Project, Sierra Club, the SF Green Party and many other groups.) The deleted emails, which we recovered, revealed clearly that Barbara Hale and her staff had been colluding with sympathetic staff of the California Independent System Operator (CAL ISO) - a nonprofit run by fossil fuel energy executives which organizes the California electricity grid. They colluded to distort the public process around clean energy issues and fossil fuel power plants; such that the public, the SFPUC Commissioners, the Board of Supervisors, and the Mayor received a completely false impression that the City needed to build a new polluting power plant in order to replace an older plant in Potrero Hill, instead of pursuing alternatives like renewables and efficiency. The SFPUC staff has been similarly gaming and manipulating public meetings and information to interfere with the timely start-up of Clean Power SF for the last five years. This ruling gives us even more leverage to show that the SFPUC staff cannot be trusted to faithfully begin the Clean Power SF (Community Choice) project, and that the LAFCo should independently draft the project RFP. cheers! Eric Brooks :^) -- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara

1 0