Opportunities
Help! We are too few trying to cover too many issues in Placer County. If you have thought about becoming more active, but didn’t know how or where to start, let us know which of these issues might interest you. We can help you help us, and/or you can “shadow” one of us as we plow through the intricacies and details.
General Environmental Programs:
Air Quality—Compliance or lack thereof
Calif Native Plant Society—Vernal Pool/Public Education
Cool Cities--http://www.coolcities.us/
Global Warming
Inclusionary Housing
Other?
Transportation—Congestion, Public Transit
Water (ground, surface, contamination, supply, etc.)
Webmaster
Location Specific Issues:
Lincoln General Plan Update and quadrupling of population
Colfax and Sewage/Pollution Problems
Foresthill’s Community Plan and population increases
Rocklin’s Clover Valley and preservation effort
Placer County Conservation Plan (PCCP)
Your Own?
By Joe Marman
The Sacramento Mother Lode Chapter of the Sierra Club has been diligently involved and working hard to ensure that Clair Tappaan Lodge will remain available for us Sierra Club members to use in the future. They are having work parties and brain-storming sessions to develop plans to increase usage and occupancy of the Lodge and the nearby huts by the public and Sierra Club members. Organizations could use the Lodge for retreats and business meetings.
The Committee to Save Clair Tappaan has asked for assistance and volunteers from our Placer Group Chapter to become more involved by attending meetings and work weekends and to participate in the efforts of the committee to save Clair Tappaan Lodge. Although CTL Lodge is in our Placer County, our Placer Group has no representation on the committee. I am hoping myself to join a work crew in the next few weeks to do repairs to the buildings there.
So, please volunteer your efforts to save Clair Tappaan Lodge. Ernie Malamud would love to hear from you at malamud@foothill.net.
ALERTS & EVENTS
Would you like to know about local Sierra Club Meetings and events? Would you like to know when we need letters to local officials? If so, please join the Placer Group Sierra Club’s e-mail listserve. We promise we won’t give your e-mail address to anyone else, and we won’t send you too many messages to sign up. Please send an e-mail to terry.davis @sierraclub.org
Metropolitan Transportation Plan
[MTP 2030]
by Cathy Haagen-Smit
Community
activists have been given an opportunity to participate in the shaping of our
transportation planning for the next 20 years. As you can imagine, drafting the
next Metropolitan Transportation Plan [MTP 2030] is a huge task. Placer
Group-Sierra Club members were encouraged to attend an Auburn workshop on the
MTP 2030 sponsored by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments [SACOG] and
Placer Co Transportation Planning Agency [PCTPA] in lieu of our February
meeting. Several of us were present to hear, and basically agree, that
continuing to build large-lot, low density housing consume large tracts of open
space, and leaves residents with longer commutes, more vehicle trips, dirtier
air, and a growing disconnect between where we live and where we work.
In 2005, SACOG
and its member agencies (6 counties and 22 cities) adopted the Preferred
Blueprint Alternative based on seven smart growth principles: providing a
variety of transportation choices; offering housing choices and opportunities;
taking advantage of compact development; using existing assets; mixed land uses;
preserving open space, farmland and natural resources; and encouraging
distinctive attractive communities with quality design. Developing the MTP 2030
based on these principles will require strategic transportation planning,
collaborative technical analysis and public involvement.
The planning
workshops being held now through June are participatory; in breakout groups one
discusses the various strategies that form transportation planning for our
region for the next 20 years. Although intense and sometimes confusing, the
workshop content was really educational, especially for car drivers who are
frustrated by congestion and bad air quality but don’t know about - or haven’t
considered - other transportation scenarios.
The workshop
participants came from all sorts of backgrounds: from the development, business,
government and environmental communities. Some of us noted how old we’d be in
2030 (I’ll be 73!) Some of us suggested that with our aging population, we
might be downsizing, maybe hoping to move into a small townhouse in a mixed use
downtown with neighborhood stores you could walk to for daily shopping or hop a
neighborhood shuttle to the doctor’s office. Others continued to think they
would never give up their daily long-distance vehicle trips, driving alone.
Builders opined that folks are continuing to demand subdivisions like the ones
that are marching madly across South Placer. Some felt toll roads were the right
thing to do, to force folks who want to drive alone to pay for that privilege,
and others considered the demand for more developer fees as well as a possible
ballot measure for a ½ cent sales tax.
To sit at a
table to debate the virtues of bike lanes with a developer who wants huge and
expensive freeway bypasses felt a bit crazy. Transportation scenarios and costs
are enormously varied and feel complicated. But a transportation idealist can
cling to the hope that at some point everyone may reach an agreement that to
continue the same development strategies of the last 20 years, may result in a
dismal quality of life in 2030.
Check out
www.sacog.org for future workshops and timeline for the draft MTP - and further
opportunities for comment.
Check out
www.motherlode.sierraclub.org/challenge_sprawl.html for Sierra Club positions
regarding transportation and smart growth planning.
Help Wanted
Got any spare time to help protect the planet?
We can use your help!
Last Updated:
06/04/2007