News

January 30, 2012 -- The Washington State Chapter of the Sierra Club enthusiastically announces its endorsement of Jay Inslee to be Washington State’s 23rd governor. “Jay Inslee brings both a vision and expertise for making Washington a leader on clean energy and forging the good jobs and economic future for the 21st century,” said Andrew Lewis, Chair of the Sierra Club's Washington State Chapter. “We need the leadership that he brings to address the most pressing issues of our time - creating real jobs here in our state and addressing global climate change.”

Lewis said Inslee has consistently been a real leader in protecting and enhancing Washington’s air, land and water - working tirelessly to protect pristine wilderness areas, clean up Puget Sound, and curb dependence of foreign fossil fuels while growing clean energy at home. Jay even wrote a book about how to get our economy going again through clean energy development.

This year will present acute challenges to our efforts to advance an environmental agenda at the State Capitol. At the Sierra Club, we believe that environmental protections improve our quality of life and are essential to a long-term sustainable economy. Environmental programs and policies may have upfront costs, but will prevent staggering future costs. In 2012, our priorities in the Legislature are:

• No rollbacks of environmental standards in a difficult budget situation;
• Sustain I-937, the Renewable Energy voter-approved standards;
• Ensure clean water and realistic, data-based management of limited water resources;
• Sustainable transit funding in a transportation budget that emphasizes maintenance.

Learn more about our 2012 legislative priorities and get involved!

You may have heard that we scored a huge victory against oil refineries last December. In a landmark decision, a federal judge ruled that the Washington Department of Ecology, Northwest Clean Air Agency, and Puget Sound Clean Air Agency have unlawfully failed to regulate climate change pollution from the five oil refineries operating in Washington State.  Now we need your help raising funds to keep the pressure on the state. Please attend our fundraiser!

The Washington Environmental Council and the Sierra Club initiated the lawsuit in March, which claimed that state agencies have the duty to regulate climate change pollution from oil refineries because this pollution fits within the definition of “air contaminants” in Washington’s State Implementation Plan, which was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and is enforceable under the federal Clean Air Act.

Wednesday night, January 25, in the town of Clatskanie, on the lower Columbia River, the St. Helens Port Commission held the first public meeting on coal exports in the state of Oregon. Despite having only a 6-day notice for the meeting, we had a large turn-out of citizens concerned about the impacts of coal exports—from Clatskanie and communities upriver and downriver and along the rail line in Oregon and Washington. 150 people packed the room and flowed out into the hallways. The public comments weighed in at 29 opposed to coal exports and only 7 for coal exports, with passionate speeches from Sierra Club volunteers and our coalition partners, especially Columbia Riverkeeper.

As always, it will be a full day of transportation lobbying with your legislators, getting to know fellow advocates, and possibly testifying in conference committee for transportation funding, policies, and projects.If you’ve never been, you should check it out. If you have been, you’ll want to join us again in this huge year for our issues.

Zip Car will be offering free rentals again, and TCC will be coordinating carpools. We need help to make this a success!

Get involved now!

If you're a Washington State Chapter member and are interested in working on changing WA State policy of spreading contaminated industrial and sewage wastes ("biosolids") as compost/fertilizer, here's an opportunity to help set up a focus group to begin researching waste spreading problems and alternatives. Your work will help our chapter develop its position on this important issue.

Toxic industrial and sewage wastes are sold as "compost" and "fertilizer" and spread across the country on farm land and landscapes. Since the 1970s, the USEPA has promoted this practice -- delegating oversight to states -- as a waste disposal method, as landfill space became minimal and the Clean Water Act disallowed spewing these wastes into open waters. The National Sierra Club opposes land spreading of these materials as they sicken neighbors, poison farm and residential land, food grown in soil mixed with these wastes, pollute rural wells and groundwater. Monthly, entities connected to a sewer is legally permitted to discharge 33 pounds of liquid hazardous waste. Landfill leachates can also be sent to "industrial" waste water treatment plants.

Captain Charles Moore, a prominent seafaring environmentalist and researcher, shares his shocking discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean, and inspires a fundamental rethinking of the Plastic Age and a growing global health crisis. Captain Moore is speaking in a 5 Western Washington cities in January: Seattle, Bellingham, Port Angeles, Tacoma, and Olympia. Don't miss this important talk to learn how our oceans are being polluted and how you can help.

In the summer of 1997, Charles Moore set sail from Honolulu with the sole intention of returning home after competing in a trans-Pacific race. To get to California, he and his crew took a shortcut through the seldom-traversed North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a vast "oceanic desert" where winds are slack and sailing ships languish. There, Moore realized his catamaran was surrounded by a "plastic soup." He had stumbled upon the largest garbage dump on the planet - a spiral nebula where plastic outweighed zooplankton, the ocean's food base, by a factor of six to one.

The Sierra Club is part of a coalition with Surfrider Foundation, People For Puget Sound, Environment Washington and Zero Waste Seattle that is asking the Seattle City Council to pass a bag ordinance. Plastics harm (choke, poison, entangle) our wildlife, such as birds, fish, and whales. A big problem is that plastic bags are light-weight and easily blow into our waters. They break down into tiny bits but don’t biodegrade for hundreds of years. The tiny pieces of plastic, including plastic bag pieces, are called microplastics, and are floating in Puget Sound. Every water sample taken in Puget Sound so far by researchers at UW Tacoma have plastic bits. Another problem is that plastic attracts toxic chemicals like a sponge. Fish eat these plastic bits.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE : December 2, 2011

Challenge to reduce dangerous greenhouse gas emissions from WA oil refineries advances

Seattle, WA —A federal judge today ruled that the Washington Department of Ecology, Northwest Clean Air Agency, and Puget Sound Clean Air Agency have unlawfully failed to regulate climate change pollution from the five oil refineries operating in Washington State. Washington Environmental Council and Sierra Club initiated the lawsuit in March of this year. The lawsuit claimed that state agencies have the duty to regulate climate change pollution from oil refineries because this pollution fits within the definition of “air contaminants” in Washington’s State Implementation Plan, which was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and is enforceable under the federal Clean Air Act.

In a unanimous decision issued in NEDC v. Brown, a case involving logging roads on Oregon State lands, the Ninth Circuit ruled that polluted stormwater generated by logging roads is subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The August 2011 decision requires that logging roads meet the standards of the Clean Water Act that would protect our clean water and salmon and steelhead. We are stunned that Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna would join with very conservative states such as Arkansas in urging the Supreme Court to overturn this court decision.