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- You can make a difference!
- Sierra Club Joins Texaco Boycott
- New Threat to Old Faithful
- Safety Net Needed For Ocean Fish
- Congress to Slash Tire Recycling?
- Write your senators at: U.S. Senate, Washington, D. C. 20510
- Write your representative at: U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D. C. 20515
- Or call your senators and representative at the Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
- Join the Sierra Club Activist Network. Receive urgent action alerts on the issues that
concern you most. Write: Campaign Desk, Sierra Club.
The Sierra Club has joined the Los Angeles-based Labor/Community Strategy Center and an
Ecuadoran human rights group in a boycott of Texaco.
Texaco's Wilmington, Calif., refinery annually spews 248,000 pounds of toxins and
carcinogens into the surrounding area, whose residents are largely people of color. An
explosion and four-day fire at the Wilmington refinery in October 1992 caused hundreds of
workers to experience such health problems as nausea, severe headaches, vomiting, loss of
hearing and skin rashes.
Texaco has dumped over 17 million gallons of crude oil and 20 billion gallons of toxic
waste water in Ecuadoran rain forests and rivers. The company has ignored requests by the
Sierra Club and other groups to stop doing business in Burma due to that country's record
of human rights abuses.
The boycott, which the Board of Directors approved in May, also addresses Texaco's work
to undermine air pollution regulations.
To take part in the boycott:
- Don't buy Texaco gasoline or Star Mart products.
- Don't buy Havoline motor oil.
- Don't use Star Lube oil change stations.
- Cut up your Texaco credit card and mail it to Texaco with a letter explaining your
action. Send your letter to A1fred De Crane, CEO of Texaco, Inc., 2000 Westchester Ave.,
White Plains, NY 10650. So that Texaco cannot deny receiving them, send photocopies of
your letter and the cut card to The Labor/Community Watchdog, 3780 Wilshire Blvd., Suite
1200, Los Angeles, CA 90010.
The otherworldly plumbing system of Yellowstone National Park--including geysers, hot
springs, and mud pots--is threatened by proposals to conduct geothermal drilling on
private lands near the park's boundaries.
Yellowstone National Park is the largest remaining geyser system on the planet, with
more than 200 geysers and 10,000 hot springs, mud pots and fumaroles (vapor-emitting holes
in the ground). Most of these geothermal features lie within the park. But developers
covet the energy potential of the aquifers that feed the geyser system, which extend
beyond the park boundaries into surrounding lands.
To place controls on unrestricted hydrothermal development just outside the park, Rep.
Pat Williams (D-Mont.) last year introduced the Old Faithful Protection Act in the House.
The bill, which the House approved, would ban geothermal development on federal lands
within 15 miles of Yellowstone Park. On private lands, the bill would require federally
approved permits for pumping hydrothermal water in the protection area.
The Old Faithful Protection Act must now be approved by the Senate, where it is up for
consideration in two Energy subcommittees.
For more information: Contact Meredith Taylor, National Wildlife Committee
chair, (307) 455-3169
What you can do: Urge your senators to support the Old Faithful Protection Act.
Send copies of your letter to Sen. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), chair of the Senate Energy
and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), chair of the
Senate Public Lands, National Parks and Forests Subcommittee.
At a time when overfishing has confined fishing fleets on both coasts to home port, the
Sierra Club Marine Committee's ongoing campaign to preserve marine habitat and
rebuild decimated fish and marine mammal stocks has taken on a new urgency.
A recent report by the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency that
oversees ocean fishing, states that 67 species are overfished, many to the point of
collapse.
"We hate to say 'We told you so,' but we've been sounding the alarm on the
long-term dangers of overfishing for years," said Shirley Taylor, chair of the Marine
Committee. "If we want to recover fish stocks, we have to change the Magnuson
Act."
The 1976 Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act, designed to prohibit foreign
fishing fleets from dropping their nets within a 200-mile U.S. coastal zone, has provided
minimal oversight of U.S. commercial fishermen. The effectiveness of eight fishery
management councils set up under the law to regulate commercial and sport fishing has been
compromised by the dominance of representatives from the fishing industry,
environmentalists say.
For more information: Contact Shirley Taylor, chair, Sierra Club Marine
Committee, (904) 385-7862.
What you can do: Urge your representative to co-sponsor Rep. Wayne Gilchrest's
(R-Md.) H.R 4404, which would strengthen the Magnuson Act by:
- Defining and prohibiting overfishing. OE Rebuilding depleted fish populations.
- Minimizing by-catch-the destructive catch of undersized or unwanted species.
- Adequately funding fish management, enforcement and research.
- Protecting marine fishes' critical habitats, from upland streams to the continental
shelf and beyond.
Urge your senators to support a bill with similar provisions when introduced.
Environmentalists are fighting to keep afloat an innovative federal program that
requires the use of recycled rubber tires in asphalt pavements.
The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 contains the first minimum
recycled content requirement passed by Congress. The act's Section 1038 re-quires all
states to meet a minimum requirement for use of recycled rubber, or "crumb rubber
modifiers," in asphalt pavements, beginning with 5 per-cent of federal projects in
1994, and rising to 20 percent by 1997.
But Rep. Bob Carr (D-Mich.), backed by the asphalt industry and most state departments
of transportation, wrangled a moratorium on enforcement of this program through 1994.
Rubberized asphalt, he and his backers claimed, would have a negative effect on
performance, cost, worker safety and recyclability.
Each of these concerns, however, was proved unfounded after extensive testing of
rubberized asphalt by federal agencies.
As part of a national highway fund-ing bill, a watered-down version of Section 1038
passed the full House in May. Now the bill moves to the Senate, where it must first win
approval by the same subcommittee that placed a moratorium on funding of the crumb rubber
program last year.
For more information: Contact Roger Diedrich of the Sierra Club Solid Waste
Committee at (703) 352-2410.
What You can do: Urge your senators to adopt the House language on Sec-tion
1038. Contact your state environmental protection agency to help counteract the pressure
from state transportation officials, who oppose Section 1038.
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