Ballooning Out Of Control: Mathis Wackernagel demonstrates how resources can be stretched to the breaking point.

Photograph by Scott Hess

Dangerous Feet

North Bay Environmentalists meet to compare footprints

So how big is yours?” That was the question on everyone’s lips when several dozen environmentalists, scientists, and North Bay community leaders came together on May 10 for a three-hour conference focusing almost entirely on feet. Or to be specific, footprints. Ecological footprints.

The rather unusual public meeting–sponsored by Sustainable Sonoma County, headquartered in Sebastopol, and the Oakland-based Redefining Progress–marked the big moment for the Sonoma County Ecological Footprint Project. As announced last November, the project was launched in order to calculate the size of Sonoma County’s ecological footprint and to compare it to the average national and international footprints and the footprints of neighboring counties.

We’re not talking about shoe sizes.

Simply put, your ecological footprint–an idea developed about 10 years ago by activist and author Mathis Wackernagel, director of Redefining Progress–is a calculation of the demand an individual puts on nature, based on the average amount of resources one consumes. Taking into account such things as transportation, housing, and food, each footprint is expressed in terms of acres. The more stuff one uses up, the bigger one’s footprint. In this case, bigger is not better.

Wackernagel, appearing early on in the conference to announce his findings, provided a bit of context by first informing the crowd that the average American leaves an ecological footprint of 24 acres, which he compared to France where the average is 13 acres. Marin County, it turns out, exceeds the U.S. national average with a footprint of 27 acres, and Sonoma County (drumroll, please) comes in just under the national average with a footprint of 22 acres per person. Think that doesn’t sound so bad?

“Consider this,” explained Ann Hancock, Sonoma County Footprint Project coordinator. “If everyone on the planet consumed like we do in Sonoma [County], it would use up four more Earths.”

The whole concept of the ecological footprint, she explains, has become a common tool among scientists and ecologists studying the earth’s capacity and different populations’ demand on it. The footprint’s greatest value, according to Hancock, is that the concept is rather compelling, relatively simple to understand, and easy to visualize. To date, hundreds of thousands have estimated their own personal ecological footprints by logging on to www.myfootprint.org. There, a simple 16-point questionnaire asks you for such information as how many times a week you eat meat, what size home you live in, and what kind of mileage your automobile gets. A click of a button later, the size of your footprint appears, along with the number of planets that would be chewed through were every human on earth consuming at that same rate.

Lest overwhelmed foot-measurers become despondent and suicidal at the size of their prints, Hancock says there are plenty of fairly painless steps one can take to reduce footprint size. Drive less. Conserve energy. Go to farmers markets more.

Hancock jokingly suggests distributing little buttons to those trying to reduce their own footprints. “Really. They could all say, ‘Mine’s Smaller!'” she laughs.

For an environmentalist in touch with the kind of numbers reported at the conference, Hancock and Wackernagel were both in surprisingly high spirits. Which points to yet another radical idea that emerged at the event: a sense of humor.

Throughout the conference–which was attended by only one North Bay politician, Windsor councilmember Debbie Fudge–a remarkable spirit of lighthearted fun kept popping up among all the furrowed brows and frightening statistics.

Hancock says the levity was intentional.

“I’ve been looking for ways to find humor amidst all of the usual environmentalist doom and gloom.” There’s another reason for injecting humor into the report. Says Hancock, with a laugh, “We’re distributing 500 copies to every elected official and community and business leader in the area. So if we make it fun to pick up, maybe they’ll actually read it.”

Copies of the Sonoma County Ecological Footprint Project report can be obtained by calling Sustainable Sonoma County at 707.829.1224 or by visiting www.sustainablesonoma.org.

From the May 23-29, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Killing Me Softly: Pleasing to the tongue, harmful to the body?

Battle Royale

Is soda pop being demonized in the fight against obesity?

By Joy Lanzendorfer

Americans are fat. Our propensity for super-sized value meals, sugared beverages, and too much TV has taken its toll. As a result, the number of obese Americans has soared to “epidemic proportions,” according to Surgeon General David Satcher. In response to this crisis, some believe a war on fat has been declared. The newest enemy? Soda pop.

The most recent battle against soda was a bill (SB 1520) penned by California Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento. Originally, the bill would have taxed soda (excluding diet versions) 2 cents a can and raised $342 million yearly to replace lost revenue in schools and fund educational programs targeting obesity. However, strong opposition led Ortiz to put the tax proposal on hold and instead propose a ban on the sale of soda by schools.

“The opposition to the bill was much louder and angrier than I anticipated,” says Ortiz. “Nevertheless, legislators are always reluctant to support new taxes, especially during election years, which I did anticipate.”

As of this writing, the bill is under consideration by the Revenue and Taxation Committee, which it must pass before going on to the Senate. But whether it passes or not, Ortiz’s bill is the latest in a number of proposals across the country targeting junk food. Governor Davis recently signed a bill prohibiting schools from selling foods that don’t meet specific dietary factors, such as those with a high fat content. In Maryland, a proposed bill would require restaurants providing sugared beverages to also provide a sugar-free alternative. The Kentucky House recently banned sodas and certain high-fat snacks from school vending machines. In Connecticut, a bill was filed to repeal a 6 percent sales tax exemption for candy sold to college cafeterias, senior centers, and daycare centers.

These states are focusing on junk food because of convincing data that obesity is becoming the country’s biggest health crisis. According to Satcher’s report, 61 percent of adults are overweight or obese, and some 300,000 people die each year from obesity-related health problems (compared to 400,000 yearly deaths linked to cigarette smoking). Children are affected as well, with 13 percent nationwide considered overweight. And in California, according to Ortiz, 30 percent of children are listed as overweight or obese.

“Obesity is definitely a huge problem,” says Eileen Jensen, family nurse practitioner and employee health manager for St. Joseph Health System, Greater Sonoma County. “In addition to increased injuries, obesity has been linked to many illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension. Much of the time, these diseases can be prevented through weight management.”

It’s an expensive problem as well. In California, the cost of overweight adults is roughly $24.6 billion. Nationwide, obesity costs $117 billion per year in “direct and indirect costs.”

Soda is often mentioned because it has been specifically linked to childhood obesity in addition to adult obesity. Nicknamed “liquid candy” because of its high sugar content and null nutritional value, children get little benefit from drinking soda besides the obligatory caffeine and sugar high. And studies show that drinking soda is becoming a habit for many students, with the average teenage boy drinking 2.2 cans a day and the average teenage girl drinking 1.7 cans a day. In the United States, the average kid drinks more soda than milk.

But while these are good reasons for concern, some groups believe that these scientific findings have spurred a nationwide war on fat, which, in its most extreme form, threatens an individual’s right to choose his or her children’s diet. One such group is the Center for Consumer Freedom, which formed in direct response to the war on fat and now represents more than 30,000 supporters, including numerous eating establishments.

“We’re seeing activist groups and politicians attempt to affect consumer diets through hysteria or other political means,” says CCF communications director Mike Burita. “We believe that they use studies like the recent surgeon general’s report as leverage to advance their causes. We’re against all the bureaucrats and activists who think they can decide better than you what’s best for you.”

One trend in the war on fat is to categorize certain foods as bad or good. Some groups, like the Center for Science in the Public Interest based in Washington, D.C., even advocate subsidizing healthy food and taxing unhealthy food. Demonizing certain foods does little to help obesity since it takes the focus off lifestyle changes and moderation, according to Burita.

In this light, bills to ban certain foods in schools take on dangerous implications. Such bills strip schools of much needed revenue. Analy High School in Sebastopol, for example, sells soda in its student store, vending machines, and cafeteria. According to co-principal Doria Trombetta, the vending machines and student store support the associate student body, which funds sports and other student activities. Without the sale of food like soda, the school would lose a “great deal of those activities.”

In addition, banning foods in school can open doors to other laws. Shannon Brownlee, a Markle Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, has advocated banning soda in schools as a “wedge” to open foods and beverages up to new government regulations and restrictions. And while legislators’ motives may not be that deliberate, there is some logic to the idea that since soda is already taxable, it’s easier for legislators to target than, say, butter or cream.

“Soda has been subject to the sales tax for as long as anyone can remember,” Says Ortiz. “Clearly people in this state have agreed for a long time that soda can barely be categorized as a food and is not essential to anyone’s diet. I would not necessarily advocate taxing and subsidizing a whole range of foods, but we do need to find ways to get people, especially kids, to think about the choices they make and how those choices affect their overall health and quality of life.”

Though an all-out war on fat is disputed, efforts to tackle the obesity problem are definitely coming into play. The surgeon general’s report stated that obesity could soon cause as much preventable disease and death as cigarette smoking. A RAND study published in March called the health risks of obesity “worse than smoking, drinking, or poverty.”

According to the CCF, the comparison to cigarette smoking is not coincidental. The group says that a parallel can be drawn between the movement to ban junk food from schools and the movement to ban tobacco advertising to kids.

“The same model that was applied to the tobacco industry can be applied to the food industry,” says Burita. “Obesity is starting to be compared to smoking more and more.”

But in the end, all sides agree on the best response to the obesity epidemic.

“The key to this issue is education,” says Jensen. “People need to be taught about obesity and to, for example, drink more water instead of drinking soda. I don’t think extra taxes or banning certain foods will make the same kind of impact that more education will to the problem.”

From the May 23-29, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Far and Wide: A wastewater reuse project puts the already endangered Russian River Watershed at further risk.

Up a Creek

Wastewater reuse plan threatens watershed, wine industry

By Tara Treasurefield

Turtle Creek winds through Marty Griffin’s property in Healdsburg on its way to the Russian River. This creek, like many others in the Russian River Watershed, has suffered serious abuse. Gravel miners nearly destroyed it when they dug a huge pit at its mouth in the early 1960s. For 38 years, Griffin, whose property includes Hop Kiln Winery and who cofounded Friends of the Russian River, has been repairing the damage. Now, just as Turtle Creek is beginning to heal, there’s a new threat: A group of farmers, the city of Santa Rosa, and the Sonoma County Water Agency intend to use city wastewater for irrigation.

Three of the 17 reservoirs described in the plan would be in the headwaters of Turtle Creek. Reservoirs leak, says Griffin, and that’s a problem. “This wastewater is lethal to aquatic life. [Wastewater leakage from the reservoirs] would kill the little animals and plants that live in streams and creeks and the Russian River.” The plan also calls for five reservoirs next to the Bishop’s Ranch retreat center, just above water agency wells. “There must be better locations for wastewater storage than right in the watershed that feeds your drinking-water wells,” says Judith Olney of the Healdsburg Association for Responsible Citizenship.

Some of the proposed reservoirs are 120 feet high, and that presents other problems. “They want to put them in steep canyons with very unstable soil,” says Griffin. “They’re going to have to take out hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of soil. It will make a God-awful mess. If [the reservoirs] break–which is very likely, because this is a very active earthquake area–they would inundate parts of our ranches with a wall of water that would wipe out everything on the way down.” Bishop’s Ranch is also alarmed and is a plaintiff on three of the 19 lawsuits filed against the project.

Celebrate the Watershed: We are all part of the watershed.

Dan Carlson, capitol projects manager for the Santa Rosa Utilities Department, acknowledges that reservoirs leak, that Santa Rosa’s treated wastewater kills marine life, and that Healdsburg is prone to earthquakes. He says that environmental impact reports will evaluate all this, as well as mitigations that include lining reservoirs to prevent leakage, determining if the amount of leakage would significantly impact downstream users, and evaluating the effects of an earthquake. Pam Jeane, deputy chief engineer at the Sonoma County Water Agency, says, “Whoever proposes a project will have to do an environmental review. People will have a chance to comment at that time.” No specific project has been selected yet, she says.

But Griffin has no doubt that the plan to construct 17 wastewater reservoirs and 74 miles of distribution lines in North County is a done deal. It costs $875,000 to develop the plan and over $20 million to make the geysers’ pipeline large enough to accommodate wastewater for irrigation. Santa Rosa is also prepared to pay up to 100 percent of the cost of constructing reservoirs on private agricultural land. Acknowledging that all this amounts to a sizable investment in a project that hasn’t even gone through an environmental impact report yet, Carlson says, “I believe that [the Santa Rosa City Council and Board of Supervisors] believe that some part of that project will likely go ahead in the future, if not all of it.”

A major appeal of the project is that it will allow Santa Rosa to build affordable housing in the city center. Carlson says that though front yards and backyards are good places to dispose of wastewater, the new dwellings won’t have any yards. The wastewater has to go somewhere. Carlson says, “Why not use it for agriculture? Farmers already need it, and we want to make sure that if those areas want to use the water, we have it available to them.”

Tom Hobart at Clos du Bois Winery in Healdsburg supports the project because vineyards will be “at the bottom of the list” for fresh water as it becomes increasingly scarce. “Twenty or 25 years from now, this may be the most important thing we ever did,” he says. But as owner of a winery himself, Marty Griffin questions the wisdom of using wastewater to irrigate vineyards. “It may hurt the reputation of vineyards in North County,” he says. “It’s very hard to clean up, and there are a lot of chemicals left in the wastewater even after treatment.”

What’s really driving this project, says Griffin, is greed. “Sonoma County is a developer-controlled county, and Santa Rosa is a developer-controlled city. They’ll do anything to get rid of the wastewater, because it’s the only thing that’s holding up development. Sonoma County could end up like Los Angeles. I think they should slow down their growth, stop their growth. They should recycle all this wastewater in their own backyards and not ours. It’s a big rip-off for North County.”

Devoted as ever to Turtle Creek and the Russian River Watershed, Griffin says, “They’re going to build those reservoirs over our dead bodies.” On second thought, he adds, “I’ve never believed in lying down in front of bulldozers, because by then it’s too late. We have to stop them in the courts and in the court of public opinion.”

From the May 16-22, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.