Mercury News
May 31, 2006

Environmental group names new executive director

By Paul Rogers

The Committee for Green Foothills, a non-profit environmental group based in Palo Alto, on Tuesday named Holly Van Houten as executive director. The group was founded in 1962 by noted author and Stanford University Professor Wallace Stegner, along with 26 other Palo Alto-area residents concerned about growth in rural areas.

Van Houten is former executive director of the Bay Area Ridge Trail Council, based in San Francisco. Before that, she worked as a senior planner at the Presidio Trust, and also has worked for the National Park Service and the Appalachian Mountain Club.

The Committee for Green Foothills successfully blocked construction of a proposed freeway from Menlo Park to the Pescadero coast in the 1960s, helped win approval from voters to establish the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District in the 1970s and in the 1990s passed a county measure to build a tunnel at Devils Slide instead of a freeway through McNee Ranch State Park.

In recent years it has worked to reduce development in the Stanford Foothills and San Jose's Coyote Valley, and has supported efforts to create urban growth boundaries around San Jose, Milpitas and other cities.

Page last updated September 13, 2010.