Measure T: A Victory Funding Environmental Protection With over 81% voting yes, the massive public approval of Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority’s Measure T demonstrated how environmental advocacy can achieve positive change and a win on behalf of the environment. We actively played an instrumental role in Measure T’s passage. As Santa Clara Valley...
Author: Brian Schmidt
Strong Community Support Continues the Process of Re-Envisioning Reid-Hillview Airport
On Tuesday, November 17th, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to begin the process for a community engagement plan that could result in closing all or part of the county-owned Reid-Hillview Airport in East San Jose and reusing the land. Green Foothills strongly supported this possible re-envisioning process and, at the invitation...
San Benito’s Measure N Threatens Open Space, Wildlife, and Human Life
No on Measure N – Let Us Count The Ways to Say No From time to time, we encounter proposals that have so much wrong with them that the only unifying theme responding to the problems is simply, “No”. Welcome to Measure N, the San Benito County ballot measure that would approve the massive Strada...
EPA Should Ban Predator-Killing Rodenticides
On July 6, we joined many other environmental organizations calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban rodenticides instead of relicensing them, particularly brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difethialone, difenacoum, diphacinone and chlorophacinone. These anticoagulant “rodenticides”, a misnomer hiding their most important ecological effect – that of killing mid-level and top-level predators, should be banned and non-poison...
High Speed Rail Endangers Wildlife, Farmland in Santa Clara County
In our comments last week to California’s High-Speed Rail Authority about the environmental analysis of running the rail from San Jose to Merced, we called for better protections of wildlife connections through Coyote Valley and Pacheco Pass, and to reject a potential East Gilroy Station in the County’s Agricultural Preserve. We will continue our long-running...
Tell California’s High Speed Rail Authority to Protect Wildlife and Avoid Farmland Destruction in Santa Clara County
This Tuesday, June 23, is the deadline to submit comments on the environmental analysis of running high speed rail from San Jose to Merced. Please email the California High Speed Rail Authority using the form below, asking it to protect wildlife movement through Coyote Valley and Pacheco Pass, and to avoid sprawl and the loss...
Opinion: Primary factor creating wildfire risk is land use
Until counties stop building houses in high-risk areas, threat of wildfires will continue to increase This op-ed was originally published in the Mercury News. Click this link for the original online article. As still more wildfires hit California this fall, we remain in denial about the primary cause of our disastrous wildfire risks. Climate change...
CGF corrects discussion of its No on E position
(Palo Alto Weekly published this letter from CGF correcting the discussion of the No on E position taken by CGF’s Board of Directors. Where the last line says “Committee for Green Foothills Board of Directors”, the Weekly failed to include the words from the letter that started with “On behalf of Committee for Green Foothills Board...
Major step forward in San Jose (and a minor step back)
Yesterday, San Jose approved the General Plan that the City and we (together with other environmental groups) had been working on for years. Good coverage in the Mercury News: About two dozen speakers addressed the council on the Envision 2040 goals that include: adding as many as 470,000 new jobs and 120,000 new housing units;...
Letter to Mountain View City Council on History Museum at Cuesta Annex
(CGF sent the letter below to Mountain View City Council. -Brian) October 18, 2011 Mountain View City Council Re: Please preserve the living history of Cuesta Annex by locating the History Museum at a different site Dear Mayor Siegel and City Councilmembers; The Committee for Green Foothills and Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society do...