The Merc has a good column today, “Fisher: County asks families to take a hike.” Patty Fisher reports on Santa Clara County Parks Department’s new Healthy Trails campaign to encourage people to use our local county parks. They even point out that parks by the Bay and in the redwoods will be great places to...
Category: News
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Committee for Green Foothills cited in "Last Child in the Woods"
CGF got a brief mention in Last Child in the Woods, an important book about how children have been losing their connection to nature, particularly the opportunity for unstructured play. The updated edition of the book includes this about removing legal barriers to access due to liability fears: While we wait for legal reform, environmental...
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MidPen expansion to the Coast is complete!
You probably thought that MidPen’s expansion to the Coast, a major goal of CGF, had been completed years ago. That was effectively right, and now the final paperwork is done: Victory for Open Space Decades of effort by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District to dramatically expand the amount of coastal land in San Mateo...
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County opposes city charter change
San Mateo Daily Journal August 13, 2008 County opposes city charter change by Michelle Durand If Redwood City voters rather than leaders decide development of open space, the county will be hard-pressed to sell off the current jail site to finance a new facility in a different location, according to Supervisor Jerry Hill. The worry...
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CGF opposes inappropriate hillside San Jose development
(CGF sent the following short letter to the San Jose Planning Commission, supporting staff’s recommendation to reject the proposed hillside development in San Jose’s Evergreen District. More information is available here. -Brian) Dear Planning Commission members, The Committee for Green Foothills agrees with City Staff recommending denial of a developer’s proposal to rezone hillside land...
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Great news for Santa Clara Valley Water District – all environmental recommendations were enacted
I just wanted to follow up on the Urgent Alert we wrote up (and sent out by our diligent Office Manager Wendee on Saturday afternoon). The day before, the Water District finalized a decision to consider a number of recommendations made by the District’s Environmental Advisory Committee (I’m the current chair of the EAC). More...
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Victory in and for Coyote Valley
Spring began this year with extremely welcome news, that the land developer entity calling itself the Coyote Housing Group had decided to withdraw its proposal to destroy three thousand acres of working farmland and vital wildlife habitat in Coyote Valley. While the environmental community cannot claim the sole credit for victory, our successful effort to...
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Thank the stars that they’re not around here
News reports suggest that arson against a mansion development in Washington state may have been the work of “ecoterrorists”. The evidence released so far is skimpy, and even the term “ecoterrorism” is debatable to me, tying it to terroristic violence when “ecoarson” might be more appropriate. Regardless, though, I’m very glad we don’t have foolish...
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Government as prosecutor versus government as defendant
As an attorney, I have to do Continuing Legal Education to keep my Bar membership, so I’ve been listening to audio CDs about environmental trial advocacy education. They consist mostly of dialog between attorneys who are government prosecutors for environmental crimes and attorneys who represent environmental crime defendants. What struck me as in interesting was...
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A congratulations post – to Lennie Roberts, Hewlett and Packard families, and even the Homebuilders Association
I’ll just gather a few congratulations together: First to CGF’s own Lennie Roberts for winning the Conservationist of the Year Award from the John Muir Association. CGF’s write-up is here: Congratulations to long-time Committee for Green Foothills San Mateo Advocate Lennie Roberts, who will be honored on January 20 by the John Muir Association as...