Why do I put Barbara Kingsolver side by side with our favorite hiking park? She’s on NPR right now talking about her books, farmers markets and the hunger people have to take control back about where our food comes from – our interface with nature. “Local food – the beating heart of the local food movement is here (in the Bay Area)” she says.

Barbara Kingsolver was cited in Newsweek awhile back as “most poetic” graduation speaker for her Duke University address “Your Money or Your Life,” the title of a Joseph Needleman book, btw. Her great line? “You’ll see things collapse in your time, the big houses, the empires of glass. The new green things that sprout up through the wreck – those will be yours.” Yup. Shollenberger is OURS and so worth protecting – its open sky, animals, ever changing waters and wetlands. For our well being as well as the birds.

In our family life? We just planted 200 fruit trees. Whew! What a world with all these (trees) in it! Want to help pick 4 tons of apples in about 2 years? Let us know.

Back to the land, digging in the dirt and then let’s protect our Petaluma Marsh land, Shollenberger park and bird sanctuary.

Shollenberger is where I go most often with my women friends to walk and talk. Healing, energizing, restoring hope the way nature does when care is taken. Barbara Kingsolver, with her new book, Lacuna, is in line with that in whatever she writes. An earlier book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, charts the year she and family ate only what they raised.

Bits from that: “For a year and a half now, my pastoral California town has been menaced by the threat of a stinky, black, nasty asphalt plant in the name of the Dutra Family — five-time heavyweight champions of being fined ONE MILLION BUCKS for dumping waste into the ocean. Our 165-acre nature preserve, wetlands, and bird sanctuary, Shollenberger Park is nestled along an oceanic estuary which flows through my historic town, serving as a haven for both people, animals, and aquatic plants, as well as housing the beloved local spotted salamander who mucks up California mass transit year after year (much to the delightful confusion of environmentalists in area).

A long battle has been brewing in local politics in the struggle between nature and this big money EPA scourge, the Dutra Asphalt Plant. I want to share what I’ve been pushing hard for, as well as to let you know how you can help wherever you’re at. A “decision” date is coming up fast on March 16, to decide whether our “birds” or our “EPA violation mega-corporation” shall prevail. So far, the outlook is mixed.

Nothing in me can reconcile the desire to put an asphalt plant into a natural wetlands, thus devastating dozens upon dozens of species of indigenous plants and animals, causing perhaps another million dollars in gross pollution fines as a chronic offender, to blight not only on my town but on any town where they would take their “business.”

Partners in this fight include not only the entire local city council, but also the Sierra Club, the League of Woman Voters, the Environmental Center of Sonoma County, every other surrounding city Government, Friends of the Petaluma River, The Petaluma Rowing Club, Moms for Clean Air, multiple Homeowners Associations, the O.W.L. Foundation, and many, many others.

And yet, it’s not enough. Again and again, the Dutras have taken this before the local Board of Supervisors, who keep dead-locking their votes, as (from what I understand) one Supervisor is quite good friends with the Dutra Family, and another is a political novice who was strongly supported by the local “status quo.” How the Board of Supervisors can block the will of the city is an entirely different story. But it apparently can happen. And is happening.

From the Save Shollenberger Park site:

Dutra’s lies and their improper influence on our elected officials and County Planning Staff have got to stop. We can stop this charade but we need your help. Our wetlands, our Shollenberger Park, our Gateway to Sonoma County will be degraded and polluted with excessive and constant noise, night flood lights, over 46 toxic by-products of asphalt production and the diesel exhaust of over 100,000 trucks a year. Wildlife will be disrupted, air quality worsened, and a voter mandated Scenic View Corridor blighted with the view of two 64 foot storage silos.

Send your support of $25 or more today and help us be ready to stop Dutra. We called them on their deceptive maps [my note: more information is in the link, but the Dutra plant has lied again and again to try to show false information that makes them look environmentally friendly or worthwhile for creating jobs] presented to the Coast Guard, we showed them mis-locating high pressure PG&E pipes. Now we need to ask the hard questions about their new proposed mooring location. Each new set of claims and maps needs to be met with hard research and questions. Our County Staff doesn’t do it, so we have to. If we each send at least $25, we’ll be ready with enough resources to stop Dutra with legal action the very Next Day!

It looks like we are facing probable legal action. There is very little hope that the votes will be there, given the length of this fight and the friendships and corporate interests of some of these obstructionists.

I’ve been in attendance at a majority of these meetings, and I’d like to reach out to Kossacks who care about communities and wildlife both, and ask to please assist however you can, from near or from far, to stop the Dutra Asphalt plant.

Please donate today:

1. TO FUND LEGAL ACTION AND SAVE THE HERON AND EGRET COLONY.

2. TO PROTECT OUR CHILDREN’S LEGACY OF VITAL WETLANDS AND CLEAN AIR FOR YEARS TO COME.

3. TO STOP THE ASPHALT PLANT AT HAYSTACK LANDING.

Personal checks are great too! Please send to this address (or push the Donate button above):

The O.W.L Foundation c/o Friends of Shollenberger Park
322 Western Ave.
Petaluma, California 94952

PLEASE READ THESE LINKS AND DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO PROTECT SHOLLENBERGER – and Happy rainy week ahead to you, too. And many green sprouts of your very own.