California Coast & Ocean

Admirers have called her "a force of nature." For more than three decades, Dorothy Green has prodded and urged southern California toward a sensible way of living within the natural limits of its geography. Much as water wears away stone, she has worked to shift water agencies from near-exclusive reliance on concrete channels to control floodwaters to an approach that includes groundwater recharge, water reuse, spreading basins, and native plants. Her creative spirit, graciousness, intelligence, down-to-earth warmth, and relentless energy have earned admiration from both allies and opponents. You can track her footprints along the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers, and Santa Monica Bay, to Sacramento and Washington, D.C. She founded Heal the Bay, the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council and, about three years ago, launched the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), whose goal is to move the state toward a sustainable water future.

Coast & Ocean talked with Dorothy Green in her home of 40 years in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

C&O: How did you become an activist? What set you on that path?

DG: One of my kids is retarded, and I joined the Exceptional Children Foundation and ran their Christmas card program from 1962 to '79. We manufactured our own cards, designed by children in the program and printed by parents who had a print shop. I built it up to a pretty good business, taking in over $25,000 a year by just selling cards designed by retarded kids, till I finally just got bored with it.

But also, there was the Vietnam War, and my oldest son was going to have to register for the draft. That happened at about the same time the first Earth Day was happening, and the civil rights movement was coming to a conclusion. I went into a kind of depression. And when I realized what was happening to me--I just didn't want to get out of bed in the morning--I began to look around for an organization where I could learn how to become an activist.

I joined Women For:, an organization that worked for all the good things--better education, civil liberties, environment, peace. It had been formed by some frustrated League of Women Voters members who wanted to be more directly involved in the electoral process. The first thing I worked on was the Coastal Initiative (1972). I volunteered for the speakers' bureau and did make a couple of speeches, but I was terrible, I was so scared. But I learned.

The second thing I did was to work for a bill that Assemblyman Ed Z'berg (D-Sacramento) was carrying, which would have established a super agency to set environmental policy for all other agencies. To push this bill, advocates had formed a single-purpose organization and I was the representative of Women For: I volunteered to be treasurer because I know how to keep a simple set of books. The two women who really ran that organization took me lobbying in Sacramento--which was an eye-opening experience.

We couldn't even get in to see the assemblyman from Long Beach. His a.a. [administrative assistant] stood in the office doorway, elbow on the doorjamb, asking us how this bill would affect the tidelands. It didn't take long to figure out: tidelands, in Long Beach, are the source of a lot of money. The oil industry is there. It is money that really makes Sacramento tick. Of course the Z'berg bill didn't get anywhere.

The third thing I worked on was the Clean Environment Act initiative by the People's Lobby, an organization that was headed up by Joyce and Ed Koupal. They rescued kids who were drugged out, gave them a place to nod off and get clean, taught them how to run a printing press and how to go out with an ironing board and gather signatures for various campaigns. I chaired the study for Women For: that led the organization to support the initiative. It was a real citizen initiative, people going out on the street and gathering signatures--not being paid to do so, but because they cared.

DG: Oh my God, has it been changed. The 1970s had a lot of real citizen-sponsored initiatives.

DG: After the People's Lobby Clean Environment initiative went down to defeat, the Lung Association brought the environmental community together to assess what we would all want to do together. They wanted to get the lead out of gasoline. The discussion led instantly to campaign-finance reform. Carlyle Hall, an attorney specializing in land use and environmental law, was asked to lead the effort to write an initiative and declined. Ellen Stern Harris, who had led the successful campaign for the Coastal Initiative in southern California in 1972, also declined. I was next-most vocal and was duly appointed. I was then between issues, so I formed Citizens for Campaign Reform. Monthly meetings were held in my home. We attracted folks from the ACLU, Common Cause, a number of prominent attorneys, and worked out a proposal. It was sent with a cover letter to about 100 nonprofits all over the state, stating that we all suffered because of the way campaigns are financed, and asking for feedback. You know what response I got back? Zero. Zero.

DG: Zero. People were not tuned in yet. Now everybody sees it. Our group was absorbed into Common Cause as it formed a state board, and I ended up working on the initiative that would require reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures and would establish the FPPC [Fair Political Practices Commission]. I served six years each on the state and on the national board trying to push public financing.

C&O: Your next cause was nuclear energy?

DG: That was on the ballot in 1976. It would have given California land use control, where to site nuclear power plants. The legislature responded by creating the California Energy Commission with responsibility for projecting energy needs for the state and for siting power plants. This took all the wind out of our sails, and we permitted the initiative to go down in defeat.

I was easily drawn into that campaign because I had done the nuclear analysis for the People's Lobby initiative, and had made friends with a nuclear physicist who at that time was working at RAND. He came and spent an evening with the six of us working on this ballot measure and taught us that nuclear power is just a way of boiling water to make steam to turn a turbine; that's all it does. Barry Commoner [the biologist, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, opponent of nuclear testing in the 1950s, and a leading voice in the ecology movement in the 1970s] used to say that using nuclear power to make electricity is like using a chain saw to cut butter. There are so many other ways to boil water to turn a turbine.

Nuclear power plants were being built only because the Price-Anderson Act insured the nuclear industry against failures. If there was a meltdown or catastrophic accident, it limited its liability to $500 million. The federal government would pick up the rest. Without that insurance policy there would be no nuclear power at all in the United States.

C&O: Each of your projects grew out of something you learned from a previous one. In recent years you have been a leader in trying to change water policy. You've founded Heal the Bay to work in water quality in Santa Monica Bay, and the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council. What took you to water?

DG: Ellen Stern Harris. She had worked for years to get an appointment to the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) Board, representing the City of Beverly Hills, where she lived. She wanted to know why they were so powerful and how they functioned. Upon finally getting this appointment, she called together the environmental community to help her with this task. We met at her home with MWD's chief general counsel, and it became clear that water is at the heart of all California politics. I was between issues at that time and was intrigued, so I began to accompany her to board meetings, to read up on the history, and to understand that water was the most basic engine for California's growth and development. The land speculators that drive the influx of people in the south have always looked for more water to serve their development schemes. The Peripheral Canal on the ballot in 1982 would have taken Sacramento River water around the Delta directly to the pumps, to increase the amount of water that could be taken from that environment. I served on the statewide committee that fought against this destructive answer to more water for both southern California and for the farmers in the San Joaquin Valley.

The two most difficult issues out there now are privatization of water and using "paper water" (water that only exists in contracts, on paper) for development purposes. To have a sustainable water future we need to use what we've got a lot more efficiently and effectively. C-WIN [California Water Impact Network] is now engaged in lawsuits challenging the urban water management plans of some water districts in an attempt to stop development based on paper water, contracted water that cannot be delivered.

DG: I would be organizing the state around the principles for a sustainable water future that grew out of my book.

C-WIN took the "Elements of a Sustainable Water Future," with which I end the book [tentatively titled Water Politics: Avoiding Conflict in California, to be published by University of California Press], and has refined it into 16 principles. I have designed and had built a website (www.c-win.org) to solicit endorsements and to act as a network for all the small nonprofits that work on water to share information and needs. The only way to take on those with the money and political influence is to organize the people. I am now seeking the funding needed to hire help to make this happen.

This article is greatly abridged. For the full text, see the print edition of Coast & Ocean.

	Dorothy Green and the Power of Water *An Activist's Path to the Source* Rasa Gustaitis
	Admirers have called her "a force of nature." For more than three decades, Dorothy Green has prodded and urged southern California toward a sensible way of living within the natural limits of its geography. Much as water wears away stone, she has worked to shift water agencies from near-exclusive reliance on concrete channels to control floodwaters to an approach that includes groundwater recharge, water reuse, spreading basins, and native plants. Her creative spirit, graciousness, intelligence, down-to-earth warmth, and relentless energy have earned admiration from both allies and opponents. You can track her footprints along the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers, and Santa Monica Bay, to Sacramento and Washington, D.C. She founded Heal the Bay, the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council and, about three years ago, launched the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), whose goal is to move the state toward a sustainable water future. Coast & Ocean talked with Dorothy Green in her home of 40 years in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. --Rasa Gustaitis C&O: How did you become an activist? What set you on that path? DG: One of my kids is retarded, and I joined the Exceptional Children Foundation and ran their Christmas card program from 1962 to '79. We manufactured our own cards, designed by children in the program and printed by parents who had a print shop. I built it up to a pretty good business, taking in over $25,000 a year by just selling cards designed by retarded kids, till I finally just got bored with it. But also, there was the Vietnam War, and my oldest son was going to have to register for the draft. That happened at about the same time the first Earth Day was happening, and the civil rights movement was coming to a conclusion. I went into a kind of depression. And when I realized what was happening to me--I just didn't want to get out of bed in the morning--I began to look around for an organization where I could learn how to become an activist. I joined Women For:, an organization that worked for all the good things--better education, civil liberties, environment, peace. It had been formed by some frustrated League of Women Voters members who wanted to be more directly involved in the electoral process. The first thing I worked on was the Coastal Initiative (1972). I volunteered for the speakers' bureau and did make a couple of speeches, but I was terrible, I was so scared. But I learned. The second thing I did was to work for a bill that Assemblyman Ed Z'berg (D-Sacramento) was carrying, which would have established a super agency to set environmental policy for all other agencies. To push this bill, advocates had formed a single-purpose organization and I was the representative of Women For: I volunteered to be treasurer because I know how to keep a simple set of books. The two women who really ran that organization took me lobbying in Sacramento--which was an eye-opening experience. We couldn't even get in to see the assemblyman from Long Beach. His a.a. [administrative assistant] stood in the office doorway, elbow on the doorjamb, asking us how this bill would affect the tidelands. It didn't take long to figure out: tidelands, in Long Beach, are the source of a lot of money. The oil industry is there. It is money that really makes Sacramento tick. Of course the Z'berg bill didn't get anywhere. The third thing I worked on was the Clean Environment Act initiative by the People's Lobby, an organization that was headed up by Joyce and Ed Koupal. They rescued kids who were drugged out, gave them a place to nod off and get clean, taught them how to run a printing press and how to go out with an ironing board and gather signatures for various campaigns. I chaired the study for Women For: that led the organization to support the initiative. It was a real citizen initiative, people going out on the street and gathering signatures--not being paid to do so, but because they cared. C&O: That process sure has been degraded. DG: Oh my God, has it been changed. The 1970s had a lot of real citizen-sponsored initiatives. C&O: After that you worked for campaign reform with Common Cause. DG: After the People's Lobby Clean Environment initiative went down to defeat, the Lung Association brought the environmental community together to assess what we would all want to do together. They wanted to get the lead out of gasoline. The discussion led instantly to campaign-finance reform. Carlyle Hall, an attorney specializing in land use and environmental law, was asked to lead the effort to write an initiative and declined. Ellen Stern Harris, who had led the successful campaign for the Coastal Initiative in southern California in 1972, also declined. I was next-most vocal and was duly appointed. I was then between issues, so I formed Citizens for Campaign Reform. Monthly meetings were held in my home. We attracted folks from the ACLU, Common Cause, a number of prominent attorneys, and worked out a proposal. It was sent with a cover letter to about 100 nonprofits all over the state, stating that we all suffered because of the way campaigns are financed, and asking for feedback. You know what response I got back? Zero. Zero. C&O: You're kidding. DG: Zero. People were not tuned in yet. Now everybody sees it. Our group was absorbed into Common Cause as it formed a state board, and I ended up working on the initiative that would require reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures and would establish the FPPC [Fair Political Practices Commission]. I served six years each on the state and on the national board trying to push public financing. C&O: Your next cause was nuclear energy? DG: That was on the ballot in 1976. It would have given California land use control, where to site nuclear power plants. The legislature responded by creating the California Energy Commission with responsibility for projecting energy needs for the state and for siting power plants. This took all the wind out of our sails, and we permitted the initiative to go down in defeat. I was easily drawn into that campaign because I had done the nuclear analysis for the People's Lobby initiative, and had made friends with a nuclear physicist who at that time was working at RAND. He came and spent an evening with the six of us working on this ballot measure and taught us that nuclear power is just a way of boiling water to make steam to turn a turbine; that's all it does. Barry Commoner [the biologist, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, opponent of nuclear testing in the 1950s, and a leading voice in the ecology movement in the 1970s] used to say that using nuclear power to make electricity is like using a chain saw to cut butter. There are so many other ways to boil water to turn a turbine. Nuclear power plants were being built only because the Price-Anderson Act insured the nuclear industry against failures. If there was a meltdown or catastrophic accident, it limited its liability to $500 million. The federal government would pick up the rest. Without that insurance policy there would be no nuclear power at all in the United States. C&O: Each of your projects grew out of something you learned from a previous one. In recent years you have been a leader in trying to change water policy. You've founded Heal the Bay to work in water quality in Santa Monica Bay, and the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council. What took you to water? DG: Ellen Stern Harris. She had worked for years to get an appointment to the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) Board, representing the City of Beverly Hills, where she lived. She wanted to know why they were so powerful and how they functioned. Upon finally getting this appointment, she called together the environmental community to help her with this task. We met at her home with MWD's chief general counsel, and it became clear that water is at the heart of all California politics. I was between issues at that time and was intrigued, so I began to accompany her to board meetings, to read up on the history, and to understand that water was the most basic engine for California's growth and development. The land speculators that drive the influx of people in the south have always looked for more water to serve their development schemes. The Peripheral Canal on the ballot in 1982 would have taken Sacramento River water around the Delta directly to the pumps, to increase the amount of water that could be taken from that environment. I served on the statewide committee that fought against this destructive answer to more water for both southern California and for the farmers in the San Joaquin Valley. The two most difficult issues out there now are privatization of water and using "paper water" (water that only exists in contracts, on paper) for development purposes. To have a sustainable water future we need to use what we've got a lot more efficiently and effectively. C-WIN [California Water Impact Network] is now engaged in lawsuits challenging the urban water management plans of some water districts in an attempt to stop development based on paper water, contracted water that cannot be delivered. C&O: If you weren't in frail health right now, what would you be doing next? DG: I would be organizing the state around the principles for a sustainable water future that grew out of my book. C-WIN took the "Elements of a Sustainable Water Future," with which I end the book [tentatively titled Water Politics: Avoiding Conflict in California, to be published by University of California Press], and has refined it into 16 principles. I have designed and had built a website (www.c-win.org) to solicit endorsements and to act as a network for all the small nonprofits that work on water to share information and needs. The only way to take on those with the money and political influence is to organize the people. I am now seeking the funding needed to hire help to make this happen. This article is greatly abridged. For the full text, see the print edition of Coast & Ocean.