Task force takes bold stance on environmental protection
Ashley Archibald
Santa Monica Daily Press
10/05/2011
If a Santa Monica advisory task force gets its way, the city will join a growing panoply of municipalities on the forefront of a movement to cement the rights of its citizens to enjoy a clean environment.
The ordinance, called the Sustainability Bill of Rights, would for the first time declare that Santa Monica residents, natural communities and ecosystems within city limits have a right to a healthy environment and conscious practices.
The draft's stated goal is to "change current economic, political and legal structures" to ones that help advance the goals of self-sufficiency and sustainability.
It was an effort, in part, to take back control from corporate interests, which had been empowered by the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, said Mark Gold, head of the Task Force on the Environment and president of local environmental non-profit Heal the Bay.
"That's a pretty important part of the story, that there's a growing frustration not only within the Santa Monica community, but nationally that corporate rights have somehow superseded individual rights," Gold said.
The task force also saw it as a way to put some teeth into the existing Sustainable City Plan by giving individuals and City Hall standing to protect environmental issues in court.
That plan, adopted in 1994, ensured that Santa Monica could continue to meet its environmental, economic and social needs in perpetuity without compromising the ability of future generations to do so.
It focuses on conservation, improving transportation, preventing pollution, protecting public health and creating a diverse economy with a focus on sustainable business.
"(The ordinance) is a combination of a response to Citizens United, but consistent with the tremendous work that City Hall has already done," Gold said. "It's not a knee-jerk reaction to the court case."
Gold and the other members of the task force began developing the ordinance in mid-2010, after the Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United decision which effectively declared an open season on corporate donations to politics.
The ordinance guarantees five specific branches of sustainability — water sources; energy; clean air, water and soil; waste disposal; and climate — and commits to protect the rights not only of people, but of the ecosystems and natural communities as well.
It also slashes into corporations, declaring that they "shall not have the rights of 'persons' to the extent that such rights intefere" with the components of the ordinance.
Similar measures have sprung up across the country, particularly in Pennsylvania, which has been ground zero for fights between the natural gas industry and municipalities looking to protect their natural resources.
Braden Crooks, a recent graduate of Penn State and the founder of local activist network Groundswell, is on the forefront of that battle.
Natural gas corporations operating in Pennsylvania use a method called "fracking" to extract natural gas from the ground. It is a dangerous process that comes with the real threat of poisoning the local ground water, Crooks said.
"On the local level, we should have the right to decide what does and doesn't happen here," Crooks said. "We have the right to clean water, clean air and a healthy ecosystem. We're going to say that we have these rights, and these are the rights that everyone should have, and on that basis we can ban hydro-fracking."
State College, Penn. will get the opportunity to be one of the first communities to vote on its version of a Sustainability Bill of Rights, which it calls the Community Bill of rights, in November.
