DesertBlog

San Diego Earth Day Report

Groups fighting the Sunrise Powerlink and promoting greener energy options were all over Sunday’s Earth Day celebration in San Diego’s Balboa Park.

On my way to the Friends of Rose Canyon booth (where we spread the word about another “unnecessary infrastructure in parks” issue), I passed the Communities United for Sensible Power booth, where Carolyn Morrow was selling tickets to Ranchita Rocks 2, which will be held September 12, 13, & 14 this year. The earlier you buy your tickets, the cheaper they’ll be. Let’s hope the Sunrise Powerlink is just a bad memory by then!

Later, on my way down to the Sun Stage for lunch, I stopped at the Donate-A-Pack Foundation booth. Turns out the program is run by the good folks at Adventure 16, and they can bring new life to even the most ancient pack. Then they donate it to outdoor education groups like Outward Bound, Big City Mountaineers, Sierra Club Inner City Outings, and more. Not only were they promoting this good work, they also were helping to spread the word about the harm the Sunrise Powerlink will do to San Diego’s backcountry, where many of their customers recreate.

A blues-rock band – didn’t catch their name – was playing at the Sun Stage, and also promoting the upcoming Ranchita Rocks festival. (Kathleen Beck’s group had played earlier, but my FRC duties kept me from getting to that one. Her song “Wires” should become our campaign’s anthem.)

At the San Diego Smart Energy Solutions booth, organizer Micah Mitrosky, the Sierra Club’s Richard Miller, and their band of volunteers had already given away all of their compact fluorescent bulbs, were just about out of Polaroid film, and had collected 300 comment cards against the Powerlink that will be turned in at the May 12 CPUC hearing. The pitch to passersby was, “Get your photo taken with our Pro-Smart Energy, Anti-Sunrise Powerlink sign, attach it to a comment card and write your personal message, and get a free CFL.” Even after the bulbs were gone, we got another 50 to 100 comment cards in the next two hours, bringing the total for the day to about 400, most with pictures proving a real person is behind the comment. Way to go Micah, Richard, and all the volunteers!

Another volunteer at the booth was Bob Baran, whose Anza-Borrego.net not only has great information on hiking and wheeling trips in Anza-Borrego, but also a lot of Sunrise Powerlink info. Turns out Bob is also our second registered user of DesertBlog. Welcome, Bob!

There were probably more groups at Earth Day with Sunrise Powerlink info that I missed. (The SDG&E booth was noticeably absent of any SPL propaganda. It was all energy efficiency and conservation. Good job, SDG&E, let’s have more of that, and less of the towering steel structures.)

Yesterday’s event jammed traffic all around Balboa Park. Let’s hope we have a traffic jam half that size out in Borrego on May 12.