Cover Story: Georgia’s Green Team

Steve Nygren?
?Nygren was jogging near his country home in south Fulton County five years ago when he saw a clump of woods clear-cut on his neighbor’s land. The neighbor was building an airstrip, but for a while, Nygren feared a strip mall was moving next door.

The well-known restaurateur (he co-founded the Peasant group of restaurants) set out to make sure south Fulton would avoid the unsightly, inconvenient sprawl that plagues north Fulton. He was determined to figure out a way to guide development without being overrun by it.

The result is Chattahoochee Hill Country, nearly 40,000 acres where landowner-friendly development tools are being merged with environmentally sensitive planning. A publicly inclusive process to create new vision for the area got the enthusiastic backing of almost all its businesses and landowners for traditional, compact “hamlets” and lots of open space.

Nygren also is the driving force behind (and chairman of) the Chattahoochee Hill Country Alliance, which is guiding development of the first hamlet. The alliance is working to bring another 25,000 acres in surrounding counties aboard the smart-growth bandwagon.

Chattahoochee Hill Country already has garnered national attention as a trend-setting way to counter sprawl. Metro Atlanta — usually a poster child for dumb growth — has Nygren to thank for flipping the reputation.

Jason Rooks?
?Since taking over Georgia Conservation Voters two years ago, Jason Rooks has made the state’s leading environmental political action committee more effective than ever. An attorney and one-time Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Rooks is comfortable as an inside player. He sits down with his adversaries and talks to them over lunch, and his professional style has moved environmental groups closer to the Gold Dome’s power circles.

During this year’s legislative session, Rooks led the fight against a bill that would have allowed developers to pipe, fill and pave over streams (see Sen. Casey Cagle in the “Dirty Dozen” section). The bill passed, but not before it was stripped of its unpleasantness. Rooks also helped block a bill that would have allowed metro Atlanta to suck water out of distant river systems.

He championed good legislation as well. For the first time, a group of Georgia agencies will work together to create a statewide water plan to guide water use for decades. Another bill Rooks pushed makes it a crime for grease haulers to dump their loads into manholes, a common practice that leads to clogged pipes and overflows of raw sewage.

Debbie Royston?
?A year ago, Royston filled the big hiking boots of Brent Martin, who left Georgia Forestwatch to run a land trust in Tennessee. She’s continuing Martin’s work, tenaciously fighting to protect North Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest from the shaky stewardship of the U.S. Forest Service.

Royston hired Larry Sanders of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic to file a lawsuit against the Forest Service for allowing off-roaders to shred sections of Rich Mountain. The lawsuit was a big success, forcing the Forest Service to close Rich Mountain Road for one year while biologists perform an environmental assessment.

But Royston and her staff face a bigger challenge this year. Under pressure from the Bush administration, the Forest Service is putting the finishing touches on a plan that would allow half the forest to be clear-cut or used as an obstacle course for four-wheelers. Royston vows that Georgia Forestwatch will sue the service once the horrendous plan is finalized.

Jane Hubert, Evelyn Kendrick and Charles Ware?
?Since 2002, when the state ordered Waste Management Inc. to shut the Live Oak landfill near Atlanta, trash companies have been scrambling to fill the void — and to make piles of money in the process. City officials want to hire a company that would ship Atlanta’s trash to outlying counties, where the stench of a landfill would plague somebody else’s citizens.

Three Taliaferro County commissioners — Hubert, Kendrick and Ware — went the distance in an attempt to ensure their constituents won’t be the unlucky ones. They headed to jail instead of signing documents that would grant Atlanta developer David Aldridge permission to build an 820-acre landfill in the poor, east Georgia county.

All Aldridge now needs to open the landfill is a state Environmental Protection Division permit, which may come by year’s end. Hubert, Kendrick, Ware and others in Taliaferro County have started a legal fund to pay for the lawsuits they plan to file to stop the landfill.

Brooke Brandenburg, Natalie Foster, Colleen Kiernan and Kate Smolski?
?Beer. It’s so delicious. And what better bait to lure environmentally conscious hipsters into the aging Sierra Club? Four environmentally conscious and (kinda) hip Sierra Club employees thought they’d do just that by starting gatherings at Teaspace, a hip little restaurant in hip Little Five Points.

Up to 150 folks now play environmental trivia games, listen to speakers, and, of course, drink beer at the monthly Sierra Club & Beer events. (The next one’s scheduled for May 19.)

But it’s not just fun and games for this group. Each of the dedicated eco-warriors has a mission at the club’s Georgia office. Foster is working to stop a 37-mile highway that would go through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Smolski is rallying the public to fight the U.S. Forest Service’s plan to open up half of the 749,000-acre Chattahoochee National Forest to logging and four-wheelers. Brandenburg keeps volunteers busy by, for example, taking them to neighboring states to protest President Bush’s extreme anti-environmental record.

And Kiernan leads the club’s fight against air pollution, which means she goes head to head with Southern Co. executives. She also helped establish the Community Green Power Program at Sevananda Natural Foods. The program allows customers to buy electricity generated by solar panels on the store’s roof.

Maybe the coolest thing about the Sierra Club these days is its wonkish leader, Bryan Hager, who led the club’s successful fight against the Northern Arc. While his four “Sierra Club in the City” staffers provide flash, Hager has been a steady, thoughtful advocate for smart growth for years.

Chris DeScherer, Ciannat Howett and Gil Rogers?
?The lawyers at the Southern Environmental Law Center are more responsible than anyone for forcing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to get off its butt and do something about Atlanta’s air pollution. David Farren, the center’s senior attorney who works out of North Carolina, and Rogers sued the EPA in 1999 for not enforcing clean air laws; they won in September. Now, dozens of stronger pollution rules are in effect, curbing pollution from cars, trucks and smokestacks.

DeScherer is taking on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ sporadic methods of determining which wetlands are protected, and which can be drained, dredged and paved by developers. DeScherer, Rogers and Howett also stopped construction of three bridges through publicly owned marshland for the proposed Emerald Pointe development outside Savannah.

As director of the center’s Atlanta office, Howett orchestrated a legislative fight against bills that would have allowed interbasin transfers and the channeling of streams into pipes (again, see Sen. Casey Cagle in the “Dirty Dozen” section). And she also found the time to raise enough money to hire four new attorneys.

Alice Rolls?
?It took Rolls 10 years to grow Earth Share of Georgia into a fundraising powerhouse that receives $2.5 million each year. Now, 72 Georgia companies allow their employees to donate part of their paycheck to dozens of environmental organizations through the workplace giving program Rolls created.

Rolls recently left Earth Share to become executive director of Georgia Organics, a nonprofit group that advocates organic farming and consumption. It’s a mark of her dedication that she’d leave Earth Share for the challenge of growing another environmental group.

Arthur Blank?
?Let’s face it. Home Depot billionaire Arthur Blank contributed to sprawl. The company he co-founded is responsible for miles and miles of big-box retail stores and blacktop parking lots.

But Blank is part of that rare breed trying to undo — or at least mitigate — the worst side effects from his business career. The website of his personal foundation even reads like propaganda from an environmental group: “Decades of strong growth in Metro Atlanta have resulted in sprawl, congestion, and disappearing open spaces.”

Now, through the Arthur Blank Foundation, the retired executive is replacing asphalt and concrete with parks and trails. He’s also pledged to give away $100 million to metro area neighborhood groups, land trusts and park conservancies. One of his goals is to link every major park in the city of Atlanta into a web of green.

During 2003, the foundation gave away $4.8 million. Cabbagetown got $200,000 for a new community park, $16,000 went to East Point for a jogging trail at Brookdale Park, and the PATH Foundation received $500,000 to add more than six miles of trails along South Peachtree Creek in Chamblee.

Greg Levine?
?Drivers might recognize Levine, program coordinator at Trees Atlanta. Perhaps you saw him on Arbor Day walking in the median of Freedom Parkway. He was checking to see that each tree planted along the highway earlier that day had a good chance of surviving.

Levine’s environmentally conscious itch wasn’t quite scratched in his earlier career with a landscape architect firm. “We would go all around the city and remove the environment,” he says.

So nine years ago, he joined Trees Atlanta. He heads up volunteer programs and tree plantings at the nonprofit organization, which has planted and distributed more than 60,000 trees since its founding 19 years ago. He and the group’s Administration Director Cheryl Kortemeier faced an additional challenge this year, when Executive Director Marcia Bansley went on an extensive leave.

Levine might have gained more materially by sticking with a for-profit business. But he’s gotten something else out of his work with Trees Atlanta. “Planting trees with volunteers and different people from around the city is a completely positive experience,” Levine says. “You’re constantly seeing the results of your work and it makes you feel good every time you pass them. It’s an immediate reward.”

Carol Couch?
?Just that Couch was chosen by Gov. Sonny Perdue as director of the state Environmental Protection Division signified a dramatic shift at the state agency.

Since she took over seven months ago, Couch, who has a doctorate in ecology from the University of Georgia, has been preaching the gospel of comprehensive planning: She wants the EPD to take the big picture into consideration, rather than obsess exclusively on the narrow issues of each individual permit application.

She’s already redefined the role of her office by speaking out against a bad bill (see Cagle in the “Dirty Dozen”), something her predecessor, Harold Reheis, rarely, if ever, did.

Couch will have another chance to prove her mettle over the next year, as the state devises its first plan for water conservation. Big farms and manufacturers will be fighting over our water supply. Couch will have to make sure there’s enough water remaining to sustain Georgia’s abused and neglected wildlife.

John Sweet?
?Before there was much of an environmental movement in Georgia, Sweet, an attorney, sued the Georgia Department of Transportation for spraying the poison Myrex on roadsides across the state.

Sweet won; the DOT hasn’t used Myrex since.

Over the last 30 years, Sweet has been involved — mostly quietly — in dozens more eco-causes. He helped rear Earth Share of Georgia, and Georgians for Clean Energy (which merged last year into the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy). Leaders of Georgia Conservation Voters and the Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest say their groups wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for Sweet, who donates office space along with sage advice.

Sweet also jumps into court for the environment — pro bono. One of his biggest cases came last year, when Duke Power tried to build a plant in North Georgia without the proper permits. Several groups and individuals sued Duke Power to force the company to follow environmental laws for power plant construction.

Duke Power sued back, attempting to get the Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest kicked off the case. If Duke had succeeded, the case likely would have set a precedent barring environmental groups from seeking outside legal help.