Wednesday, April 22, 1998 | 10:03 a.m.
"It's not easy being an environmentalist in the Southwest."
That's according to Deanna White, director of the environmental voter education campaign for the Sierra Club.
While Earth Day participants around the world are scrambling to promote environmental awareness today, volunteer members of the Sierra Club make it a yearlong task.
White, along with other members of the environmental group, are busy contending with the environmental problems created by continuous growth in the Las Vegas Valley.
Randy Harness, conservation chairman of the Southern Nevada branch of the Sierra Club, said there isn't a balance between growth and environmental threats in Las Vegas.
"People focus on maximizing development, growth and profit without considering the affect it will have on the environment," Harness said. "Unchecked growth doesn't work."
White interjected that the Sierra Club is not anti-growth.
"But there's a need for managed growth. It's becoming increasingly dangerous to one's health to live in Las Vegas."
Dave Brickey, chairman for the Southern Nevada Sierra Club, said the Valley's poor air quality is largely due to development.
"Every time you blade the land, the desert contributes more dust," he said. "If you disturb the land, there should be a specific number of days to secure it again. Many developers break ground, then leave it alone."
Brickey said that dust is a large concern since it can get lodged in the lungs.
The Sierra Club's Clean Air Project, which is part of a conservation committee focusing on air quality in the Valley, is actively fighting Clark County's request for a five-year extension on air-quality standards.
"Without the extension, if they are found out of compliance with the Clean Air Act, then highway funds can be taken away," Brickey said. "We're trying to get to it before it's extended."
The Sierra Club is a nonprofit, member supported, public interest organization. They promote conservation of the natural environment by influencing public policy decisions through legislative and administrative action.
The organization that was established in 1892 to preserve the Sierra Mountains has grown to include 65 chapters in the United States and Canada. The Southern Nevada group and the Great Basin group make up the Toiyabe Chapter that was established some 50 years ago.
Brickey said the group's work is often bureaucratic.
"We're the guys on the committees in the board rooms," he said. "Before government levels can do something, they need to present it as a plan of action. We sit in on the issues being presented."
Harness, Brickey and White say they took personal offense at Rep. John Ensign's recent accusations that the leaders of today's environmental movements -- specifically the Sierra Club -- are socialists.
"I'm a socialist because I feel public land should be used for the public," White said sarcastically.
The organization's bike ride and rally last Saturday, in honor of Earth Day, focused on voter awareness, and Ensign, R-Nev., was a large part of their focus.
The organization said that Ensign voted to weaken water and other environmental safeguards to benefit polluters and made it difficult to take additional steps to clean up the air and water. They say he voted to bypass local control in private land issues and allow land owners to tie up federal courts.
"We're people like everyone else who care about Southern Nevada," Harness, a native Las Vegan, said.
White, who promotes environmental awareness, says her job is to hold elected officials accountable for their position on the environment and voting record.
The organization works to educate members of the public on where elected officials stand on the environment and encourages them to let their elected representatives know how they feel.
"People feel that they don't have a voice, or don't see a way. We provide them with a voice," White said. "We give people a chance to feel that they have a voice in a process that can be daunting and confusing."
Nationally the Sierra Club is known for its leadership in hundreds of causes. It has been instrumental in passing legislation including the Wilderness Act, the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act; preventing the construction of dams in the Grand Canyon; and creating the Alaska National Lands bill.
Harness said locally the organization helped create the Mt. Charleston Wilderness Area, assuring its protection so it will never be developed.
He said the Sierra Club led the campaign to keep MX missiles out of Nevada and was instrumental in stopping the expansion of development into the Red Rock Canyon. The group also is involved with the transportation issues concerning Yucca Mountain, the proposed national nuclear waste dump site.
The Sierra Club also is involved in SWEPT, the county's new desert dumping program, which includes Silver State Disposal Inc. and Clark County.
Harness said the organization, which has a shortage of volunteers, receives calls from residents in the Valley asking them to take care of environmental problems. But the Sierra Club can't tackle everything since locally there are 1,800 members and only 3 percent are active.
"The process is never ending. We win small victories, but it's a constant vigil," White said.
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