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BEC Protects
The Butte Environmental Council (BEC) is a non-profit environmental organization based in Chico, California. Our mission is to preserve and conserve the Earth’s natural resources, with particular attention to environmental issues in Northern California. BEC was formed in 1975 and throughout its 37 years, BEC has had a significant voice in shaping the environment and policies of Butte County and beyond.
BEC in the News
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- John Scott is a member of the BEC Board of Directors and Co-Chair of the BEC Advocacy Committee. He is also a member of the Butte County Water Commission. - rdifalco
Highlights and Sticky Notes:Supervisors will surely vote to protect the countyI think our Butte County supervisors have the tenacity and courage to do the right thing by supporting the Butte County written ordinance to ban fracking.This ban will protect our community, its farmers, ranchers and all future generations from the inevitable destruction of our aquifer brought about from hydraulic fracking,Will any of our supervisors vote to support fracking and sell you out to big energy?Stand with me to support all the supervisors that vote to ban hydraulic fracking in Butte County.
— John Scott, Butte ValleyTags: BEC, Butte County, fracking, waterby: rdifalco
Highlights and Sticky Notes:Butte County supervisors must act on fracking banThousands of Butte County citizens joined members of Frack-free Butte County, Butte Environmental Council and the Sierra Club to demonstrate our desire for a ban against fracking in our petition to the county last year.Since then, numerous health, water, air, disposal, climate, transport, soil, seismic and other problems with fracking were described in letters to the editor. In April, the Butte County Board of Supervisors asked the Planning Commission staff to develop a ban; it was tighter than our own ban. Now the time has arrived for the board to sign onto the staff’s excellent ban.Tags: BEC, fracking, Butte County, waterby: rdifalco
Highlights and Sticky Notes:Butte Environmental Council representative Mark Stemen shows areas of invasive Arundo donax growth along Little Chico Creek near Humboldt Park in October. Stemen, along with other citizens and city officials, are championing a plan for removal because of major fire danger risk and environmental damage.Chico >> The city of Chico is rallying with Butte Environmental Council to eradicate an invasive weed clogging Little Chico Creek.On Tuesday, the Chico City Council will be asked to approve a joint application for a $1 million Urban Streams Restoration grant to eradicate arundo donax in the creek. “We believe that when the city has to take a step back, the community can take a step forward,” said Mark Stemen of Butte Environmental Council, which will help spearhead the eradication effort. “We pointed out the problem. We also wanted to be part of the solution.”A class of his students at Chico State University mapped Little Chico Creek last fall, noting every location of arundo, invasive species and habitat that will need to be preserved.Tags: BEC, chico, city, council, arundo, Little Chico Creek, watershedby: rdifalco
BEC News Interests
Highlights and Sticky Notes:Humankind didn’t do fish and wildlife any favors when it went on a dam-building spree a half-century ago. Now science it trying to help with a small bit of payback.The impacts the massive structures would have on fish and critters were barely considered in the name of progress as society sought modern solutions to the problems of supplying water and electricity for a growing population.It only took a few years to figure out the stunning negative impact dams would have on rivers that contained spawning anadromous fish, however.
With hundreds of miles of spawning tributaries cut off by structures like Shasta Dam, Oroville Dam, Trinity Dam and the many dams on the Klamath River, salmon and steelhead populations on the rivers plummeted. Tags: water, fish, salmonby: rdifalco
Highlights and Sticky Notes:Like gold, it lies beneath ground. We use it but don’t manage it. My interest in it may differ from yours. But if we don’t cooperate, the resource may go away and we’re both hurt. What is it? Groundwater.The bottom line is that California’s population growth, coupled with that pesky multi-year drought, pitch one-two strikes that stress out the aquifers.Tags: water, california, Butte Countyby: rdifalco
Highlights and Sticky Notes:After nearly five hours of discussion, public input and professional testimony on the proposed countywide ban of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the Butte County Board of Supervisors failed on Tuesday (Feb. 10) to adopt an ordinance that has been more than 10 months in the making.
Instead, the board directed county staff to craft an ordinance calling for conditional-use permits for fracking so each project can be considered on an individual basis. The supes also called for an ordinance that would ban the deposit of fracking waste in Butte County storage wells.The Butte County effort was initially backed by four of the five supervisors who gave Alpert direction to write up an ordinance last April. The latest meeting was standing-room-only with a large number of fracking opponents who, one after another, asked the supervisors to pass the local ordinance. These same folks, calling themselves Frack-Free Butte County, gathered enough signatures in 2014 to get a similar initiative on the June 2016 primary ballot.Tags: Butte County, frackingby: rdifalco
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