Two environmental victories

Important not to overlook these victories. At the end of 2008, Santa Clara County instituted new "Green Building" rules for residential development that required minimizing the impacts from new residences and major remodels (info here).

While the County staff planned to require more from larger homes, they also planned to stop requiring more at a certain point. We successfully convinced the County that monster mansion impacts continue as they increase in size, so the required "Build It Green" points needed will also have to increase with size.

The new standards will reduce the climate change impacts from the homes, they encourage such things as native plant use and reduced visibility, and the reduce the economic incentive for sprawling monster mansions, all of which supports CGF's core mission.

The second ongoing victory is at Moffett Field, where the US Navy took another major step towards restoring polluted lands as tidal wetlands. CGF had been involved in this effort several years ago (a major effort by Save the Bay), and when the Navy indicated it would go in this direction, we've limited ourselves to monitoring it. Great to see it moving closer to realization.

-Brian