Subject: Re: Your role in Sierra Club Nuclear work

Dear David Orr and concerned activists who have written us,

We appreciate the information and your concern.  Anyone is welcome to
contact the Environmental Quality Strategy Team to offer a proposal for a
national approach to the nuclear waste problem, but we also need people who
will do this work. The Sierra Club is a movement of activists.  Our greatest
resource is our membership, now over 700,000 strong.  The role of strategy
teams is to set up the organizational structure and to funnel organizational
resources to empower the activists within the Club to save their own
communities and wildlands near and far.  If you have seen our calls for new
committee members, you know we have been looking for people to develop
projects and organize around emerging or historic issues.  EQST retains the
responsibility to set priorities and not every idea can be implemented right
now, but certainly nuclear waste would be a top priority.  When the EQST put
out a call for the Waste Committee, which included nuclear waste work, we
had very, very few applicants.  No nuclear activists applied, and we were
very disappointed.

The EQST fully supports the anti-nuclear agenda of the Sierra Club and the
shares its member's serious concerns regarding the disposal of nuclear
waste.  The waste committee has three members and is charged with the full
range of waste issues:  mining waste, emissions from power plants, uranium
processing, waste transportation, site cleanup, waste disposal, and
mixed-waste incineration (occuring in PA).  It works with the EQST, with
access to a limited number of staff.     It has provided resources to
chapters, when requested, and taken taken a formal position against uranium
mining on the Navajo reservation and organized opposing testimony by local
Sierra Club activists at public hearings; we are listed by the tribe as
supporters of their opposition in their literature.

We would like to do more.  Potential projects include developing alerts,
evaluating legislation,  lobbying, writing formal public comments, expanding
the Club's national website information, forming a strategizing cell of the
Club's anti-nuclear activists, forming a Nuclear Waste Subcommittee,
campaign planning, position development, policy revision and updating,
assessing the needs of the Club's grassroots activists and developing a
responsive "tool kit," and partnering with other nuclear activist groups so
that we can work together effectively).

The Sierra Club has policy and guidance related to nuclear waste which can
be used as the foundation of any local, regional, or national campaign. The
directly-related policy is located at <
http://www.sierraclub.org/nuclearwaste/policy.asp >.  It includes:
Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors, Energy and Energy Economics, Energy
Facilities Siting, Environmentally Hazardous Substances, Hazardous Waste
Management, High-Level Nuclear Waste, Low-Level Nuclear Waste, Nuclear
Exports and Plutonium Separation, Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons and Related
Issues.   Related policies and guidance can be found at
<http://www.sierraclub.org/policy/conservation/index.asp >

Please let us know what you would like to do to help.

Marti Sinclair and Doris Cellarius, Co-Chairs, EQST

The Animated Software Company

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