Sandy Bahr

Sandy Bahr, conservation outreach coordinator and lobbyist for the Grand Canyon Chapter of the Sierra Club, studied civil engineering and worked as a general engineering and land surveying technician after graduating from college.
When she moved to Arizona, she continued her education, this time in environmental studies, and became a volunteer for the Sierra Club and was later hired as a staff member. She also worked as a contract lobbyist for the Arizona Audubon Council.
Ms. Bahr, who was interviewed July 13, has lobbied for the Sierra Club for nine years, a job she describes as often working in a “hostile” environment. She added, “Long after I retire, I plan to be a thorn in the side of the Legislature and other elected officials.”
Why do your opponents still call environmentalists “tree huggers,” and how to you react to that?
I’m not insulted by it. For some people it’s a term of derision — a way to dismiss an entity that should have a voice in public policy making. It harkens back to people thinking to protect individual trees. The Sierra Club has never been about that; we’re about protecting forests. In the Sonoran Desert, cactus hugger would be more appropriate.
Has the environmental community made any significant progress in Arizona, say over the past 10 years?
At the Arizona Legislature, I would say no. In the area of air quality, a lot of the things the environmental community has worked for have come through lawsuits. Some of it has come through really pushing agencies, and some has come from the federal level.
We’ve also seen some additional areas protected in Arizona, including the national monuments. In Pima County, the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan is a landmark plan and came about because the Pima County Board of Supervisors believe strongly in conservation.
We’ve seen more opportunities at the local level and to some degree have shifted in the area of land use because the Legislature is so tight with the developers, and it’s so difficult to accomplish anything there.
Has the Sierra Club done a good job of telling the public and politicians what you’re all about?
I think we could always do better. Unless you have really deep pockets, it’s hard to cut through all the chatter out there. If you look at the Chamber of Commerce, on any given day, they may have half a dozen lobbyists at the Legislature. Lobbyists for individual companies will also be there. I think we could do a better job in telling elected officials and the public what we’re for. Too often, they hear what we’re against. A lot of my time is spent on trying to protect the places where we live.
Judging from your annual scorecards of legislators, conservation and other environmental issues are divided along party lines, with the exception of some moderate Republicans. So, what is it in partisan philosophies that divides along those issues?
It’s a fairly recent phenomenon, the schism along party lines. That’s not to say there aren’t some Democrats that aren’t bad on environmental issues as well. It’s an outgrowth of what happened in ’94 with the ‘Contract for America,’ and here in Arizona, they had their little contract for Arizona as well. Some of the things they went after were basic environmental protections that Republicans for years had supported, and that helped to create this division.
In the early 90s, we had bipartisan support. Even if you look back to the early days of the [Governor] Symington administration, he certainly wasn’t anti-environmental. At some point, he seemed to take a hard turn to the right.
As a lobbyist, are you turned away by conservatives when you want to discuss a bill or testify in committee?
Sure, that’s something that happens. There are some conservatives that are open to at least listening, and I appreciate that. What I’ve done over the years is look for opportunities to work with people we haven’t always worked with on specific issues and specific bills. An example of that is a bill we worked on with [Sen.} Carolyn Allen, and that had to do with notifying parents and guardians who have children in child care facilities about pesticides.
You said you weren’t pleased with the governor’s approval of funds for more highway construction. Did she sign any other measure that displeased the Sierra Club?
We weren’t happy with the bill to loosen the regulation of landscapers relative to the application of herbicides. She also signed that bill to give an exemption to the mines on county regulations of their reclamation activities. The other one we didn’t like was the Copper State Park bill. It’s a bad bill and doesn’t establish a good park. Elected officials should have thought about whether it was appropriate to give up Oak Flat [in a land swap], which is an important recreational and traditional area for the Apaches. It shouldn’t have the potential for mining activity in the middle of the park.
What is Arizona’s number one environmental threat?
The rapid rate of growth affects everything. It’s pretty obvious we can’t keep up with that rate of growth. They think if we just widen these freeways, it will address the traffic problems. Whether it’s that, whether it’s school construction, whether it’s water and sewer infrastructure, we just can’t keep up.
We focus on Phoenix a lot because Phoenix is one of those poster children for urban sprawl, but look at the Prescott area. It has massive growth. People up there passed a reasonable growth initiative.
Whenever you try to do anything to change even the way we’re developing, you run up against an industry that is powerful, has very deep pockets and is really entrenched in this state.
And what’s on the horizon that we might not think about?
A lot of the elected officials are not thinking about the implications of climate change and global warming. That is something we need to get out in front of. The governor has been looking at it. I was part of a climate change advisory group that is forwarding recommendations to her office.
I think the public is starting to be more concerned about it, but the elected officials aren’t really tackling it. Some of them are still in denial. We’re sort of living on the margins, anyway, in the desert relative to water and temperatures. It has serious implications for our future. The Legislature just will not step up to the plate on that [water] issue.
Regarding the enactment of a limit on the feeding of wildlife in Pima and Maricopa counties, tell us how feeding wildlife endangers the animals?
Anytime wildlife associates people with food, it’s bad news. Feeding of prey species can help draw in more predator species, such as mountain lions. Or there’s a bad interaction with people, the animals usually end up dead. Feeding wildlife can promote diseases and creates unnatural clustering of the animals, and it can even disrupt migration patterns for some animals. It’s bad for wildlife and it’s also a public safety issue.
How is the Department of Environmental Quality doing in your opinion?
We would like to see them do more. We’re pleased to see the agency move forward with the hazardous air pollutants rule… it’s been 13 years. They’re looking at trying to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. There’s been some strong enforcement actions taken against some violators.
On the down side, we’ve seen them almost cheerlead for building a refinery in Arizona, especially when everyone’s talking about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.
Some of the impediments they have are at the Legislature. Some of the attacks on them are almost at the irrational level at the Legislature. A couple of people have created the idea that they’re anti-business. When you look at the agency, a huge part of what they do is helping business.
There are two trust land measures on the November ballot. Explain as simply as you can the differences?
There isn’t a good understanding about the trust lands and what their current status is. The measure referred to the ballot by the Legislature requires additional legislative action for any land to be conserved beyond the 42,000 acres in the Arizona Preserve Initiative. Considering the Legislature had been somewhat hostile to conservation in recent years, it seems unlikely there will be additional lands conserved.
The legislative measure isn’t really there to pass; it’s there to kill the other measure. If they seem similar, I don’t think that was unintentional.
The Sierra Club and the Arizona League of Conservation Voters extend their scope to include constitutional amendments and citizen access to government. Are you generally concerned about the overall democratic process in Arizona?
Absolutely. Without having access to public records, for example, we can’t hold government accountable, and that’s a big part of what we need to do on environmental issues. The Legislature over the years has become hostile in some areas regarding citizen involvement. They’ve made it hard to put a citizen initiative on the ballot, and while a lot of times we don’t support those initiatives, we certainly support being able to put them on the ballot.
Whenever the Legislature tries to make that more difficult, all they’re doing is putting that process more in the hands of the big money interests.
When I first started in ’94-’95, there was this movement for opening things up. The tone for [limiting public participation in committee hearings] is really set by the leadership, the Senate president and the speaker of the House. They ought to talk to [committee chairmen] and tell them, ‘You need to be respectful of people and hear from them. If that means fewer bills on your table, so be it.’
Thanks for your time.