Delta Group Loses Second Keeper
By Warren Lutz, The Record, Stockton, Calif.
Nov. 11–DeltaKeeper is fast running out of keepers.
Stockton’s stalwart environmental agency in August saw the departure of its founder, Bill Jennings. Now the acting director has left as well, leaving the organization without any full-time staff members.
Its parent organization promises DeltaKeeper will continue to operate. But the departures leave some local activists wondering what the future holds for the group that once forced the cleanup of Penn Mine, pressured state officials to regulate water pollution that drains from farms and successfully sued several local companies for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act.
Baykeeper’s executive director, Leo O’Brien, said he plans to keep DeltaKeeper running and would announce a new director soon.
“We feel like we’re close,” O’Brien said. “We’re fully committed to that work. Nothing has changed on that front.”
But Baykeeper won’t be looking for a new director for its only other local environmental group, Petaluma Riverkeeper. The former Riverkeeper chief, David Yearsley, left when Jennings did.
Although Baykeeper would like to replace Yearsley eventually, O’Brien said the organization had limited resources and had decided DeltaKeeper was more important.
“We view the Delta as sort of the heart of the watershed, and probably the liver and spleen and everything else, too,” O’Brien said. “We just can’t see how we can do our mission effectively without some strong staff in that role working to protect the Delta from pollution.”
Still, not all local activists are convinced that DeltaKeeper will be resurrected.
“I don’t have much hope,” said David Fries, a University of the Pacific professor and former board member of Baykeeper, DeltaKeeper’s parent organization.
Fries left the Baykeeper board of directors when Jennings quit over differences in how the environmental group should operate.
“It just seemed like they really wanted to have control over everything in San Francisco and to use that brand name Baykeeper on everything,” he said. “It seemed like the grass-roots effort that Bill Jennings grew here and a lot of us worked hard to promote “¦ wasn’t going to work.”
A former tobacco-store owner, Jennings created DeltaKeeper in 1995 and was its ardent and controversial leader. The group monitored pollution in local waterways and was quick to pursue legal solutions when other methods failed.
When Jennings left, his assistant, Kari Burr, became the acting director while Baykeeper began looking for Jennings’ replacement. Last week, Burr announced she was leaving to work for the Fishery Foundation of California and to pursue a master’s degree in biology.
Burr, who will work one day a week during the transition, said she was excited about the opportunity to do field work.
“With all the changes with DeltaKeeper, this opportunity came up, and it seemed like a really good move for me,” she said.
The future of DeltaKeeper’s headquarters also remains unsettled.
Although now involved in different groups, Jennings and Burr still work out of the same home on the Calaveras River. Jennings, who now works solely as the chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, pays the rent.
Plans for new development threaten the space, although those plans recently stalled.
“I’m expecting that we’ll certainly be here through the end of summer,” Jennings said.
But he said he thinks the organization he started will live on.
“I suspect there will be, in some fashion, a DeltaKeeper,” Jennings said. “Whether it’s in the same mold or with different priorities, that remains to be seen.”
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