Our working group met on Wednesday, March 18th at the Southside Community Center to address our needs going forward. Present at that meeting were: Aaron Grogg, Patrizia Hironimus, Carmen Hironimus, William Daniel Webster, Celeste Garcia (Facilitator), Linda Draper, Don Noble, Ken Scherer, and Bill Bynum (Secretary).
We first addressed the setting up of a website. Aaron gave a presentation and after discussing it we decided to give Aaron the go ahead with that project. He will be assisted by Yvonne Harbison. We passed the hat to get enough seed money to begin. Aaron has since set that website up. The domain name is dioxineducation.org. It is still a work in progress, but it is a great start.
Next, we addressed the idea of becoming a non-profit. Ken recommended that we do that, and he said the cost would be about $600. We will pursue that avenue further at our next working group meeting.
We then had a long discussion about a possible fundraiser(s) to raise enough money to possibly hire an environmental lawyer to research a possible lawsuit regarding environmental injustice because South Oroville is a disadvantaged community. We came up with several ideas, and we will continue to work on this issue at our next meeting.
We next discussed reaching out to other groups for assistance. Don Noble is contacting the DA, Mike Ramsey, to see if there are State agencies that we should contact. Celeste reached out to both the local and State Sierra Club boards. Jean Marquardt, a board member with the local Blue Oak chapter, is going to be our contact locally for support and Sean Wirth, a prominent conservation leader with the Sierra Club Mother Lode Chapter, is going to be our contact with the State. Celeste is already in contact with both. I reached out to the new director of the Butte Environmental Council, Courtney Ellington. We met for an hour, and Courtney took a great interest in our plight. She listened attentively and did some research on the spot. She will be joining us at our next working group session.
All in all, it was a very productive meeting. We decided to meet in two week intervals for the time being, so we scheduled our next meeting for Tuesday, March 31st at 4:30 at the Southside Community Center. If you would like to join our working group, please let me know by responding to this email or by texting me at 530-403-7401.
Respectively,
Bill Bynum
Secretary, Dioxin Education Committee