For Immediate Release - July 18, 2006 - Sacramento, California
AMERICAN RIVER PARKWAY PRESERVATION SOCIETY ANNOUNCES:
2006 SLOBE PARKWAY ADVOCATE AWARD RECIPIENT
Mary E. Tappel
The award will be presented to Mary during the ARPPS Board of Directors meeting October 9, 2006.
Over the past several years, in many capacities, most recently as the organizer of the lower American River Parkway* River Keepers, Mary has been a dedicated, deeply committed, and leading community voice advocating for the lower Parkway.
Mary is an environmentally-knowledgeable Parkway user and environmental activist who lives close to the lower Parkway. She has been very active in Sacramento’s Creek Week**, for nearly 20 years now, having led and organized creek, river, and neighborhood clean ups throughout North Sacramento for the past 15 years. For the past 5-7 years, she has led many of the most popular Creek Week field trips, the local evening beaver walks.
Mary works for the State Water Board as an Environmental Scientist, where she has worked with Adrian Perez, one of our State’s Environmental Justice leaders, for over 20 years. She also maintains some of the Water Board’s public outreach websites, which promote public engagement in watershed cleanup and restoration. She has completed some five years of contractual work for SAFCA, protecting the lower Parkway’s extensive native riparian restoration plantings from both excessive beaver pruning and destructive human vandalism, developing new low cost ecological methods along the way. She has always maintained a strong environmental and social justice perspective in all her work.
Mary continues her dedicated advocacy for the Parkway, often appearing in front of the Sacramento City Council and Sacramento County Board of Supervisors to press for more effective and affordable public safety and maintenance to keep the Lower Reach area of the Parkway safe and clean.
Mary backs up her public requests by getting out on the Parkway regularly, focusing, with many others from all walks of life, on organizing volunteer efforts initially to keep one area near the Rusty Duck clean and safe, and then expanding outwards from this area as the success of the effort has allowed. Mary is doing the absolutely vital work of coordinating volunteers from all walks of life in now successfully protecting the public against Parkway crime in the area formerly having the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous in the Parkway.
Mary works continually to involve all of the stakeholders in the process of dealing compassionately with illegal campers and others who are responsible for causing and/or sustaining public safety and/or environmental problems in the Parkway, while insisting on the primacy of equal public safety for everyone, and environmental and social justice for everyone.
Mary is currently working with the largest local homeless support organization, Loaves and Fishes, other Parkway organizations, a wide range of area neighborhood and conservation groups, Sacramento County Park Rangers, the Sacramento City Police Department, Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies working in the Parkway, the City of Sacramento Department of Utilities Stormwater Management Program Community Action grants, and the North Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, where she is a member of the American River Parkway Task Force.
Mary is an excellent example of the type of committed advocacy the Slobe Parkway Advocate Award was created to recognize, and it is our honor and pleasure to be able to present it to her.
*Meaning the Lower American River Parkway from the CalExpo/Bushy Lake area and Paradise Beach/River Park neighborhood downstream to the confluence with the Sacramento River
**Sponsored and organized by the Sacramento Urban Creeks Council
Organizational Leadership
American River Parkway Preservation Society
Sacramento, California
July 2006
AMERICAN RIVER PARKWAY PRESERVATION SOCIETY ANNOUNCES:
2006 SLOBE PARKWAY ADVOCATE AWARD RECIPIENT
Mary E. Tappel
The award will be presented to Mary during the ARPPS Board of Directors meeting October 9, 2006.
Over the past several years, in many capacities, most recently as the organizer of the lower American River Parkway* River Keepers, Mary has been a dedicated, deeply committed, and leading community voice advocating for the lower Parkway.
Mary is an environmentally-knowledgeable Parkway user and environmental activist who lives close to the lower Parkway. She has been very active in Sacramento’s Creek Week**, for nearly 20 years now, having led and organized creek, river, and neighborhood clean ups throughout North Sacramento for the past 15 years. For the past 5-7 years, she has led many of the most popular Creek Week field trips, the local evening beaver walks.
Mary works for the State Water Board as an Environmental Scientist, where she has worked with Adrian Perez, one of our State’s Environmental Justice leaders, for over 20 years. She also maintains some of the Water Board’s public outreach websites, which promote public engagement in watershed cleanup and restoration. She has completed some five years of contractual work for SAFCA, protecting the lower Parkway’s extensive native riparian restoration plantings from both excessive beaver pruning and destructive human vandalism, developing new low cost ecological methods along the way. She has always maintained a strong environmental and social justice perspective in all her work.
Mary continues her dedicated advocacy for the Parkway, often appearing in front of the Sacramento City Council and Sacramento County Board of Supervisors to press for more effective and affordable public safety and maintenance to keep the Lower Reach area of the Parkway safe and clean.
Mary backs up her public requests by getting out on the Parkway regularly, focusing, with many others from all walks of life, on organizing volunteer efforts initially to keep one area near the Rusty Duck clean and safe, and then expanding outwards from this area as the success of the effort has allowed. Mary is doing the absolutely vital work of coordinating volunteers from all walks of life in now successfully protecting the public against Parkway crime in the area formerly having the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous in the Parkway.
Mary works continually to involve all of the stakeholders in the process of dealing compassionately with illegal campers and others who are responsible for causing and/or sustaining public safety and/or environmental problems in the Parkway, while insisting on the primacy of equal public safety for everyone, and environmental and social justice for everyone.
Mary is currently working with the largest local homeless support organization, Loaves and Fishes, other Parkway organizations, a wide range of area neighborhood and conservation groups, Sacramento County Park Rangers, the Sacramento City Police Department, Sacramento County Sheriff’s deputies working in the Parkway, the City of Sacramento Department of Utilities Stormwater Management Program Community Action grants, and the North Sacramento Chamber of Commerce, where she is a member of the American River Parkway Task Force.
Mary is an excellent example of the type of committed advocacy the Slobe Parkway Advocate Award was created to recognize, and it is our honor and pleasure to be able to present it to her.
*Meaning the Lower American River Parkway from the CalExpo/Bushy Lake area and Paradise Beach/River Park neighborhood downstream to the confluence with the Sacramento River
**Sponsored and organized by the Sacramento Urban Creeks Council
Organizational Leadership
American River Parkway Preservation Society
Sacramento, California
July 2006
