 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
Greenbelt Alliance In the News
April 27, 2007 THE GREEN ROOTS OF HOME: SONOMA COUNTY NATIVE RETURNS HOME TO BE THE EYES AND EARS FOR ENVIRONMENTALIST GREENBELT ALLIANCE CHRIS COURSEYAs Daisy Pistey-Lyhne haunts the halls of power in Sonoma County government and monitors the meetings at Santa Rosa City Hall, a common theme strikes her. " The people making the decisions and influencing the decisions about our future in this county are the ones who will least have to live with those decisions," she says. What she means is that much of the impact of the decisions made today - about land use, development, infrastructure and the environment - won't be felt for another 20, 30, even 50 years. By then, a lot of today's decision-makers will be long gone. But Pistey-Lyhne, 25, plans to still be here. The Sonoma County native grew up in Guerneville, graduated from El Molino High School in 1999 and earned undergraduate and master's degrees from Stanford University. She worked for a short time in Washington, D.C., and then in Chile, but her roots tugged her back home. As Sonoma-Marin field representative for the San Francisco-based Greenbelt Alliance, she has a job "that uses all my skills to focus passionately on the things I care about in the place I love most in the world." While Pistey-Lyhne identifies herself as an environmentalist, she's not a stereotypical tree-hugger. Her undergraduate focus at Stanford was "earth systems," an interdisciplinary path that steeped her in science, policy and political studies, and her master's is in sustainable development. She calls western Sonoma County - the coast, the river, the redwoods - "an important part of who I am." But as interested as she is in preserving the natural environment, she is quick to point out that it is "the human-created environment that sustains us," including agriculture and housing. She lives and works downtown, and supports the city's plans for more development in the core area, but would like to see more affordable housing in the mix. " I'm not against growth," she says. "I just want to see us plan well for it." Greenbelt Alliance is a membership organization that grew out of Bay Area land-preservation groups and in the 1980s became active in promoting city-centered growth. It was instrumental in the campaign to establish urban growth boundaries around eight Sonoma County cities. Today, Pistey-Lyhne is working to make sure her group's views are represented in the 20-year update of the county general plan and is active in the process guiding transit-oriented development in downtown Santa Rosa. Bill Kortum, the dean of Sonoma County environmentalists, says he has been impressed with Pistey-Lyhne since she was hired by Greenbelt in 2005. " She displays the leadership qualities that are so necessary to get things done," he says. "Plus, I was taken because she's a fellow Sonoma County native. Most natives take Sonoma County for granted and let the people who move here try to save it." Pistey-Lyhne isn't likely to take it for granted. While she enjoys having "a life outside of work" that includes soccer and hiking or an evening of salsa or ballroom dancing, she also cares enough about what she does to let the job seep over into her personal life. " My friends get invitations to 'environmental happy hour,' " she says. ### |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
