Last week we had a great success when the DC Council unanimously voted in favor of the Anacostia River Cleanup and Protection Act. We played a major role in the public outreach campaign for this bill, doing everything from designing the coalition's logo to printing postcards to delivering more than 1200 of them to Council Chair Vincent Gray back on May 4. The bill is one of the toughest such measures in the country, and the first one in a major city on the East Coast. Members of our executive committee attended every public hearing and meeting on the bill, and were on hand for the vote on June 2. Elation!
The required second vote is scheduled for June 16. What a great lead-in to celebration at Ripple! (And the author of the bill, Councilmember Tommy Wells, will be there to help!)
Then this past weekend we ripped it up at the Ocean City Longboard Contest, put on by our brothers & sisters at the Ocean City, MD, chapter. Our team made it to the quarterfinals--quite respectable for an inland team!
Over the weekend we also had a table at Celebrate Fairfax!, a huge music and entertainment festival in Northern Virginia. We began our efforts to get a bag bill in Virginia, and talked to passersby about how their actions upstream affect the ocean--in ways both good and bad.
And later this week chapter chair Julie Lawson is giving a presentation about the bag bill to a class at Cesar Chavez Public Charter School. Carl Pellegrino, husband of super-paddler and uber-ocean advocate Margo, will be on hand to film it. Very exciting!
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