White River Group News
by Cynthia Andre

It has been one year since a small group of Sierra Club members in southwest Missouri got together to start the process of reorganizing Missouri’s fifth group—the White River Group (WRG)—which covers 21 counties in that region of the state. It has been an exciting and very promising first year.

In addition to holding regular monthly meetings and programs in the fall and spring, the group has built two important coalitions with others in the Springfield community—one to work on increasing public awareness of air quality and climate change and the other to support green building. The Group also completed a demonstration rain garden at a Springfield city park in partnership with another organization.

There has been a slow steady growth in the membership in the region during this first year as well an increase in the involvement of the members in the group’s activities and programs. Members pitched in to help with the group’s year end calendar sales last fall and gave generously this spring providing much of the funding needed for WRG’s many activities. (The group was also the recipient of a generous donation from the Eastern Missouri Group.)

While WRG leaders are excited about the progress the group has made in the Springfield area, we are interested in providing opportunities for all our members to become more involved. Along these lines, we encourage members in other areas of southwest Missouri to contact us for help in working on local issues or projects and to be frequent visitors to our newly launched Web site at www.whiteriver.sierraclub.org for news of future events, outings and programs in our area.WRG holds regular monthly meetings with programs at the Springfield Nature Center on the second Tuesday of each month at 7:00 p.m.

Ask all the Missouri delegation to Congress to support protection of Appalachian streams from mountaintop removal mining.