• Etta Waterfield, Republican candidate for California’s 33rd District Assembly, has added some more endorsements to her list. Earlier this month, the Santa Maria businesswoman received political support from State Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks) and Lew Uhler of the National Tax Limitation Committee. For more information about Waterfield’s campaign, including a full list of her endorsements, visit ettawaterfieldforassembly.com.
• U.S. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) has secured $2.5 million for her constituents through the California Bay-Watershed Education and Training (B-WET) regional program. The funding is included in the recently passed House-version of the 2010 commerce-justice-science appropriations bill. Capps introduced the legislation to improve ocean, coastal, and watershed education and literacy last month with U.S. Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI) and U.S Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) after seeing the work that the B-WET program has done in her own congressional district. “In so many ways, the health of our communities relies on the health of our watersheds,” Capps said in a release to the media. “As we are inundated with reports of climate change, overfishing, wildfires, and droughts, children need ways to connect—through hands-on experiences—to their environment. How else can they understand the importance of their actions and the significance of what we are fighting to protect?” The B-WET program provides organizations with funds to support environment-based education for students, teachers, and communities throughout the San Francisco, Monterey Bay, and Santa Barbara Channel watersheds.
This article appears in Oct 22-29, 2009.