Kathy Sanders, who’s pulled weeds locally, picked up trash from nearby beaches and served on the Open Space Committee for 24 years, will get a Green Award.
The prize, determined by a Quality of Life Commission unanimous vote, is given “unsung heroes,” volunteers who’ve aided San Anselmo without expectation of recognition or reward.
It will be presented at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 10 at the Town Council meeting.
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Modest about her volunteerism on the committee, despite having served three years as chair and being its current treasurer, she contends, “Everything we do is a group effort.”
She cites their Sorich Park work as an example, with “many people planting trees, weed-whacking, and creating a master plan.”
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Sanders also has yanked out French Broom from Hawthorne Canyon, the Bald Hill Preserve and Faude Park.
She considers the $495,000 canyon purchase, which occurred during her tenure as chair of the panel, her greatest achievement, but insists “it involved a lot of community effort to buy those 18 acres of land.”
She remembers “30 to 40 people showing up for a meeting to inform the community about the plan to preserve the property, which was close to being developed.”
She recalls, as well, when three landowners fenced off access to the fire road on Bald Hill and the Marin Municipal Water District in the ‘90s, then sued 101 hikers for trespassing. She can still see the hikers “sitting on the bleachers by Isabel Cook, [because] no one had the key to get inside, waiting to hear from our two pro bono attorneys…on how to proceed. It was a sobering time, but we prevailed in preserving foot and bike access to these important trailheads.”
Preserving open space “can be a very slow process,” Sanders explains. “You have to be very patient and wait for the right time…and that’s why so many people have stayed on [the committee] 10 to 15 years.”
The award recipient, who’s lived in San Anselmo since 1988, dates her interest in open space and the environment to childhood in the Carmel Valley, where she “always found it disturbing when a mall would be built.”
Sanders’ parents, who’d been instrumental in getting a regional park established, encouraged her environmental awareness.
Her father “always said we should leave a place cleaner than we found it while hiking or picnicking, [so] to this day I can’t stop myself from picking up pieces of plastic and other trash as I walk on the beach.”
Sanders claims her sister Maria is “much greener than I am, being an environmental analyst for the city of El Cerrito, helping to create the state of the art Recycling and Environmental Resource Center.”
And she tells a cautionary tale about her own consciousness. “In an effort to be greener,” she said, “I started riding my bike to work every day. But after seven months, I was hit by a car — and now am recovering from a fractured knee.”
Sanders will become the 33rd recipient of the Green Award.
It was previously given the team of Ann Brenner and Grier Argall, Liz Huntington, Alex Godbe, Dick Glanville, Lisa Hamilton, Jo Ann Richards, Rene Voss, Linda Hoch, Rich Torresan, Jo Julin, Jake Luria, Anna Frost, Brian Crawford, the team of David Fox and Sheila Mutter, Jeff Hvid, Conn Rusche, Charles Kennard, the team of Steve Reinertsen and Scott Weeks, Sita Khufu, Rohana McLaughlin, Joyce Brown, Larry Nilsen, Matt Eakle, Ted Bakkila, Christine Dietrich Cragg, Bob Mellin, H.G. Von Dallwitz, Denali Gillaspie, Jonathan Braun, Dan Goltz and the husband-wife team of Janet Byrum and Bob Fleming.
Nominations for the environmentally oriented Green Awards, or the broader Silver Awards, can be hand-delivered or mailed to: Quality of Life Commission, c/o Town of San Anselmo, 525 San Anselmo Ave., or e-mailed to voodee@sbcglobal.net or townclerk@ci.san-anselmo.ca.us.