Cancer can't dim passion for a cause
The energy and focus that helped Dorothy Green, 79, found Heal the Bay remain with her as her health fails.
Dorothy Green was trying to be polite, but the founder of Heal the Bay made it quite clear that she wasn't terribly interested in talking about the things I had come to discuss in her Westwood home.
Death?
"It's part of living," she said, flicking away the question.
Her legacy?
"I don't look back, only forward."
Her deteriorating condition?
"It's interesting that cancer is what you want to talk about."
Now 79, Green has beaten her grim prognosis by years. But the melanoma first diagnosed 30 years ago metastasized to the brain six years ago, and she's now been told there's no way to stop the rapid spread of the disease. She's in hospice-care now, a bit wobbly on her feet and wearing a smart-looking cap to keep warm.
"I hope it happens sooner than later," she said of her demise. "It's so hard getting one thought put with another now."
You're not afraid?
"I'm scared for the whole world, for the Earth. Not for me."
To those who know her, this is classic Dorothy.
"She tells me we have to keep talking about these issues because it's what keeps her alive -- her passion to do what's right for California," said Carolee Krieger.
Krieger and Green co-founded the California Water Impact Network, a nonprofit devoted to educating Californians about what they see as environmentally destructive water mismanagement in California, with public officials caving to the desires of big agriculture.
Though Green is clearly addled by painkillers and exhausted by her fight with cancer, so much so that she often pauses mid-sentence to steal the strength to continue, she immediately interrupted me when I mentioned California's water shortage.
"There is no water shortage," she said sharply.
Not that anyone should run out and plant a 40-acre lawn, she cautioned. We waste far too much water as it is. But there's no water hog like agriculture, she said.
"Big agriculture uses 80% of the developed water in the state," she said, calling their conservation measures abysmal. "And almost half the agriculture in the state is for low-value, water-intensive crops like cotton, rice, alfalfa."
The siphoning of such huge amounts of water for agriculture is destroying the ecosystem in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, she argues. And the boondoggle is made possible by the lackeys on the state Water Resources Control Board. She gave the Gov. Schwarzenegger-appointed board members lousy grades for their two main duties:
