Category: Environmental


Sierra Club's Coastal Program’s Surfing Attorney
By Kathy Klossner
Apr 4, 2007, 20:53

Last Pristine Coastline

When I heard my favorite windsurf spot in Central Coast California was threaten by the development of a luxury golf coast by the Hearst Corporation, I knew I had to get involved. Luckily, I was working for one of the top environmental activist companies in the US – Patagonia.

After a few calls I was told to contact the Sierra Club’s Coastal Program. Funny, but I had always thought of Sierra Club as the protectors of the mountains and the forest. Not necessarily the ocean or beaches.

I received a phone call from Mark Massara from the Sierra Club’s Coastal Program. Not knowing anything about his background and not knowing he was an attorney who had won one of the largest clean-water environmental lawsuits in the country, I would have sworn I was talking to a laid back surfer. With his soft spoken easy manner, who would have thought this guy was an environmental attorney genius.

Mark Massara

Mark Massara was working as an attorney for Surfrider in 1991 when he won the lawsuit against 2 pulp-mill companies near Eureka, California. Now he's director of the Sierra Club's California Coastal Campaign. He also founded Surfers Environmental Alliance and the National Association of Surfing Attorneys, and writes on coastal and environmental legal issues for surfing magazines and other publications.

Mark has been a surfer and an activist pretty much his whole life. Surfers may seem like unlikely partners for the Sierra Club, and even Massara says that organizing them "is like herding cats." What Mark strives to do it to get surfers more involved in their community and to take actions in protecting the coastline. The people at city hall are not surfing or hanging out at the beach. Most city officials are totally clueless what is going on. That is why it is important for every one of us to take actions and make our voices heard in the name of saving the environment.

Mark and I worked side by side holding events at Patagonia stores to inform the communities of the destruction of one of the last untouched stretches of coastline in California. Not only did Hearst Corp hope to gain millions in revenue in building another “Pebble Beach”, they took no consideration of the significant Native American resources that would be disturbed by the project and the environmental impact to the ocean, sea life and the local communities. It was with the power of a crowd of 1,500+ local town folks and surfers who showed up to the Coastal Commission hearing demanding a stop to this obscene project. We sent the high-powered, 3-piece suit Hearst Corporation lawyers back to New York where they came from. It was an awesome victory in the name of the environment.

You can probably catch Mark surfing his favorite surf break in Ocean Beach near San Francisco. Or you may run into him at an environmental cause or campaign along the California Coast. I wish we had more lawyers like Mark that strive to do good for people and the environment.