Volunteer of the month: Kathleen Nimr

Kathleen Nimr works on transportation issues -

And also land use, and solid waste, and elections, and peace, and the Middle East... and even takes her grandkids hiking

How did a little Republican girl from New York City become one of the most avid political conservationists in Contra Costa County?

Kathleen Nimr doesn't offer an easy explanation for her metamorphosis from Nixon blue to Nader green, but politics has always been in her Irish-American blood. Growing up in Brooklyn and Queens, she graduated from Queens College in English literature and wrote copy in Manhattan for a company that exported American magazines. Her major political issue at that time was avoiding war. In 1960, the first year she could cast a vote for a presidential candidate, she was a precinct co-captain for the Republican campaign in Rep. John Lindsay's "silk-stocking" district.

That year was important for another reason. Kathleen and some New York friends drove out to California. The friends returned after their vacation. Kathleen stayed.

San Francisco attracted Kathleen for many reasons: it was as diverse as New York but smaller and more manageable. After working for import companies and a painting contractor; after trying out the Mission, the Richmond, and the Sunset districts; after marrying a Palestinian and bearing two daughters and before the birth of her son, Kathleen and her family "lit out for the territory" - Contra Costa. After settling in Pleasant Hill for a time, they moved to Martinez, where Kathleen still lives.

The suburbs were quite a shock to Kathleen's urban mind. In New York, "open space" usually meant a school playground. Kathleen liked it that the family now lived near a creek and her kids could enjoy greenery and fresh air.

In the 1970s, working to preserve that greenery and fresh air, Kathleen became the action chair for the Mount Diablo division of the League of Women Voters. The group prepared in-depth studies on the coast, air quality, and other issues; organized discussions and presentations; and testified before governing bodies such as the county transportation authority. "People seemed to have more time to do things like that then," Kathleen muses.

A hostile county supervisor unintentionally lit Kathleen's political-activist fuse. She campaigned hard for his opponent, Nancy Fahden, who became the first woman supervisor in Contra Costa County, and Kathleen then served as Fahden's chief of staff. In those days, Kathleen jokes, "chief of staff" meant "entire staff".

Since her new boss had been endorsed by the Sierra Club, Kathleen joined the Club and began serving on club committees, including the Political Committee. She represented the Sierra Club on the citizen advisory committee overseeing the county's transportation sales tax. Fahden appointed her to the Contra Costa County Planning Commission, where she fought land-use battles with people who generally wanted to solve disputes by paving over open spaces. (In the following decade, Kathleen served as chief of staff for another Contra Costa County supervisor, Jim Rogers. By this time, a supervisor's chief of staff actually had staff to oversee!)

"It was Kathleen who triggered the landfill wars in Contra Costa County," says David Tam, co-founder of the Northern California Recycling Association and current chair of the Bay Chapter's Solid Waste Committee. In the 1970s the only recycling center in Contra Costa County was in El Cerrito. Despite studies showing the benefits of recycling, the county planned to dispose of its waste via landfill and incineration. Kathleen was among the handful who publicly espoused recycling.

Unwilling to wait until the county acted, Kathleen and her cohorts created a non-profit recycling company to serve the central county. Kathleen served as president of the board of the directors and did a lot of hands-on labor at the center. "It was nice in the spring," she recalls, "when the birds would sing. And I met a lot of nice people." After eight years, the local garbage company began curbside recycling collections, and with goal achieved, the non-profit company disbanded.

Tam, who has worked with Kathleen for more than a quarter of a century, finds Kathleen's contributions invaluable. "So few people in Contra Costa understand as well as she does the consequences of growth and development."

Kathleen recently stepped down as chair of the chapter's Transportation and Compact Growth Committee. A long-term member of this committee, she has been a champion of "environmental justice": making sure the "have-nots" - who must rely on public transportation - are as well represented as the "haves" - who have the option of driving on those well-funded highways. Chapter conservation director Mike Daly describes Kathleen as absolutely "uncompromising, really dedicated to public transit and livable communities." "She just keeps working," he says, "and she is there all the time." She continues to represent the club's positions as a member of the Expenditure Plan Advisory Committee of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority.

An unflinching idealist, Kathleen doesn't choose her political positions on the basis of what is popular in the neighborhood (or even in the Sierra Club). She finds herself in the ironic position of opposing the county's current draft plan for a renewal of the transportation tax, which, although it meets some environmental needs, opens an additional bore in the Caldecott Tunnel, and which, she feels, in other ways sacrifices the needs of nature and of the county's less affluent citizens for the ease of the elect and the developers. (The Sierra Club has not to date taken a position on the measure.) In 2000, she ran Ralph Nader's presidential campaign for Contra Costa County's Green Party. (The Sierra Club supported Al Gore, not Nader.)

Not limiting her efforts to local and environmental issues, Kathleen has long been involved with groups that support justice, education, and yes, the environment in the Middle East. In the '90s, one of these groups strove to get rid of the sanctions in Iraq. Kathleen and her co-workers have been particularly concerned with inequity on the West Bank. They have raised money for scholarships for Middle Eastern women and sponsored speakers who discuss the situation of these women.

Kathleen doesn't have a lot of "down time". She might go on a Sierra Club outing - if the focus is on saving and not just enjoying nature. Once she escorted a volunteer group out to the eastern part of the county to explore an area saved from a garbage dump. And she takes her two young grandsons on small hikes and bus and BART trips. She is, she says, introducing them to urban environmental issues while they are young.

Karen Rosenbaum