The Sonoma County Conservation Council was a federation of local environmental groups with the goal of pooling resources to protect and restore our environment. The Environmental Center of Sonoma County was a project of the SCCC, operational from 1985 through 2023. It was managed jointly with the Sierra Club’s Redwood Chapter, Sonoma Group, and run mainly by volunteers. In 2025, SCCC was dissolved as a nonprofit. Enviro Chronicles is a repository for the history and information that SCCC accumulated over the years.
History
In 1982, a group of environmental community leaders began meeting on Cleveland Avenue in the Santa Rosa Indian Center. These leaders and their organizations committed to pursue what became the SCCC and incorporated it as a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit in 1984. During the process, annual weekend Environmental Advances were held at Wellspring Renewal Center in Philo and Valley of the Moon Camp Glen Ellen to refine the SCCC and focus the issues.
Founding members included the Milo Baker Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, Sierra Club Sonoma Group, Madrone Audubon Society, Sonoma Tomorrow, the Community Network for Appropriate Technologies, COAAST (California Organized to Aquire Access to State Tidelands) and the Environmental Forum. More than forty environmental organizations have been members of SCCC since its inception. Additionally, SCCC has served as fiscal sponsor or seeded development of twelve other groups.
SCCC was crafted and sustained by the historic figures of the early Sonoma County environmental movement, among them Iva Warner, Ken Stocking, Len Swenson, Bill Kortum and Ernie Smith. From SCCC inception, Susan Keller served as pro bono facilitator given her career as a public interest planner and network developer. Peeter Vilms created the first SCCC website and was instrumental in Environmental Center operations through 2013.
The SCCC Board was always composed of representatives from member organizations. One guiding principle in SCCC evolution was that all agreed that the SCCC would not take positions on issues and no one could speak in the name of SCCC without approval. That was the glue and catalyst that held us together as such diverse groups committed to our mission. Early on it was agreed that a political action arm was needed and SCCC Board members Bill Kortum, Dick Day and others went on to create Sonoma County Conservation Action.
SCCC was created to connect member organizations and community members and empower them with cutting edge information provided by the organizations actively engaged as SCCC members. That information sharing and the ability to mobilize informed advocates to take action on the full spectrum of things shaping Sonoma County made the SCCC unique and powerful. SCCC’s first major efforts involved organizing around the General Plan Update in the late 1980s and later around creating the Sonoma County Ag & Open Space District and identifying important properties and coastline to preserve.
The Environmental Center, established in 1985 and closed in 2023, served as the physical hub for SCCC member groups’ activities. Bequests from Iva Warner and Ernestine Smith helped to keep the Center open from 2000 to its close. At both the annual Environmental Awards Dinner (1990-2015) and the Holiday Networking Party (2012-2024), SCCC recognized Ernie Smith’s longstanding service by awarding the Environmentalist of the Year Award to activists engaged in current and lifetime work to protect the environment of Sonoma County. Local environmental leaders continued to be honored with awards through 2024.
In 2025, SCCC partnered with the Sonoma Environmental Education Collaborative to create the SEEC Ernestine Smith Youth Engagement Program, encouraging and supporting youth to engage in environmental activities.