http://www.deserttrail.com/articles/2006/03/15/editorial/opinion1.txt

Editorial

Examples for all of us to follow

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Last week we featured a photo spread concerning a very special party held at Huell Howser's house here in Twentynine Palms. What made the party special, however, was not its location or its host.

What made the party special was, in fact, its guests of honor, Donna and Larry Charpied, who were being honored with the Minerva Hoyt California Desert Conservation Award for the years of hard work they put into fighting, and continuing to fight, plans to install a huge landfill at the former Eagle Mountain mine, an area surrounded on three sides by the Joshua Tree National Park.

The Charpieds are jojoba farmers who live and work near the proposed site of the Eagle Mountain landfill. They were some of the first people to stand up in opposition to the plan to brings tons of trash daily from Los Angeles by train and truck to the site of an abandoned iron mine.

Through one setback after another, the Charpieds continued their 15-year struggle which has brought them now to the brink of ultimate victory. It is to a large extent because of their work that a mega-landfill will not be placed on the Joshua Tree National Park's doorstep.

More important, the Charpieds, like last year's Minerva Hoyt California Desert Conservation Award honoree, Susan Luckie Reilly, have demonstrated what individuals can accomplish when they are determined and committed and patient enough to see the fight through to the end.

We should all take a lesson from the Charpieds and get more involved in the world around us. It's true that we can't all be leaders like them, but the truth is for every one of them there was a thousand or more others backing their efforts up. Each one of those people was vital to the effort's eventual success.

Believe it or not there are some fights that are worth being fought, whether they deal with the future of a natural treasure like the Joshua Tree National Park or the future of a beloved hometown like Twentynine Palms.