The Sierra Business Council has announced the winners of its Vision 2020 awards. The work of this year's honorees reflects some of the biggest challenges facing the range, from providing low-income housing in resort areas to thinning over-crowded, fire-prone forests to protecting rural areas from development.
Meea Kang, president of Domus Development, was selected for her efforts to bring affordable housing to Kings Beach at Lake Tahoe where many Hispanic families now live in over-crowded conditions in trailers and apartments.
Jim Turner, general manager of the Loyalton Co-Generation Plant and Keith Logan, principal in the firm Logan and Associates, were singled out for their work to develop renewable sources of wood energy (known as biomass) and help make Sierra forests more fire-resilient at the same time.
Reed Tollefson, manager of Audubon's California Kern River Preserve was selected for reaching out to private landowners and public agencies to preserve the rural nature of the area, and for his efforts at ecological restoration.
Finally, Michael Chrisman, former California Secretary for Natural Resources, was selected for his leadership on Sierra issues, including his role in the formation of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy in 2004.
Based in Truckee, the Sierra Business Council is a nonprofit group of more than 700 members that works across the range to protect the environment, improve economic prosperity and community vitality and promote social fairness.
(Photo: From left to right, Michael Chrisman, Jim Logan, Meea Kang, Reed
Tollefson, Jim Turner and Sierra Business Council president Steven Frisch.)
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