Moving Forward with the Environment. Together.

By Randy Jotte

As liaison to the Health and Environmental Services Advisory Board and member of City Council, I promoted and enabled increased recycling throughout our community. The new 65-gallon single-stream recycling containers for residents city-wide, financed primarily with public grants, create the potential to significantly increase the overall volume of recycling. In addition to protecting our environment, increased recycling may reduce future costs of trash services through decreased landfill usage. In addition, in 2008, Webster Groves will facilitate commercial recycling on a voluntary basis in our business districts through shared recycling dumpsters. Recycling is planned in our municipal parks as well.

I am a Republican candidate for the Missouri House of Representatives. My guiding principles of environmental stewardship are consistent with several historic pillars of the Republican party - Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

President Lincoln began the first federal conservation program in 1864 when he signed a bill protecting the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias in California. This led to the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872. This was the first time a federal government ever preserved public lands simply because of their natural wonder. (http://www.nps.gov/yose )

The sheer volume of conservation of natural assets that took place during Theodore Roosevelt's Presidency is one of his most valuable contributions to our nation's past, present and future. President Roosevelt succeeded in creating 21 reclamation projects, 150 national forests, 51 bird preserves, four game preserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments. National treasures ranging from the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest National Parks in Arizona to Mount Olympus in Washington and the Tongass National Forest in Alaska are preserved in perpetuity, due to the foresight of President Roosevelt. (http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org)

As your State Representative, I will continue to protect our environment, assuring that the natural legacy we leave to the coming generation equals, and possibly exceeds, that given to you and me.