Candidate for
State Senator; District 16

DAIRY FARMER'S DAUGHTER

My grandparents came from Idaho to the Ontario/Upland area in the 1920s with a fledgling family in a Model T Ford. They started out with some pocket change, a lot of faith, hope and a hard work ethic. After making some money tending citrus, and selling extra milk from their second cow, they started a small dairy farm using a defunct hotel on 7th Street for a creamery. They called their new operation Shady Grove Dairy. Growing up in the 1950s, I watched how the entire Musser family, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins worked so hard together to make this business endeavor a success...and they were successful. My father was appointed to the San Bernardino County Flood Control Board and elected to become president of the San Bernardino County Farm Bureau and at a time in my youth he organized small operation farmers and dairy families and championed tax relief for California small farmers which he he later received congressional recognition for.

My folks set a really strong example for me growing up, instilling in me a really strong work ethic, honest business practices, and the idea of working together with others. They taught me to give back to my community and value the importance of the environment we live in, not to waste food and particularly the idea of conserving water so that we have quality, quantity and sustainability. My folks always wanted me to have the opportunities that they didn't have--they wanted me to go to college.

COLLEGE AND VOLUNTARY SERVICE DURING THE VIET NAM ERA

I attended elementary and middle schools in the Ontario School District, Western Christian High School and Chaffey High School. After graduating with honors from high school, I attended Chaffey Community College, then in the midst of the Viet Nam war era, I committed to voluntary service in a mission in New York City believing that I should pitch in and serve our country just as my brothers were doing. Gordon was drafted and went to Viet Nam and Michael, a conscientious objector was completing a required term of voluntary service.

On the outskirts of New York City in 1972-1973, I worked as a clerk typist for the Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Home for dependent, neglected and abused Children and all of my income except $10.00 a month went to the Brethren in Christ Mission where I lived on Tremont Avenue in the south Bronx near Harlem. So at home and at work I was assisting and volunteering for the poor and needy, the afflicted and downtrodden at a time in New York City's history when gang warfare was at its peak. A typical Friday night, included hearing rounds of gun fire and watching another building burn down. I sent a pattern to my Mother in California and she sewed a long hooded blue cape for me to keep me completely covered as I rode the subway to work. Later, one of my coworkers was molested in the underground train.

After a year of service I returned to college to finish the prerequisite work and the other women in the mission were relieved of duty because of safety issues.

After Chaffey, I attended the University of California, Los Angeles and got interested in Anthropology/Archaeology. There was an excellent field archaeology program at the University of California, Riverside so I transferred there working my way through college serving as a resident assistant in the dormitories and at the University's Archaeological Research Unit.

I graduated with honors from the University of California, Riverside in 1976 and continued to work for the University's Archaeological Research Unit while beginning to prepare a report on Native American Rock Art along the lower Colorado River which was published in a professional archaeological journal in 1978.

I went to work for the United States Forest Service as a summer seasonal archaeologist in Plumas, California and after that, I was hired by the Bureau of Land Management's California Desert District as their East Mojave Archaeologist in 1978, during the Carter Administration. At that time, I assisted with developing and implementing the 1980s California Desert Conservation Area Plan.

GOVERNMENT ARCHAEOLOGIST

Over 30 years ago, in 1980, as the East Mojave Desert Archaeologist for the Bureau of Land Management, our field office moved to Needles, California in District 16. During this time while serving in the capacity of East Mojave Archaeologist I conceived and originated the very first archaeological site stewardship program called "Historic Site Adoption" in an effort to protect remote areas of critical environmental concern. Later I established my own archaeological consulting firm there, married and raised a family, was a college archaeology instructor, on the PTA board, a Boy Scouts and Girl Scout leader and later on an elected City Council Member.

As an instructor at the San Bernardino Valley College extension in Needles, California, I taught an Introductory Archaeology class and also assisted the Needles School District as a substitute teacher from time to time while raising my two children.

While my children attended public school in Needles, California, my husband, Robert and I, dedicated ourselves to providing for them while actively protesting a national radioactive waste disposal facility that was to be cited over the water aquifer supplying the city and connected to the Colorado River.

During this period of time, I wrote and circulated a countywide voter initiative to prohibit the disposal of radioactive/nuclear waste in unlined trenches above desert aquifers. Over 20,000 voter signatures were collected and soon after the facility plans were discarded. How it came to be that I got involved in this voter initiative is a result of a life changing experience that I had that turned me into a progressive Democrat.

LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE

With the changing political leadership in Washington, the management of the governments Department of the Interior agencies changed as well. I experienced a life changing event in 1986 after I blew the whistle on my boss, a Bureau of Land Management field office manager and found myself without a job and a two-year old child to care for. Sadly, the new BLM office was built on top of the Native American site anyway, and without first obtaining adequate data recovery.

As a result of my departure from the agency, the fledgling Site Stewardship program I conceived of in 1980 and organized called "Historic Site Adoption" was not moved forward in the east Mojave Desert. Fortunately however, others picked up on the idea of volunteer archaeological site adoption/monitoring and renamed the program California Archaeological Site Stewardship Program (CASSP) which today is a volunteer program partially sponsored by the State of California, State Parks Department.

MY PROGRESSIVE HISTORY

Thank goodness my husband had a union job protected by the AFL-CIO, because after I separated from the federal service I became an environmental activist continuing to expose the same BLM Manager and how he was mis-portraying a national nuclear dump that was to be installed over a water aquifer near the Colorado River as a disposal site for hospital lab coats and booties used in the radiation department.

We did not find out what the real project was to be until we read the Environmental Impact Report. Then we learned that entire nuclear powered submarines and nuclear reactors were to dumped in unlined dirt trenches so near the Colorado River and above an aquifer that drains into the river.

The publication of a letter I wrote in 1987 shortly after my departure from the BLM, launched a 15-year campaign along with others against the proposed national nuclear waste dump commonly referred to as "Ward Valley" located west of Needles, California. In the midst of the 1990s controversy, while a Girl Scout and Boy Scout leader, and was elected to the Needles City Council to fight the nuclear dump and I was appointed to the San Bernardino County Association of Governments. In the 1990s, those running the town of Needles were desiring to install the national nuclear dump there.

My winning the election in 1993, sent a signal to City leaders but they did not heed the message. While on the council I wanted to stop the liquid waste haulers who were being allowed to dump in our unlocked manholes outside of the non functional city sewer plant and put an end to the waste being discharged directly through an effluent pipeline straight to the middle of the Colorado River.

Meanwhile, years before the Erin Brockovich movie was released about Hinkley, I was publicly exposing Pacific Gas & Electric's (PG&E's) dumping of the same deathly toxic, hexavalent chromium (Chrome 6), in washes south of Needles, adjacent to the Colorado River.

Energy industry fueled attempts were made to silence me by waging strategic litigation against (me), a political participant (S.L.A.P.P.) and a recall at the same time. These "SLAPP" suits are illegal now, but at the time, while trying to raise children on my husband's income, it was practically impossible to fight. Another elected council person, Charles Butler, was also actively engaged in stopping the nuclear dump and a campaign attempt was made to try to recall him at the same time but he died of pancreatic cancer in the midst of the campaign after being slugged in the stomach during a city council meeting.

SWITCHING STRATEGIES AND WINNING

After his death, I took over the Directorship of People Against Radioactive Dumping (PARD, 1994). Going around those (now bygone) city leaders attempts to silence my effort to stop the dumping and water contamination, we triumphed by switching strategies. I authored a countywide voter initiative to prohibit the disposal of radioactive/toxic waste in unlined dirt trenches above our desert aquifers. Volunteers successfully gathered 20,000-plus signatures to help stop the dump.

Together with activists (before the convenience of the internet) on foot we obtained over 20,000 voter signatures and we stopped that nuclear dump and saved our precious water with the assistance of Democrats in Sacramento including Governor Gray Davis, Senators Byron Sher and Tom Hayden, as well as many elected Democrats, an organization called Bay Area Nuclear Waste Coalition (BANWASTE) and many others including the Native American tribes and tribal members who live on the Colorado River.

WATER CONSERVATION ACTIVIST FOR 25 YEARS

Since then however, we have been losing out by repeatedly electing those supported by polluter corporations or those who would privatize the clean water that we do have. Since 2002, I have actively fought corporate water heists of public desert water including the Cadiz Corporation project, a plan to pump and pipe to Orange County the water that is under the East Mojave desert. I put out alert emails and helped organize a campaign against the project successfully ousting the County Supervisor who consistently voted to enable the irresponsible water depletion project to move forward.

More recently, I've been active in seeking a moratorium on another type of water heist occurring in the Mojave Desert--massive corporate solar plants are situated directly over water aquifers, pristine, fragile desert wildlife habitat when energy could be produced more efficiently by providing incentives for installing roof top and road way solar and solar over already disturbed parcels and corridors.

I also support the campaign for a moratorium on oil fracking (hydraulic fracturing) in California now that we know about the leakage of fracking chemicals into our central valley water aquifer and the contamination of billions of gallons of water that could otherwise be used for farming. Further, I have written opposition papers to the unnecessary "HECA" project which amounts to a coal burning energy plant near Bakersfield that would add to the already high particulate matter in the air and produce an immense amount of CO2 adding to the threat of global warming.

Instead, I support the no thrills water conservation project proposed in Measure 1 on our November 4 ballot which will reallocate money from unused bonds to make better use of the money. Our need for safe drinking water for all communities is critical. We need to fill up our dangerously low underground water aquifers in the central valley, to protect water from evaporation, to ensure that our farms and businesses get the water they need during dry years, to manage and prepare for droughts, to invest in water conservation, recycling and improved local water supplies, while at the same time, increase flood protection and capture the unbridled rain run off, fund groundwater cleanup, clean up polluted rivers and streams, and restore the environment for fish and wildlife because I love wildlife and I love to go fishing and I know a lot of you do to.

We need me in office to defend and promote key water conservation measures that would require urban and rural areas to develop and implement water conservation plans such as crop sprinkling at night, drip irrigation, planting drought tolerant crops, reconditioning old water pipe infrastructure to avoid leaks and pipe bursts and prohibiting wasteful industrial uses.

ARCHAEOLOGIST/BUSINESSWOMAN

Currently, I am the owner/investigator for an archaeological consulting firm with an office in Needles, California. My work involves archaeological investigation in the tri-state area of California, Nevada and Arizona where I conduct fieldwork, record archaeological sites and prepare environmental reports for a variety of local, state and federal agencies.

I also maintains a very small rental housing management business in Needles and owns the rental units that she leases.

CIVIC INVOLVEMENT

I am committed to my community and served as a Boy Scout and Girl Scout Leader, on the executive board of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), as an elected member of the Needles City Council and as an appointed member of the San Bernardino Association of Governments. I was a charter member of the Needles Museum Association and currently I serve as a member of the Needles Historic Commission to identify local properties to recommend for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

I am a regional expert on Native American prehistoric rock art and currently serve as the local organizing chairperson for the 2015 American Rock Art Research Association annual meeting, which is to be held in the Laughlin, Nevada/Needles, California area.

In 2009, I was employed as a cultural resource manager for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, Las Vegas, Nevada, where I re-established an archaeological site stewardship program and trained volunteers to monitor heritage sites. I am credited with having conceived of and implementing a program in the early 1980s that is considered to be ancestral to a now nationwide Archaeological Site Stewardship program. In 1981 it was called the "Site Adoption" program in operation in what is now the East Mojave National Preserve.

I am a published author contributing to professional archaeological journals including the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, the Pacific Coast Archaeological Society Quarterly and the Nevada Archaeologist. During the period of July 2013 through July 2014, Ruth prepared a weekly history column published in the San Bernardino County Sentinel called "A Glimpse of San Bernardino County's Past."

Because of the loss of our water and our courts and our roads and schools, I am currently taking a sabbatical from that column to run for public office, the position of California State Senator, District 16 that includes Visalia, Tulare and Bakersfield in the lower Central Valley, the lower Sierra Nevada, the Morongo Valley, and the Mojave Desert north of Victorville to the Colorado River. Much of the district is in the East Mojave Desert where I have worked and lived for the last 34 years.