We’ll miss you, Peter!
Peter Scott, co-founder of the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation died a few days ago. He was reported to be riding his bike just days before he died.
In April Lookout Santa Cruz published my appreciation of the legacy of Peter and Celia Scott. The following is taken from that article.
When I enjoy a bike ride at Wilder Ranch, or take a serene solo walk through the redwoods in the Pogonip or meet a friend for a walk at Arana Gulch, I sometimes feel grateful for the people who protected these spaces from development. I think of Peter and Celia Scott.
This visionary couple had a knack for organizing that resulted in the Santa Cruz we know today, a community of exquisite natural beauty accessible to all and without a large freeway running through its middle.
Picture what Santa Cruz would have looked like if the plans of the 1960s had come to fruition: homes and schools across the Pogonip and a freeway – with a loop to the Boardwalk – through Santa Cruz connecting Highway 17 with the North Coast. In 1972, a Toronto investment firm proposed a development for 33,000 people for Wilder Ranch. In 1970, PG&E announced a plan to build a nuclear power plant two miles north of Davenport.
Citizen groups organized opposition to these plans, taking on names like “Operation Wilder,” “the Coastal Coalition,” “Save the Coast,” and the “Rural Bonny Doon Association.” They were outspoken and effective.
In 1969, the Sentinel reported, “About 1,500 rabidly partisan citizens jammed the Civic Auditorium this morning to make themselves heard on the Great Freeway Issue.”
Peter and Celia were at the heart of the citizen action that made Wilder Ranch into a state park in 1974, pushed PG&E to abandon its plan for a nuclear power plant, and generated signatures for the 1972 ballot initiative that established the California Coastal Commission.
They did this alongside their “real” jobs. Peter was a physics professor at the then-new UCSC campus. HIs childhood enjoyment of the outdoors led him to the leadership of the local Sierra Club. Celia Von der Muhll was a planner, an environmental attorney and a young mother who had attended the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and become fascinated with London’s greenbelt. She believed cities needed greenspace and that people should be able to walk out and be immersed in nature. She believed Santa Cruz could be that sort of place.
In 1979, Peter and Celia and others worked to pass the Greenbelt ballot initiative, which saved Pogonip, Arana Gulch, and Moore Creek from development. That ballot initiative incorporated a requirement that new development include 15% affordable housing.
Along with county Measure J, passed in 1978, these were among the first ordinances in the nation to require affordable housing in new development.
Celia was elected to the Santa Cruz City Council in 1994 with the most votes of any candidate. At her swearing-in ceremony, Peter and other musicians led the crowd in singing Celia’s campaign song, “Dancing on the Brink of the World,” which the Scotts wrote and which celebrated the San Lorenzo River. They used another song,“To the Gray Whale Ranch,” in a 10-year campaign that stopped development at Gray Whale Ranch and resulted in its annexation to Wilder Ranch State Park, now 7,000 acres.
In a Sentinel op-ed in 1998, Peter addressed the plan to make Highway 1 eight lanes from Santa Cruz to Freedom Blvd. Basing his argument on studies by the EPA, he wrote, “Due to pent-up demand, the excess capacity created by adding new lanes will soon be used up.” However, the Regional Transportation Commission forged ahead, placing a highway tax measure on the ballot in 2004.
The effort against the measure included Sierra Club chair Paul Elerick, Debbie Bulger, Bill Malone and Bruce Van Allen. The measure needed a two-thirds vote, but garnered only 43%. The failure to win public support for a highway tax made the dream of an eight-lane highway moot.
Debate about Highway 1 expansion continues today, as Caltrans builds auxiliary lanes (exit-only lanes) in between the choke points at each interchange. Auxiliary lanes are not the answer to traffic congestion. In fact, a Caltrans 2015 environmental impact report stated the auxiliary lanes and ramp metering from Santa Cruz to Freedom Blvd. “would result in a very slight improvement in traffic congestion.” The Sierra Club and Campaign for Sustainable Transportation are currently suing Caltrans because the Highway 1 project’s environmental impact report failed to analyze alternatives to auxiliary lanes proposed for State Park Drive to Freedom Boulevard. The proposed project would strip 1,100 trees that line the highway and squander a large chunk of local transportation dollars. Like Celia and Peter Scott, we need to imagine a better future.
I just learned of Peter’s passing. I am shocked because Peter has always been here and such an important part of Santa Cruz. He will truly always be here for all the wonderful work and places he and Celia worked to save. Everywhere one turns in Santa Cruz If it’s green and alive with abundant life his spirit and his work is in it.💓❤️💖💜❣️
Many thanks to Peter and Celia for their loving care for our lovely coast, critiques of University malfeasance in property management as well as intelligent analysis of our traffic idiots’ plans to pave paradise. You fought the good fight with love and devotion.
I saw Peter a few weeks ago. He looked beatific as ever, but also with a kind of calm sadness I hadn’t seen before. I asked him how they were doing. He said Celia was having a hard time and that he was “walking towards the grave.” That struck me as very strange and not Peter-like, but in retrospect he knew he didn’t have very much time left.
I have always admired and loved Peter. He was a living Bodhissatva, radiating kindness and understanding. Before I met Peter, I didn’t have a political bone in my body. I became an early almost Co-Founder of FORT, greatly influenced by Peter’s legacy. I have endeavored to carry on his fight to the best of my ability.
He was also a professor of physics with a PhD from Stanford, which is exactly my background. He was known for an early contribution to chaos theory from observing a dripping faucet and how each drip influenced the drip after that in remarkably complex patterns. Three of his students ended up at the Santa Fe Institute, where I met them and began to be drawn into the Santa Cruz orbit. When I saw him last we talked about observations, in this case noting that there must be two great horned owls hooting near our homes which are a few blocks apart. He was an observer of life and nature par excellence.
The dripping faucet is an apt metaphor for Peter’s legacy, the water that wears away stone, the legacy that carries on to the people after him in rich and beautiful ways.
And he rode his bike to the end,
I’m in a bit of shock, so, forgive me if I fail to be articulate. Peter is the first person I remember seeing when I came to Santa Cruz. I had just arrived at UCSC, and there was a protest up on campus and he was sitting in the middle of an intersection with hundreds of people and he was playing guitar and singing a protest song. I so deeply admired his and Celia’s work in the Santa Cruz community. Then, many years later, he officiated Song’s and my marriage. Today I was thinking of reaching out to him and Celia to ask a question about a historical land use issue. Then I got an email with the news. In many ways, Peter is Santa Cruz in my mind. I hope to find a way to support Celia at this time.
So sorry to hear of Peter’s passing. We were working on a recording of his songs with Michael Levy. I was one of those musicians who played in City Hall for Celia’s mayoral victory and have played at many events with Peter. He was a sweet , kind man. Santa Cruz is losing a gem. May we always remember him when we walk the trails of Wilder, Pogonip and Gray Whale or along the banks of the San Lorenzo River.
I’m deeply moved at hearing of Peter‘s passing. I always appreciated his kindness and patience at explaining things beyond my grasp. I have such gratitude for the work that he and Celia have done over the decades. I so often think of them both when I walk in the pogonip, a gift they had the foresight and diligence to create with the help of others for the community to enjoy.
It’s people like Peter that buoy me up in times like these. I take solace in knowing that he and others exist in our community and it together we face whatever comes.
Thank you Peter and blessings on Celia and your family.
How sad can one be? Losing Peter is losing the mentor who guided my thinking and provided the information and understanding needed to continue working in the face of what seemed to be insurmountable obstacles. Caring and joy are words that come to mind when thinking of Peter. And, of course, it was “PeterandCelia”– all one word — who demonstrated the beauty of a lasting, loving relationship. We are all so lucky that he chose to live and work here, along our coast and its mountains. Thank you, Peter. I hope I told you that enough times.
These two dear people, always PeterandCelia as another has said, were busy at work when I moved to Santa Cruz in 1979. They made my environmental heart sing with joy. I shall miss Peterand Celia. While Peter’s dedicated work lives on, all life in our bioregion is diminished without him, his twinkly eyes, his music and his blueberry waffles. I want to know that Celia is cared for right now.
I knew Peter only through the CFST, but I count myself lucky to have known him at all and am so sad today to see this. I remember him arriving at a climate event just a few years on his bicycle, with all his tools and an ingenious and intricate display, which he then assembled by hand, cheerfully and perfectly. I was a bit in awe then and I still am. He didn’t know me but still made me feel a part of it all. Thank you Peter, for everything.
I was so saddened to hear of Peter’s passing. He was a wonderful person with such amazing vision. Our Santa Cruz environment was blessed to have both Peter and Celia as residents. Their actions have shown all of us that individuals with insight and perseverance have the power to protect open space and biodiversity, and motivate others to join them. Peter’s presence will be missed each day in our community.