Andrew G. Fried When President Donald Trump ordered Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke to review the status of 27 national monuments created by three former presidents, many across the nation took it as a call to action to advocate on behalf of the monuments closest to their homes, and their hearts. Northern...

Andrew G. Fried Complacency is deadly. This truism can be aptly applied to the battle to prevent Cemex USA from developing a massive sand and gravel mine in Soledad Canyon. After more than two decades, in August 2015 it appeared the battle may be drawing to a close, as the federal Bureau of Land Management...

Andrew G. Fried There’s an environmental disaster brewing in California, and the public is generally unaware of it. The culprit? Gov. Jerry Brown. California’s governor is pushing a piece of legislation called “Trailer Bill 707,” which seeks to increase the availability of affordable housing...

Andrew G. Fried Over the years, the acronym NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) has taken on a widely recognized, negative connotation: People who oppose things like new construction or government infrastructure projects get labeled, derisively, as NIMBYs. The implication is that a NIMBY is someone who doesn’t...

Andrew G. Fried As soon as the federal Bureau of Land Management announced it was canceling the Cemex Soledad Canyon mining contracts last August, those of us who have been following the issue for more than a decade noticed one potentially frightening loophole: The BLM never said it was ruling out a...

Andrew G. Fried You name it, and someone has tried to stick this community with it. Hog farms. Toxic waste dumps. Prisons. Landfills. Over the past half-century, this corner of northern Los Angeles County has fended off all of them. A decade and a half ago, a group of concerned citizens formed Safe Action...

Andrew G. Fried To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of the death of Cemex’s Soledad Canyon sand and gravel mine have been greatly exaggerated. A month ago, there was shouting from the rooftops, cheering headlines that said the BLM had “killed” the much-feared mining contracts, held by Cemex for...

Andrew G. Fried It’s a natural reaction. When you have fought so long and so hard to defeat something, and it appears victory is yours, you’re inclined to celebrate. But most of the published reactions to the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to cancel Cemex’s Soledad Canyon mining contracts...

Andrew G. Fried For those of us who have battled for the past decade and a half to prevent Cemex from developing a massive sand and gravel mine in Soledad Canyon, it would be all too easy to give up hope after so many close calls and legislative failures over the years. But we haven’t given up hope....

Andrew G. Fried The waiting game can be frustrating, for all parties involved. In the case of the proposed 56-million-ton Cemex gravel mine in Soledad Canyon, those of us who have been working toward a solution have endured a long wait, and it’s not over just yet. After several years of close calls...