Mr. Kittelberger operates “Walt’s Charters”, a sport fishing guide business out of Port Mansfield, Texas. He is a co-founder and executive director of the Lower Laguna Madre Foundation. The Foundation has led efforts to research and protect that South Texas bay, which is a rare hypersaline lagoon well-known for its crystal clear flats, shoalgrasses, redhead duck flocks, and vital redfish and speckled trout populations. He and others involved in the Foundation have been especially concerned about threats to the bay that include dredging for the Intracoastal Waterway, the risk of oil and chemical spills from barge traffic on the Waterway, and development proposals for Padre Island and the mainland.
Region: Coastal Prairie
Marvin Legator
Dr. Legator was a toxicologist and professor of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and earlier served as chief of the genetic toxicology branch of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He was a critic of the weaknesses in the toxicological testing, risk assessment and epidemiological review of many commonly used and discharged chemicals. Dr. Legator was an author of Chemical Alert! and the Health Detectives Handbook, and worked in other ways to testify for, consult with and assist those affected by environmental releases of toxic chemicals.
Bessie Cornelius
Ms. Cornelius was a birder based in Beaumont, Texas who helped in preserving a number of important bird sanctuaries, including the Audubon sites at Smith Woods, Boy Scouts Woods, Bolivar Flats, and Sydney Island, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service property at McFaddin National Wildife Refuge, as well as other sites in Southeast Texas.
David Crossley
Mr. Crossley has worked in media for many years, managing KPFT Radio, reporting for Texas Monthly, editing Houston City magazine, and leading firms involved in digital presentations. He has also been engaged in environmental protection, acting as chair of the Citizens Environmental Coalition from 1996 through 2000, and founding the Houston Environmental Center in 1998, which has provided office and meeting space for a diverse array of local environmental non-profits. In recent years, Mr. Crossley has been particularly involved in pressing for smart growth, improved quality of life, and better planning for the Houston-Galveston area, through founding and directing the Gulf Coast Institute and Blueprint Houston.
Bill Dawson
Mr. Dawson is a journalist and professor. From 1984 to 2001, he served as the environmental writer for the Houston Chronicle, researching and reporting in major series on smog, air toxics, ozone, grandfathered industries, and global warming, in addition to covering numerous day-to-day events in the environmental field. In the years since, he has continued to write, managing Texas Climate News, covering environmental matters for the Society of Environmental Journalists, as well as contributing to the New York Times, writing for the Center for Public Integrity and the Metcalf Institute, and also serving as a Lecturer in the Center for the Study of Environment and Society at Rice University.
Ann Hamilton
Ms. Hamilton lives in Houston, where she worked as a Grant Officer focusing on environmental programs for the Houston Endowment, the largest foundation in Texas, from 1991 through 2009. She also served as a trustee for the Jacob W. and Terese Hershey Foundation, a Texas family foundation which supports land conservation, parks and open space, animal protection and human population initiatives. As well, she co-founded the Texas Environmental Grantmakers Group as an effort to explore and develop conservation funding opportunities and partnerships in the state. Prior to her philanthropy work, she worked as executive director of the Park People, a non-profit advocating for increased open space protection in the Houston area, and as executive director of the Houston Parks Board, a vehicle for enabling public support and participation in the City’s Parks and Recreation Department’s acquisitions and operations.
Ed Harte
Publisher of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times from the mid-1950s through 1987, and partner in the Harte-Hanks newspaper management for many years, Mr. Harte was active in habitat protection, drilling regulation, and institutional work. With regard to habitat protection, Mr. Harte made major contributions in two areas: gift of the 57,000-acre North Rosillos Mountains Preserve as an adjunct to the Big Bend National Park, and lobbying for the purchase and protection of Mustang Island State Park and Padre Island National Seashore. With respect to drilling, Mr. Harte convened a citizens’ group to set limits on offshore oil and gas drilling in Corpus Christi Bay, which became the first municipal regulations of drilling in the country, and a model for future state and federal standards. He also made major contributions to the management of a major American environmental group, the National Audubon Society, where he served on the board from 1964 to ’70 and 1972 to ’79, acting as chair from 1974 to ’79.
Martin Melosi
Dr. Melosi is an environmental historian whose research and writing have focused on urban sanitary infrastructure, including the services for drinking water, wastewater and solid waste. He is a professor at the University of Houston, where he has taught since 1984. Previously, from 1975 through 1984, he taught at Texas A&M University. He has written widely (The Sanitary City, Energy Metropolis, Effluent America, and Coping with Abundance), edited professional journals and books, including the Environmental History Series at Texas A&M Press, worked as an expert witness in litigation, and served his colleagues as President and officer with the American Society for Environmental History.
Johnny French
Mr. French is a biologist who served for close to 25 years in the Corpus Christi office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service monitoring, reviewing and seeking to improve numerous projects requiring a federal permit or consultation. For example, some of the projects he worked on included oil and gas drilling on Padre Island, cleanup of the Ixtoc oil spill, dredging for the Intracoastal Waterway, navigation related to the Homeport proposal, chemical production and cleanup at ASARCO, Alcoa and Formosa Chemical, and protection plans for the ocelot, jaguarundi, bald eagle, whooping crane, Atwater prairie chicken, brown pelican and piping plover. Following retirement in 2001, he has continued to be involved, with much of his recent effort focused on maintaining public access to the Texas shore.
Mary Anne Piacentini
Ms Piacentini is a planner who has worked on protecting and developing open space for recreation, habitat and sustainable land use. From 1993 through 1998, she led the Friends of Hermann Park, which succeeded in restoring an historic, neartown park that includes 545 acres of land and major urban attractions, such as the Houston Zoo, Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, and Miller Outdoor Theatre. In 1999, she helped found, and later chaired, the Texas Land Trust Coalition, a non-profit dedicated to supporting, coordinating, and educating the three dozen land trusts in the state. From 1998 through the present day, Ms Piacentini has served as executive director of the Katy Prairie Conservancy, which has managed to protect 12,000 acres of grassland to the west of Houston, for rice production, cattle raising, wildlife habitat, and flood abatement.