John Bartlit, center, receives the Dorothy Hoard Stewardship Award painting from Friends of Bandelier President Craig Martin with Bandelier National Monument Superintendent Jason Lott. Courtesy photo
The Board of Friends of Bandelier has chosen John Bartlit of Los Alamos to receive the 2016 Dorothy Hoard Stewardship Award.
Bartlit was selected for his advocacy of providing clean air and water in New Mexico. Because of his advocacy the public, elected officials and the State Legislature have come to understand the importance of the air we breathe and the water we drink. And, for our National Parks and Monuments, clean long range vistas add to the public’s enjoyment of the landscape.
Bartlit and his wife Nancy became concerned about the haze ruining the mountain views in the early 1960s. He decided to find out what the industry was saying at the legislature—and the rest is history. The Bartlits, Michael Williams and a few others co-founded the New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air and Water, Inc, in 1969.
Dorothy Hoard, for whom the award is named, was helpful as they began organizing. Her passion for the out-of-doors and her artistic skills led her to make posters for the Citizens for Clean Air and Water. She never asked if they could use the posters. She voluntarily gave them to the organization and they were delighted to use them for publicity.
Founding an organization is more than just a gathering of minds. There was work to recruit and organize chapters around the state; to advocate for appropriate laws and regulations; to put pressure on polluting utilities and mines to clean up specific pollutants, and ultimately to enforce the law as citizens. These efforts occupied Bartlit’s non-work time—evenings and weekends. His engineering orientation to innovate a technical solution and awareness of legal process combined with rare expertise and the dedication of a wondrous, rare team made it all possible. As a result of this effort, scrubbers were put on the Four Corner’s Power Plants reducing the haze that first challenged him to act.
Today he writes for the Los Alamos Daily Post a column called “Tales of our Time.”
Bartlit also has been a community activist helping found Vision 2020, a small group of concerned environmentalists in Los Alamos who sponsored speakers and discussion. He has worked hard to address problems not covered by existing laws. One way is to convince the corporate world to go beyond what is required by regulation whenever feasible. Bartlit convinced the utility to continue running scrubbers at their design efficiency and to reduce their annual emission at little extra cost. In doing this, he stressed the fact that improved controls represent more jobs, not less.
Bartlit’s website is www.johnbartlitengineeringdiscourse.com.
The Dorothy Hoard Stewardship Award is a yearly award given in the name of Dorothy Hoard who founded Friends of Bandelier in 1988. Each year the award is given to someone who has contributed to the health and wellbeing of our landscape and environment. Hoard died in 2014 and the award is her legacy to her advocacy for the landscape she loved.
The award includes a picture of Bandelier painted by Hoard. The recipient can choose a $1,000 project for Bandelier in accordance to their passion for the environment. Previous recipient Dale Coker selected a new trailhead kiosk at the Cerro Grande Trailhead as his sponsored project.
