San Juan Citizens Alliance<\/a>, a Durango-based environmental advocacy group, and relocate with his family to Portland, Oregon.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s super mixed emotions,\u201d Olson said. \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of work left unfinished, but in the last three years we have really rebuilt a very strong platform for the alliance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olson, 38, is leaving so that his wife, Emily, can attend graduate school for nursing and midwifery in Portland. Emily Olson works in the Durango office for Chama Peak Land Alliance. The two have a pre-school aged son, Henry.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re both supportive of our career aspirations, and this is an important opportunity for her to pursue,\u201d Olson said. \u201cBut at the same time, Durango has always been a chosen home, for both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olson became executive director in 2014, at a time when the more than 30-year-old organization was reeling from the financial impacts of the 2008 recession. The alliance had lost 65 percent of its grant funding, and was forced to lay off staff and contract its programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came in on the tail end of that,\u201d Olson said. \u201cWe were either going to continue to spiral downward, and not be an organization anymore. Or, we were at rock bottom, and we were going to start to rebuild and strengthen our core.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olson said he refocused the alliance to get \u201cback to the basics,\u201d by improving communication efforts to the public, upping the alliance\u2019s presence on social media, rebuilding its website and reaching out more effectively to current members.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I saw was an organizing problem, not a mission problem,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I was confident in taking the challenge on.\u201d<\/p>\n
By Olson\u2019s account, his tenure as executive director has left the alliance in a stronger position. The alliance went from an all-time low number of paying memberships to an all-time high, mostly stemming from enhanced outreach efforts.<\/p>\n
According to the San Juan Citizens Alliance website, the group has more than 800 dues-paying members and \u201cthousands of supporters who care passionately about preserving the unique qualities\u201d of the Four Corners.<\/p>\n
\u201cRegardless of leadership, I\u2019m confident we\u2019ll continue to thrive after I\u2019m gone,\u201d Olson said.<\/p>\n
The San Juan Citizens Alliance was formed in 1986 by a group of residents who were concerned about the impacts of oil and gas development. According to the group\u2019s website, the alliance now addresses a broad range of issues, including the protection of air, land and water resources.<\/p>\n
Current issues the alliance is involved in include protecting the Greater Chaco Canyon area from further oil and gas development; securing more environmentally sound water management for the Dolores River, and fighting the energy extraction sources that have caused the \u201cmethane hot spot\u201d over the Four Corners.<\/p>\n
Also not to be forgotten, Olson said, is the 30-plus year \u2013 and counting \u2013 fight to stop an Aspen-sized development from being built atop the Continental Divide near the Wolf Creek ski area, known as the Village at Wolf Creek.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one he would have liked to see resolved before his exit.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the psychological well-being of the community, it would be wonderful to put the Wolf Creek fight to bed,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a 30-year saga that just seems to have no end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Olson and the work of the San Juan Citizens Alliance is not without its detractors.<\/p>\n
Christi Zeller, executive director of the La Plata County Energy Council, has sparred with the alliance on numerous occasions, most frequently on issues surrounding oil and gas development in the region.<\/p>\n
Zeller said that while her advocacy group for the oil and gas industry promotes, much like environmental groups, responsible energy development, how the two entities go about that differs tremendously. She said the anti-oil and gas rhetoric increased when Olson became the alliance\u2019s executive director.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy frustration is that sometimes it\u2019s (SJCA\u2019s arguments) just emotional, they\u2019re not educational or even factual,\u201d Zeller said. \u201cThey don\u2019t delve into what our industry does every day to protect the environment. They just try to ignite the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olson, for his part, takes criticism in stride.<\/p>\n
He grew up in a town outside New York City, and earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in philosophy. But his career started at Harvard University, where he worked to improve the campus\u2019 energy sustainability.<\/p>\n
He then went on to work as an energy sustainability consultant for Fortune 500 companies while his family was based in Jackson, Wyoming. But soon after he and his family moved to Durango, Olson underwent a sea change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came to a point where I realized the progress being made within the system was simply not sufficient to address timely problems that we\u2019re facing,\u201d Olson said. \u201cI really felt I needed to engage more on policy and the grass-roots advocacy side of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olson said he plans to continue his work in the energy and environmental sustainability world when he gets to Portland, though he has no job lined up. He said given the Trump administration\u2019s stance on many environmental issues, there\u2019s likely to be no shortage of work to be done.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe blessing of a Trump administration has been the incredible participation and advocacy from people who have never considered themselves politically active,\u201d he said. \u201cI have a lot of hope actually, that there will be this real turning inward to say what can we do as a community to continue making progress on these issues that are timely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andy Corra, the owner of 4Corners Riversports and who serves on the SJCA board of directors, said Olson\u2019s successor has not been found. He said Olson will surely be missed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s going to be a hard guy to replace,\u201d Corra said.<\/p>\n
jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Back to the basics\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[781,13,1269,2346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-70402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-environmental-politics","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-nonprofits","tag-people-profiles"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70402"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=70402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}