Cris Costello – Sierra Club Organizing Manager
Cris Costello has been organizing the grassroots for the Sierra Club since May 2007 and since 2017 has been the Organizing Manager for the Sierra Club Our Wild Florida Campaign, which encompasses the Everglades Restoration, Red Tide, Stop Sugar Field Burning, and Wildlands campaigns.
Cris coordinates the Sierra Club’s statewide water quality campaign to prevent harmful algal blooms in both coastal and inland waters in Florida by eliminating point and non-point sources of fertilizer, sewage and animal manure pollution. She works with partner environmental and civic organizations, local government staff and officials, homeowner associations, and landscape maintenance professionals around the following issues: Everglades restoration, springs protection, local and state-level urban fertilizer management policy, water quality standards for Florida’s fresh and estuarine waters, wildlife habitat protection, and the acquisition of conservation land. From day one, urban fertilizer ordinance adoption has been an important part of her work; as of March 15, 2020, thirteen (13) counties and one-hundred plus (100+) municipalities have adopted strict rainy season application bans on Nitrogen and Phosphorus urban fertilizer.
Statewide coordination and collective action among large and small environmental advocacy organizations has been a focus of her work since November 2013 when Cris organized the Citizens’ Clean Water Summit in Orlando, where 253 activists from 121 organizations gathered to make plans for a higher level of collaboration among the state’s water quality and water quantity advocacy community. Cris coordinated the result of the Summit, the 156-partner Floridians’ Clean Water Declaration (FCWD) Campaign Coalition through 2018. In 2018, the focus of her state-wide coordination became focused on the divisions between the North and South Florida advocacy communities. A part of this work is her current role as a conduit between Everglades and springs advocates; the goal of this North-South relationship building is to better withstand the tactics consistently used by polluter interests to divide and conquer the state’s environmental community. In 2019, with the passage of a bill to create 330 miles of new toll roads (M-CORES), Cris turned her attention to building a state-wide coalition to stop the proposed tollways in their tracks; the No Roads to Ruin Coalition, as of March 15, 2020, had eighty-five (85) coalition members focused on mobilizing the overwhelming public opposition to the new roads.
Prior to joining the Sierra Club, Cris was a rural and urban grassroots community organizer, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras, an organizer and negotiation/arbitration specialist in a seventeen-year career in the labor movement, and a consultant to the Gulf Coast Community Foundation in Venice, Florida. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.