Green money

Leaders of those two local environmental groups who just cut a deal with San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders not to oppose a sought-after waiver of federal sewage-treatment requirements are making pretty decent money. According to its 2006 IRS filing, the San Clemente–based Surfrider Foundation, with annual revenue of $4.8 million, paid executive director James T. Moriarty $186,667. Chief operating officer Michelle C. Kremer got $115,000. Development director Stephen E. Blank received $95,063. Over at San Diego Coastkeeper, with total revenues of $1,021,988 during 2007, executive director Bruce Reznik was paid $90,000. Development director Kate Hanley made $65,000. The groups’ flip-flops on the sewage-treatment waiver drew the wrath of other environmentalists, who opposed the City’s efforts to dodge federal requirements in order to save about $1.5 billion. … San Diego–based Sempra Energy has found itself in the middle of a struggle between members of Arizona’s Navajo Nation over a proposed 500-megawatt wind farm on tribal land in northern Arizona. According to an account in the Boston Herald, Sempra has a multimillion-dollar deal with the Navajo’s 1500-member Cameron Chapter. But the tribe’s governing Navajo Nation now wants to junk that arrangement and build a similar project on the same land with Joseph P. Kennedy II’s Citizens Energy Corporation. Kennedy is the son of the late Senator Robert Kennedy. “Navajo President Joe Shirley made a deal with Joe Kennedy behind closed doors that we knew nothing about,” a spokesman for the Cameron Chapter told the paper. “Kennedy is offering more money. But we value trust more than money.”