February 28, 1923 - May 23, 2013

A Great Conservationist and Jefferson Award Recipient

The Northwest was blessed to have 2008 Jefferson Award recipient Elsie Sorgenfrei, as a champion of the environment during the last five decades. Her record of achievements preventing water pollution, conserving water, and protecting forests is inspiring.

She succeeded in convincing Snohomish County Public Works to stop spraying herbicides next to roads adjacent to streams; helped craft WA State legislation banning phosphates in soaps; lobbied the Legislature to require low flow toilets in new construction that, over time, will conserve billions of gallons of water (the media labeled her the “Toilet Lady” as a result); set up a citizen based water quality monitoring program on Lake Roesiger; and, most recently, battled to ensure 1600-acres of forest in a rural area near Lake Roesiger will become public recreation land managed by Snohomish County Parks and the WA Department of Natural Resources.

Along the way, Elsie became a founding board member of the Adopt A Stream Foundation and used her energies to help establish Streamkeeper Academy to teach people of all ages how to become stewards of the environment. She also helped raise funds for and became a major contributor to the Northwest Stream Center that is evolving into a regional environmental education center with stream and wetland ecology and fish and wildlife restoration as its central themes.

“Elsie was dispensing advise on how to prevent water pollution until the week before she peacefully passed away,” says Adopt A Stream Foundation Director Tom Murdoch. “She told me that ‘going out so early was very disappointing - just ten years short of 100.’ At the end of last year, when she turned 90, Elsie told me that she had great plans to keep protecting the planet until she reached at least 100.”

FUNERAL INFORMATION

Everyone is invited to enjoy her story and celebrate her remarkable life of achievements on Wednesday June 19 at one of her three favorite locations:

1pm -The Northwest Stream Center (600 –128th Street SE, Everett WA 98208) 3pm -Lake Roesiger Park (1608 S. Lake Roesiger Road Snohomish WA 98290) 6pm -Sorgenfrei Creek (21120 Dubuque Rd, Snohomish WA 98290)

Memorial

A nice stop in the road and a reason to smile

By Tom Murdoch

The other day, I was driving out to pay one of my last visits to a dear friend, Elsie Sorgenfrei. As I got closer to her house next to Sorgenfrei Creek, a County Road Maintenance Flagger held up a stop sign. While I waited, I noticed a large mechanical mower cutting vegetation next to the road that was near the creek.

A smile came to my face. That stop in the road brought back memories of when I first met Elsie back in 1979. At that time I was a Water Resource Planner for Snohomish County's Planning Department and Elsie was very unhappy that the County Public Works Department was spraying herbicides on weeds along roads next to streams. She knew that that was a problem for water quality and fish and wanted to know how to get the County to change its procedures.

I introduced her to the Public Works Director. Elsie presented him with a cost-benefit analysis demonstrating that is was cheaper, more effective, and much more environmentally sound to use mechanical mowers rather than herbicides. She also dropped the hint that she would walk in front of any County trucks spraying herbicide next to Sorgenfrei Creek.

Thanks to Elsie's efforts, Snohomish County stopped spraying herbicides next to creeks in 1980. A little later on, she researched water quality problems associated with phosphates in soap products and helped draft legislation banning phosphates, which was adopted by the Legislature.

As I got to know Elsie more, I learned that, after earning a BA degree from the University of Washington and teaching credentials from Central Washington University, she went to Ohio to earn a Masters Degree in Psychology & Speech and Hearing Therapy from Case Western Reserve University. After working with kids in Case Reserve Hospital polio wards for a few years, she moved back to Washington State where she was drafted by the Snohomish County School District as a school psychologist and special education instructor. During the next 15 years, she helped a few thousand kids get on the right track to the future.

When the Snohomish County School Superintendent retired, Elsie decided to move on as well and spent the next few years working for the Department of Corrections teaching non-violent offenders to get their GED's.

While I was waiting for the County Road Flagger to allow me to move down the road some other memories jumped in my head that made me smile more. After tackling the herbicide and phosphate problem, the next thing that Elsie did was to push for water conservation. In 1982, she installed a low flow toilet in her house and proved to her neighbors around Lake Roesiger that the increased velocity of water would keep their plumbing from getting clogged. Then, she set out to convince others.

On behalf of the Snohomish County League of Women Voters, Elsie replaced a passenger seat in her van with a low flow toilet and filled up the rest of the van with information on water conservation. Then she traveled around Snohomish County to community fairs and club meetings - and on to Olympia where she lobbied the legislature.

Her water conservation campaign led to a name tag King TV reporters used that caused her to smile: The Toilet Lady. Thanks largely to her non-stop water conservation effort, in 1993, the Legislature required low flow toilets in all new construction and remodels.

Thinking about the billions of gallons of water the "Toilet Lady" saved should bring a smile to your face too. Another reason to smile - Elsie told me that she really enjoyed a photo of her of her next to Lake Roesinger posing beside a low-flow with her small dog peering out from inside the toilet bowl!

While in the midst of her water conservation efforts, Elsie became one of the founding members of the Adopt A Stream Foundation and helped launch a long-term program to teach people how to become stewards of their watersheds...to become Streamkeepers.

Then, she took on another challenge by asking questions about a hypolimnetic siphon (a giant aerator) that the Washington State Department of Ecology was planning to have installed in Lake Roesiger to combat low oxygen levels in the lake water. As a counter to that plan, Elsie got the lake residents to stop using fertilizers and to convert much of their lake front lawns to native plant landscapes. Then, she provided WDOE a cost benefit analysis that got them to change their minds and not install the siphon...saving taxpayers $1.5 million dollars. That's worth another smile.

Elsie does not like accolades. She often said to me that she was "just an ordinary person" and that anyone could do what she did. But she is anything but ordinary - she is very special. Many others think so too. Her conservation efforts earned Elsie very well deserved recognition as a Jefferson Award winner in 2008 at the age of 85. That national award is like a Nobel Prize for Public Service given to people who make a difference in their local communities on a daily basis.

She never slowed down. A major housing development that was intended to become a new city was planned out in the forest near Lake Roesiger. Elsie challenged the environmental impacts of that project. You can smile again. Instead of more urban sprawl in Snohomish County, the Department of Natural Resources and Snohomish County Parks and Recreation now jointly own this 1600-acre site. In the not too distant future, you and your family will be able to go there and take a long walk in the woods. Another reason to smile.

Elsie was also instrumental in pulling funds together to construct an Elevated Nature Walk at the Adopt A Stream Foundation's Northwest Stream Center in Mc Collum Park. In about a year, you will be able to "take a walk on the wild side" there and learn the interconnections between forest, wetlands, streams, fish and people. Another reason to smile.

Unfortunately Elsie will not be able to join you on those walks. Last year she turned 90 and was very excited to begin a new decade of protecting the environment. However cancer got in her way and she quickly lost that battle.

Always thinking ahead, Elsie started a Streamkeeper Academy Endowment Fund to support great environmental education programs for you and your family to enjoy at the Adopt A Stream Foundation's Northwest Stream Center. You can make Elsie smile by helping that endowment grow and enable the Adopt A Stream Foundation to keep "teaching people how to become stewards of their watersheds" long into the future.

In the Great Scheme of Things

In the great scheme of things, what matters is not how long you live, but why you live, what you stand for, and what you are willing to die for.

Paul Watson