Governor’s assistant helped draft platform
By Daily Press staff
A Santa Monica man has been appointed as the special assistant to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for energy and environmental technologies.
Terry Tamminen, 53, had been the Secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, appointed to that post in 2003 by Gov. Schwarzenegger. Founded in 1991, the EPA, which oversees state environmental resources, is the voice of environmental issues in Sacramento.
Tamminen held the EPA post until last week, when he was appointed as special assistant the governor.
Fred Aguiar, secretary of the state and consumer services agency, replaces Tamminen as cabinet secretary.
“I also want to thank Terry Tamminen for his outstanding work for the people of California,” Gov. Schwarzeneg-ger said of the appointment. “He will continue to serve in my administration as an advisor. His counsel and exper-tise will guarantee that California will continue to lead the world in our efforts to protect the environment while ensuring that we balance the needs of the state’s recovering economy.”
Tamminen, a Democrat, helped draft Schwarzenegger’s environmental platform, which includes ambitious measures to protect California’s national forests, cut air pollution by 50 percent, reduce independence on foreign oil and invest in hydrogen vehicles.
In 1993, Tamminen founded Santa Monica BayKeeper, a local environmental watchdog group, and was its executive director for six years. And from 1999 to 2003, Tamminen served as the executive director of the Santa Monica-based Environment Now Foundation, a private organization dedicated to protecting, preserving and restoring the environment of California.
A former student of CSU Northridge and the University of Queensland, Australia, Tamminen also co-founded water protection groups in San Diego, Orange County, Ventura and Santa Barbara.
A United States Coast Guard-licensed ship captain, Tamminen has long been drawn to the undersea world, starting in the 1960s with a family operated tropical fish-breeding business in Australia and continuing with studies on conch depletion in the Bahamas, manatee populations in Florida coastal waters, and mariculture in the Gulf States with Texas A&M University.
On land, Tamminen managed the largest sheep ranch east of the Mississippi, assisting the University of Minnesota in developing new methods of livestock disease control. He also managed a multimillion dollar real estate company, owned/operated a successful recreational services business, and assisted the nation of Nigeria with the creation of their first solid waste recycling program.
Tamminen has served on numerous civic and charitable boards and commissions, including as chair of the Public Advisory Committee to the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project and on the U.S. Navy Pt. Mugu Naval Air Station Restoration Advisory Board, the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor Safety Committee and on the Board of the Wishtoyo Foundation, a group that preserves natural resources through Chumash Indian traditional teachings.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 15, 2005. Read the original PDF.