Oklahoma Carbon Program receives Henry Bellmon Environmental Stewardship Award
The Oklahoma Carbon Program received the 2012 Environmental Stewardship Award from the Henry Bellmon Sustainability Awards program. The award was presented at a gala at the Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa on Sept. 13, 2012. Mike Thralls, OCC executive director, and Stacy Hansen, OCC Carbon Program director, accepted the award.
Sustainable Tulsa and the Tulsa Southside Rotary Club and Foundation joined together to create the Henry Bellmon Sustainability Awards to honor the memory of the Oklahoma Governor and Senator and raise awareness and reward those people, agencies, organizations or companies who dedicate themselves to a balanced approach toward quality of life, responsible economic growth and environmental stewardship.
The Oklahoma Carbon Program is a program of the Oklahoma Conservation Commission’s Water Quality Division and has been recognized locally, nationally and internationally as a leader in sustainability. The program encourages Oklahomans to protect water quality, prevent soil erosion and improve air quality by voluntarily adopting conservation practices that sequester carbon or avoid emission of greenhouse gasses. More than 50,000 acres of sustainable farming practices have been verified in the program since 2009.
In accepting the award, Thralls quoted the first chief of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, which is now the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. “The Oklahoma Carbon Program and all Conservation Commission programs are guided by the principal stated by Hugh Hammond Bennett: ‘If you take care of the land, the land will take care of you.’”