Obituary: Frederick G. Styles Wrote State’s Environmental Bill of Rights

By Robert D. Davila
Sacramento Bee
June 3, 2008

Frederick G. Styles, an environmental activist who influenced major legislation to protect California’s natural beauty and won a groundbreaking legal battle over plans to develop the Stone Lakes nature area, has died at age 78.

He died May 18 of Parkinson’s disease in a residential care center in Dublin, said his daughter, Katy Rogers. He had lived mostly in Bolinas after retiring in the 1980s, she said.

Mr. Styles shaped state environmental policy as a state Assembly consultant in the 1970s. He authored the California Environmental Bill of Rights, a landmark document in the early social movement to protect natural resources from pollution and encroaching development.

The report led to bills that created the California Coastal Commission, the California Coastal Conservancy and the California Environmental Quality Act. It called for creation of the state Office of Planning and Research and for biennial assessments of environmental goals and policies.

"Fred was one of the key figures in drafting California’s environmental legislation," said John Passerello, who worked in the Office of Planning and Research under Gov. Ronald Reagan. "After he left, a lot of the emphasis for the environment shifted from the Legislature to state agencies."

Mr. Styles influenced environmental policy at all levels of government. He served in state management positions under Gov. Edmund "Pat" Brown and spent three years at the U.S. Interior Department in Washington. He returned to Sacramento as environmental consultant to the Assembly Office of Research.

Active in the Sierra Club, he also served on the Sacramento County Planning Commission and the city’s architectural advisory panel. In 1975, the Environmental Council of Sacramento honored him as an Environmentalist of the Year for helping to preserve the Bushy Lake area south of Cal Expo.

In 1970, he joined other conservationists in a successful public fight against plans by McKeon Construction Co. to subdivide and build homes on Elliot Ranch in the Stone Lakes nature area south of Sacramento.

In one of the earliest cases of a legal trend known as "SLAPP," or strategic lawsuit against public participation, the developer accused Mr. Styles and four other opponents of interference and defamation and sued them for $80 million.

A Sacramento Superior Court judge threw the case out in 1974 in a decision that was upheld three years later by a state appeals court. In turn, Mr. Styles and the other environmentalists filed an anti-SLAPP suit alleging malicious prosecution, eventually settling with McKeon in 1979 for a total of $550,000.

"It was very stressful for him," his daughter said. "He was someone who hadn’t grown up with a lot of money, and $80 million was an astronomical sum."

Born in 1929 in Rochester, N.Y., Frederick George Styles moved as a boy with his family to Sacramento. His parents, a housepainter and homemaker, both had been orphaned as children and struggled to support their own seven children without help from relatives.

Mr. Styles graduated from Sacramento High School, served in the Navy during the Korean War and married Kathleen Berry. He entered Sacramento State on the GI Bill and transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1955 and a master’s degree in city planning in 1957.

He was planning director for the city of Santa Rosa before joining the Brown administration in Sacramento.

Mr. Styles, who also taught a UC Davis graduate course in planning, had four daughters before his marriage ended in divorce. After retiring, he worked at the Bolinas public library and served on the board of Californians for Population Stabilization. He also donated land to Point Reyes National Seashore.

"He just really felt it was necessary to preserve the natural beauty of California," Katy Rogers said. "One of my sisters called to tell me that my dad expressed to her that he worked hard to preserve the environment because he viewed it as a critical part of the human experience."