Slowing down

Paul Clinton

Shortly after leaving the City Council earlier this month, Peter

Green decided to retire from Golden West College, wrapping up a

distinguished career as an educator, civic activist and public

servant.

Green said he will leave his 32-year teaching post at the end of

the school year, in the spring.

“I’ve always enjoyed teaching, and it will be hard for me to

leave,” Green said. “But I know others will come along.”

Green has taught at the community college since 1970, when he

joined Golden West’s faculty after moving to Huntington Beach from

Oklahoma, where he was the president of St. Gregory’s University, in

Shawnee.

For more than three decades, Green has taught biology, ecology and

zoology as a full-time instructor. This year, he was putting in 15

hours a week lecturing and conducting lab sessions.

Green decided to hang up his lab coat this year, he said, in part

because of sweeping changes in the science field, which has been

permanently altered by a biotech and genetics revolution.

“I felt now is the time, because there are so many [new] ideas

coming out in the biological sciences [field],” he said. “I find

myself not keeping up to date with the technological changes.”

Green cited the highly technical equipment now being used to

measure water quality as one reason for the decision.

On Dec. 2, Green stepped down from his second eight-year term on

the City Council because of term limits. He served as a councilman

from 1984 to 1992. He was elected again in 1994. Along the way, he

was the city’s mayor two times.

Green got his first taste of environmental activism in the late

1970s and early 1980s as a member of Amigos de Bolsa Chica, a group

founded to halt plans for a massive housing development on the Bolsa

Chica Mesa.

Green served as president of that group in 1980 and 1981.

Amigos members urged Green to run for the City Council in 1984.

During his two terms on the council, Green helped guide the city in

its shift from an organ of developers to a place where water-quality

issues, wetlands preservation and other environmental causes have

risen to the top of the agenda.

“I think I got on the City Council primarily for my environmental

interests,” Green said. “The balance between the environment and the

economic needs of the city has been preserved.”

In between his two stints on the council, Green secured an

appointment from then-Gov. Pete Wilson to an oversight committee that

was reviewing measures to rehabilitate the San Francisco Bay.

Earlier this month, when he stepped down from the City Council,

wife Cathy ascended the dais, replacing him on the city’s primary

decision-making panel.

With much more time on his hands nowadays, Green said he would get

back to some household projects that have had short shrift for city

issues.

“I have a vegetable garden I’ve neglected for the past few years,”

Green said. “So I’m going to concentrate on that.”