ALPERN AT LARGE-We truly live in a laughable state--Sacramento had to fight, and we will have to fight, for a water bond measure just north of $7 billion at a time when there remains insufficient money (and public will) for a California High Speed Rail project such south of $70 billion...with insufficient money (and public will) to fix a growing local/state pension fund shortfall of perhaps ten times that much.
Water is good. Water is necessary. Since the dawn of human history, civilization and development could only exist with ample and reliable access to water. Think Egypt and the Nile River. Think Mesopotomia and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
California has beautiful weather, but it is a desert--which was, for the most part changed a century ago when water was shifted to large regions of central and southern California.
But we're in a historic draught, made particularly so by an avalanche of overdevelopment that turned what was once a growing state (at least economically) into a state which is now driving away millions of middle-class workers and retirees because of traffic, a lack of jobs...and high utility bills.
To his credit, Governor Brown has hobbled together and negotiated a compromise $7.2 billion water bill that is free of the "tunnel vision" of a previously-promoted $11 billion bond measure filled with pork and expensive tunnels that infuriated environmentalists, fiscal conservatives and just about everyone.
Republicans are unhappy that their demands for $3 billion for reservoirs and dams and surface storage weren't entirely met, but the $2.5 billion offered is close enough for anyone experienced in Sacramento politics to know that their demands were overall reached.
Ditto for the farmers who, for some silly reason, many Californians demonize because they (gasp!) grow food and (gasp!) employ farmers and farm workers and (gasp!) are vital to the California economy. Their needs will be met.
Environmentalists are unhappy that money might still be promoted for new tunnels, but there are a few big steps forward for promoting water conservation...and it's not likely that Californians will be abandoning the need to conserve water any time soon.
Yet bigger questions loom:
1) Why is development (and overdevelopment) continuing to explode if there isn't enough water to go around already?
2) Why isn't this money already being included as part of our general budget (ditto with roads, sewage, electrical infrastructure, etc.)?
3) Why are we embracing the influx of so many new residents who are NOT here legally (call them migrants, undocumented immigrants, illegal aliens, refugees, or whatever) if our monthly water bills are driving out native born and legally-immigrated residents of all ethnicities, of all socioeconomic backgrounds, and who have paid taxes for decades? (Heck, even self-respecting illegal immigrants are bailing out of the state!)
4) Why is it so hard, and why does it require so much work, to pass a $7 billion bond measure when a $70 billion California High Speed Rail project is nowhere near economic/budgetary funding...yet being slammed forward at taxpayer expense?
5) Why is it so hard, and why does it require so much work, to pass a pension reform initiative that both Democrats and Republicans alike recognize addresses a budgetary shortfall of approximately 100 times or more this bond measure...and which is now being postponed from 2014 to 2016?
{module [862]} {module [662]}
Anyone reading this knows that California is a sort of "upside down world" where petulant/teenage/feel-good thought wins the day, and where adults questioning this thought get demonized, called names, and often are forced to just leave (or just shut up and "take it").
Yet the money that appears to grow on trees in this state is beginning to dry up, as in turn the economy and our environment and our collective quality of life are also drying up, because even the basics of water collection, storage, access and sustainable development can't be mastered by the geniuses in Sacramento...or the geniuses who keep voting them back into power.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at This email address [email protected] . He also does regular commentary on the Mark Isler Radio Show on AM 870, and co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 66
Pub: Aug 15, 2014