LA Weekly

Previous: Condor AC2 found dead

---

Next: Damn that red-legged frog

Gristmill has already blogged this well, but I'm repeating it all here to keept track of it:

Arnold Schwarznegger, in the wake of a Katrina -- and despite a cry for help from several California legislators for money to shore up California's crumbling levee system -- has booted all the reasonable people off the board that oversees such matters, and replaced them with industry-friendly folk. Once again: All the independent thinkers on the Reclamation Board, who had recently announced a moratorium on new development in central California's floodplains, have been fired. In their place are people who won't say no to new buildings, because they can make money off them.

Yes, even in the Los Angeles Times story, which I read out loud to the man I live with because neither of could believe it, it's that simple. Even Carl Pope can't believe it.

One of the board members, Jeffrey Mount, was recently interviewed in Salon about New Orleans -- which leads just about everyone these days to the perilous geology of the California Delta. Said Mount:

I laugh, only in a gallows humor sort of way, when people in California go: "How stupid are those people to build a whole city down there in a subsiding bowl." Huh? Been to Stockton?

Another, former Sacramento City Manager Bill Edgar, told the Sacramento Bee recently that he was concerned about the compatibility of housing developments with a levee system designed only to protect farmland. Said Edgar:

I believe if you're going to urbanize the land you've got to urbanize the levees. That's the bottom line.

Another, Betsy Marchand, questioned Yuba County's policy of allowing development in flood-prone areas to generate income for levee improvement.

We're not trying to give you a hard time.

she said in a meeting a whole year ago,

You've got a project that's a real doozy. It's one that gives a lot of people a lot of concern."

Marchand, Edgar and Mount are out, as are their four other former fellow board members. In their places are:

Rose Burroughs, the owner of a livestock company Benjamin Carter, a farmer and former Apple Computer executive Maureen Doherty, a farmer Emma Suarez, an attorney who works for the California Farm Bureau, who defended the farmers against environmentalists in the battle over the spotted owl; Teri Rie, a civil engineer; Francis "Butch" Hodgkins, formerly executive director of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency (not so bad -- he's has gone on record fearing the demise of the levees and the flooding of his own town); and Cheryl Bly-Chester, a civil engineer who ran for governor in the 2003 election as a Republican.

At there's one guy in there who seems to know what's up. Maybe there's two -- hard to tell.

As Drudge says, developing . . .

--------

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)