We live in a desert that was turned into a green space, but the desert is fighting back. The drought in California and throughout the southwest is a major environmental issue. Santa Monica has been proactive in replacing thirsty plants with drought-tolerant ones, we’ve built systems to capture water, use greywater and on the whole we’re conscious of public water consumption.
It’s not enough.
The fact is that the southwest is drying up. We are undergoing desertification in combination with the unrestricted growth that is being pushed by our public officials who are beholden to special interests. While the State dictates to the local officials how many more residential units we are mandated to build to accommodate population growth, they are ignoring the profound costs that those new bodies are incurring.
Special interests have put forth and funded new rules on development that are having a limited impact today, but I believe will have a profound impact on our state over the next two decades. As developers are allowed to build more densely we will have an increase in our traffic congestion, in our overburdened public works and infrastructure, and in the strain that is put on our environment.
As Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg noted on 60 Minutes this past Sunday we’ve essentially not performed major maintenance on our infrastructure since the Eisenhower administration. Anderson Cooper noted that our political leaders have generally preferred to start new projects, rather than crow about bringing in the money for maintenance, and Secretary Buttigieg agreed with him.
In our little pocket of the world, one need only look to the boondoggle that is the high-speed train that is being built from Bakersfield to Fresno. It’s already billions of dollars over budget and no one who draws a conscious breath can honestly claim that it is ever going to come close to the original budget. Has any public project ever come in on time and on budget, let alone under budget?
Rather than take the billions of dollars that are being spent on an essentially unnecessary train, and repairing the systems and public works that we have in place, the money is routed to corporations that will then pay lobbyists to guarantee that the money keeps coming from the legislators that they are paying to put in office.
Now the counter-argument to all of this is that all that money is circulating and is helping to keep blue-collar workers employed, and they, in turn, pay their rent, buy their trucks and feed their children while paying hefty taxes that are used to pay for more public works. Money is the lubricant that keeps our state economy moving, but it does seem to me that while we are spending on development and packing the people into small cities like Santa Monica, we are forgetting that important elements of life, like water, need to be considered.
Rather than build that silly train thing, why aren’t we spending that money on improving our reservoir system? Why not be building new reservoirs so that we can make better use of the rain that we do get? The northern half of the state is both underpopulated, and the primary source of our winter snowpack. It seems to me that we could develop a deeper, more robust reservoir system in Northern California that serves the tremendous needs across the state, from the agricultural needs of the central valley to the residential demands of the southern six counties.
The water table of the central valley is dropping to record lows, lands are imploding, and the Nestle water company continues to make profits. I know that we need to work with industry to provide clean drinking water, but once the wells run dry, Nestle will move on to a new source, much like a parasite does when the host dies. The problem for us is that we are the host.
We have to find new and better ways to provide for the population that is still increasing every day in our state. So long as development continues, and it will, we have to address the long-term costs and needs of our people. The failure of our leadership to think beyond election cycles will be our undoing, for the planet operates in terms of centuries and millennia.
I believe our shortsighted leaders will be remembered more for their deficiencies than their visions of the future.
David Pisarra is a Los Angeles Divorce and Child Custody Lawyer specializing in Father’s and Men’s Rights with the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He welcomes your questions and comments. He can be reached at dpisarra@pisarra.com or 310/664-9969. You can follow him on Twitter @davidpisarra
