Clean Water
The Clean Water Act was
passed in 1972, amended in 1977 with the intent of making sure that our water
supplies were safe for drinking and everyday use. At least that’s what I always
thought until I read the article describing its purpose. Actually, keeping
water safe for people wasn’t really the main goal but rather was for the
vague goal of “restoration and maintenance of chemical, physical and
biological integrity of Nation’s waters-“. The national policy stated
in Goal 2 was “to provide for protection and propagation of fish,
shellfish and wildlife” and provide for recreation. Further, it is
national policy to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters
by 1985 and that the “discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts (underline
is mine) be prohibited”. Unfortunately, some government agencies have
been very abusive in their application of this law, making life very difficult
for small ranchers and farmers.
A current case being
litigated for the past 12 years is against a 75 year old cranberry farmer who
is being accused of “destroying wetlands” in Massachusetts. Apparently, the federal
agents were not aware that cranberries grow in bogs which are wet areas, very
acidic, and have very specific growing requirements. Cranberries will not grow
in the desert or even in a semi-arid location. This cranberry bog is more than
20 miles from any navigable (a legal term) water which is the legitimate focus
area of the EPA. The Pacific Legal Foundation, an organization dedicated to
representing landowners being abused by government and judicial personnel
overstepping their bounds is representing the farmer against charges that he
has destroyed “federally protected” wetlands and must
“restore” the land to its original condition to the tune of
$1.1million dollars plus pay a $75,000 fine.
To make matters worse, the
Clean Water Restoration Act 2007 has just been introduced which removes the
term “navigable waters” from the original legislation ensuring that
every ditch, gutter or mud puddle will now be eligible for regulation from
governmental agencies. This provides, if passed, another opportunity for
government representatives to make life miserable for the agricultural sector
of our country.
More close to home,
ranchers and farmers are being required by Santa Barbara County
and other government agencies to be responsible for run-off from their
properties into rivers or streams. It was never the intention of the writers of
the Clean Water Act to apply regulations, meant to deal with large industrial
plants, to agriculture. According to an EPA source, once the Superfund sites
were cleaned up, they looked around for some other industry to work on.
Agriculture became the industry of the moment in order to avoid laying off many
government employees. Numerous problems have ensued since programs have been
put in place to measure pollution run-off from these lands. Lack of scientific
evidence identifying specific pollutants as to their source has been a really
serious issue. There has been no proof, to date, that farm animals, as opposed
to wild animals or irrigated crops are the source of any of the concerning pollutants such as e-coli. In fact, many
of these organisms are found naturally in areas not having any crops or
domesticated animals at all. Unfortunately, no one has been particularly
interested in pursuing this question so the farmers and ranchers have remained
the focus in taking responsibility for perceived pollution. Additionally, they
have been forced to pay for training and permits to operate their businesses,
adding further financial burdens to an industry already struggling to stay
solvent. To not pay for the “education” from non-farm personnel,
results in hefty fines and a requirement to attend the training program and pay
the regular fees for the “privilege” of producing food and fiber
for the public. It is really a shame that our tax dollars are being spent to
harass those people working so hard to feed and clothe us.
It is important to all
people to have a clean source of water but the abuses by government officials,
primarily designed to save their own jobs, are becoming more than burdensome.
Much misinformation and plain old scare tactics have resulted in a lot of good
people having to do things which not only don’t result in cleaner water
but also keep farmers and ranchers from doing what they do so well. Many
farmers and ranchers have gone out of business because they cannot fight the
rising tide of unreasonable regulation foisted upon them by well-meaning (in
some cases) officials. When the
public insists on their elected representatives “doing something”
about a particular issue, the officials respond by some kind of legislation
whether it accomplishes the required goal or not. In many cases, no one even
knows enough about the topic, and certainly will not admit it, to make accurate
assessments of the situation. It would behoove all of us to be careful what we
ask for.
Western Images
I’ve been confused
for some time about the Western images I’ve been seeing routinely on
television. It used to be that images of John Wayne and huge vistas of
undeveloped land evoked feelings of pride in what the United States
stood for. These days, car ads show SUV’s splashing through creeks
(huh?), traveling down rural roads with not a single building in sight or some
guy riding a bucking horse in a rental car lot. Did you see that one? I bet
many of you didn’t notice that the first horse and second horse shown
weren’t the same horse. Foreign car companies, like Honda and Toyota in particular,
seem to use Western images to sell their vehicles. My confusion is this, if the
ad agencies who produce these ads think that the Old West (which still exists in
real life by the way) glorifies their product, why do people use the term
“cowboy” to insult people such as the President? Perhaps you have
the answer.
Freedom of the Press
The on-going discussion of
what the expression “freedom of the press” means has reached a high
level of concern. It appears that some distortion of the concept has occurred
in recent years from what it used to mean. It was proud declaration of one of
the major differences between our country and many others where gun-toting
quasi-military personnel essentially dictated what people were to believe and if,
for any reason, you didn’t agree, you had best not say so for fear of
severe retribution. It seems increasingly the case that while the majority of
media including those locally based appear to have a significant bias in their
reporting, there are some new ways to accomplish their agenda. I have noticed,
while watching and reading a wide variety of news sources that
“freedom” has come to mean the freedom to not report items
or to place them such as to obscure them. Such was the case of the JFK airport
terror plot where several large papers placed the article on a page towards the
back of the paper. What this tells me is that these papers don’t want
their readers to know the truth. Why are they afraid to just report all of the
news and let their readers make up their own minds? I suspect that they either
don’t feel their readers are capable of making up their own minds or,
even worse, they don’t want their readers to make up their own minds.
Just like the reporting on
the war in Iraq
has focused on the three or four provinces that are having serious problems,
there is never any reporting on all the rest of the country, in fact the
majority, where there is no trouble. It really skews one’s impression of
what’s happening there. So too is the lack of understanding of the
difference between reporting “both sides” and reporting the truth-
if one group being interviewed keeps repeating the same distortions, it does
not serve anyone. If, on the other hand, reports give new information that has
not been reported before because, perhaps, it does not support or is in
conflict with previous reports by others, they can be very useful for people
trying to understand an issue and form an opinion about whatever the topic is.
It is a subtle difference, to be sure, but, I believe, an important one in this
age of instant information.
A New City?
Have you heard about the
new master planned community called North Hills that was introduced at the County Board
of Supervisors meeting this past Tuesday? I just heard about it at the end of
last week and looked on their website, www.northhills-santabarbara.com.
Much to my surprise, and that really doesn’t express how I felt, here was
this fully developed vision which sounded like it had been taken out of the
Sierra Club handbook talking about sustainable this and ecologically friendly
that. The community is to be built south of Orcutt in the hills including 7500
homes divided into six or seven “villages”. Each village is to be
somewhat self-contained with shopping, schools and easily accessible parks and
trails. A major emphasis was put on how all residents could just
“walk” everywhere, therefore, reducing car emissions and other such
pollutants. I was bothered by the realization that anyone who could not easily
walk everywhere would be immediately eliminated from this community.
I continued to read about
how this development was going to occur and some questions began to arise in my
head such as how is this going to pass the Planning Commission and Board of
Directors when the four thousand acre project was currently zoned agriculture?
I wondered who owned this land now and how this idea came to be. I remembered
that some man had called me a couple of weeks ago wanting my opinion on
building houses on ag land in the Santa
Maria area. He wanted to meet me in Santa Ynez to
discuss it. Unfortunately, my schedule didn’t allow for the meeting but I
believe this was the same issue.
As I explored the website,
which I encourage you to do as well, other questions began to emerge such as
where are they going to get enough water to supply all of these residents and
businesses? A light bulb went off when I read that the City of Santa Maria was going to be approached to
provide the water. I remember, some time back, reading articles about a government
entity, perhaps the City of Santa
Maria, in litigation with the local farmer/landowners
over possession of the return water and ground water. The details of the fight
are unclear at the moment but I do remember being puzzled at the time as to why
the fight was even happening. It seems possibly related to this current housing
project. I certainly will look further into it because I am curious as to
whether this has been planned for a long time in secrecy. Just to keep the
information clear, the reference to return water refers to water that returns
to the groundwater when a crop is being irrigated. Ownership of water beneath
the ground usually, in California,
belongs to the overlying landowner. In some areas, this is extremely valuable
if the groundwater basin is particularly large.
Everybody knows how
valuable water is in this semi-arid area of California, so any fight over water can have
huge consequences for many people. Water rights in this state are unique,
having mostly been settled by lawsuit, and governments are constantly trying to
figure out how to get possession of it from landowners. It’s not always a
pretty situation. Stay tuned.
