Community Groups Protest Schwarzenegger-Feinstein Water Bond Scheme

Of concern to the 18 million persons in Southern California, the region's carrying capacity can only provide water for 2-3 million people.

Revealing the local water crisis confronting the Los Angeles community
Without the Mono Basin, Owens Valley, Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and Colorado River (all with reduced or no water stream flow forecast and 500-year drought), a potential net out-migration of 15-16 million people without water must find and form new cities near adequate water.

Los Angeles County flood control engineers estimated upwards of 80 percent of storm-water percolated to groundwater prior to the concretizing of our natural river systems. Only 8 percent of rainfall in urbanized areas now recharges the groundwater, the rest along with urban contaminants flow to the ocean via the channelized streams.

Before suburban sprawl, the Tujunga/Pacoima Watershed was a major contributor of groundwater supply feeding the San Fernando Groundwater Basin—a natural underground reservoir that has become depleted over the years as most of the valley floor became impervious.

A third of LA County's total water recharge is attributed to snow-melt, and rainwater runoff which is collected in the upper watershed by Pacoima and Big Tujunga dams and infiltrated along the Pacoima and Tujunga Washes - comprising the total local surface water infiltrated to groundwater in Los Angeles County between 2003 and 2006.

Currently less than 15 percent of the water supply for the City of Los Angeles comes from local native groundwater. The other 85 percent is imported from distant sources via a delivery system that costs a significant percentage of our total statewide energy bill.

Revitalizing the Tujunga/Pacoima Watershed: a local solution to our water crisis
The two Upper Los Angeles River Area groundwater basins (San Fernando and Sylmar) are at a tiny fraction of capacity - with almost no infiltration. Impervious paving and long-term contamination have denied needed recharge to the basins.

If one-half the urbanized lower watershed is reclaimed to it's historic, natural state - using current landscape design methods (with 'Green Streets', non-polluting transportation modes and point sources) and advanced recycled water technologies, potable groundwater could be boosted five-fold or 75% of the city water supply. To insure a safe water supply, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board have announced that Honeywell International, Inc. has recently begun construction of a wellhead treatment system for chromium in the North Hollywood region of the San Fernando Valley - Area 1 Superfund Site.

State and municipal declarations of drought will require reduction in water demand (particularly for landscape irrigation), proof of 30-year water supply prior to approval of built-form development, expanded conservation and re-use programs, exploration of other water supply options, and increased reliance on local supplies.

Climate shift implications for neighborhood councils have to do with being frugal, making sacrifices, planting and cultivating community gardens as neighborhood festival, being able to hike, bicycle, ride a horse from our homes in the lower watersheds to the upper watersheds in the Angeles National Forest - in the process getting ourselves weened off the oil standard, weaned off the power grid.

In a report just released by the U.S. Department of Energy that analyzed a scenario in which 20 percent of the nation's electricity is generated from wind power by the year 2030, the DOE noted that such a shift would reduce water use by approximately 8 percent. That's a significant savings, roughly equal to the average share of western water withdrawals claimed by urban users.

Then what would one do or advocate now given the impending urgency?

Urban planning and design must be ordered by the watershed. One needs to insure that survival of civitas will be dependent on having close-at-hand access to (work, food, water, shelter, clothing, health care, education.) Bio-regional determinism will define watersheds as political governing units where the bottom up governs from the grassroots.

Removing developers and politicians from the built-form development decision process
Once developers and politicians are divorced from the decision-making process of where, how much and what to build, payola politics will cease to counter the public interest, permitting our Tujunga-Pacoima Watershed to be a local solution to our water crisis.

Surely, once payola politics borne of a tryst between politician and developer is extinguished, aesthetic, life-safety, and other community impacts will continue to enjoy the public forum for dialog, communitas and discussion between all players will continue, but the nature of bio-regional determinacy will leave the decision-making about restricting land areas from urbanization up to a process of overlaying maps of hydrologic, riparian, chaparral, flora, fauna, woodland, forest, geologic, seismic off-limits-to-urbanization preserves to be sustained for the carrying-capacity of the watershed.

Reuse, reduce, recycle, restore – all replace the one-party town payola mantra of denial, distraction, distortion, and diversion.

Neighborhood councils, enabled financially by the city on an annual basis are very prone to stifle, stunt, and shun free speech when the issue (city cronyism-based governance) is the hand that feeds them. So, all the more reason exists for neighborhood empowerment to dismiss the greed and corporate-personhood of the developer greasing the skids by writing the legislation, then profiteering from that legislation, after paying the politician, and threatening and coercing the constituency with bureaucratic layers of immunity provided by the one-party town politic. Neighborhood councils have been reduced to a venue for stakeholders to be vetted and vent, safely away from Planning Agency and City Council hearings where the good-ole-boy politician do the developer's bidding against the neighborhood self-interest.

Healthy watershed means healthy neighborhood means no payola politic.

- Mr Lindblad is running for State Assembly in the 39th District, has anchored his 26 year planning and architecture practice in the San Fernando Valley with his work being recognized for excellence and innovation. Mr Lindblad is also a long time Community Activist in the San Fernando Valley who is dedicated to protecting the environment, co-author and presenter of the award-winning Panorama City Commercial Area Revitalization Study which was codified into Los Angeles City Planning ordinance. He has given support to the formation of Panorama City and Valley Glen Neighborhood Councils.

http://lindbladforassembly.blogspot.com

Schwarzenegger has approved 5 new casinos in the Central Valley. Mass development will follow. Where do you think the water is coming from? Check out the link below:
http://marlalk.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/north-fork-rancheria-of-mono-indians-big-sandy-band-of-western-mono-indians/

Post a comment

Commenters: You must preview your comment before posting. And please only hit "Post" once; it may take a while, but your comment is being processed. Thanks.