This and that
The Dolphin Award ceremony played to a packed house at the Malibu Swim Club this past Saturday, and it’s heartening to see so many people who have given so much to Malibu. This was a difficult year to choose winners. We try to pick eight or nine winners each year, but there were many more people nominated. If your candidate didn’t make it this year well, in the words of my old Borough, “wait until next year.”
We’ve got a City Council race coming up in April with three seats up, and I must confess this is the strangest, most listless campaign I’ve seen since we became a city in 1991. Several of the candidates just seem to have decided to jump in because they had nothing else to do, and they’re running what some term a non-traditional campaign, which really means a non-campaign. We’ll be endorsing candidates soon, probably before the opening of absentee ballot submission period.
The city is now test drilling holes into the ground in the civic center area to see if it’s OK to put excess treated runoff water back into the ground during rainy season. There is plenty of demand for the water during the summer and dry season, but there is too much of it in the wet season. The wet season choice is simple. Either store it someplace or send it someplace. Apparently, storing it means large reservoirs or ponds, or putting it back deep into the ground.
I made the mistake of asking one of the local environmentalists why we couldn’t run a pipe out into the ocean and just dump the excess water there. After all, this water has been treated to what they call Title 22 standards, which means it’s practically drinkable. The truth is it actually is drinkable, but we’re all a little squeamish about drinking treated runoff water. To return back to our environmentalist, he practically went into cardiac arrest when I suggested there might be nothing wrong with putting treated water back into an ocean of water. He started ranting about nitrates and salinity levels, and it was then clear to me that if we dumped a few thousand gallons into the ocean in Malibu it would probably cause a tidal wave in China, so I backed off and said I was just kidding, and in a few minutes his breathing returned to normal. It reinforced my belief that environmentalism has become some sort of secular religion for the unchurched, and anything outside of traditional doctrine is heresy.
I must confess I have the same uncertainty about what is called Southern California native vegetation and why the restoration of that vegetation serves some great social good. At one time Southern California was pretty much a desert. Then along came Mr. Mulholland (see the movie “Chinatown”) and we piped (or stole, depending on whom you ask) the water from the Owens River Valley. This didn’t do much for the Owens River Valley, but the San Fernando Valley bloomed and Southern California is now bursting with 25 million people or so. Did it change the flora and fauna of Southern California? Of course it did. Still we keep trying to go back to the vegetation we had before all of those people arrived. It mystifies me. Perhaps there is some enviro out there who would care to respond and explain why native vegetation is a good thing. If we did return to native vegetation, then most of Southern California would end up looking like Legacy Park. Now wouldn’t that be special?
Speaking of Legacy Park, it has just won a major statewide prize for being the best project in the State of California this year. Legacy Park is really a great big engineering plant, mostly underground, and its principal job is to clean up runoff water, which it apparently does quite successfully. You might think that this was a great environmental triumph. You might think that, but you would be wrong, because the National Resource Defense Fund (NRDC) and the Baykeeper are suing Malibu over the project. The lawsuit has already cost millions, and before it’s over probably millions more. Perhaps someone from the NRDC or the Baykeeper might care to explain.
That’s it, folks. I’ve annoyed enough people for today. Perhaps someone will have the guts to take the bait and write an opposing column.
Next week there will be a new question. How can anyone, living in Kansas, missing some front teeth, with a 10th grade education and trying to get by on Social Security and Medicare, truly believe there is too much Federal government in their lives? Beats me.