The applause for your editorial “So what’s a good steelhead worth?” (March 1) comes from mostly silent taxpayers who are not “activists” as a group. The true cost of trying to bring steelhead trout back to Malibu Creek by destroying the Rindge Dam is surely more than the $4,200 per trout you hypothetically compute. This Rindge Dam/steelhead matter has been studied off and on more than 30 years, with the pace of activity and reports quickening in 1989 to this day. Now yet another Rindge Dam study is proposed costing the taxpayers another $1.5 million in the hope that steelhead will come back.
These studies have consumed millions of taxpayer dollars represented by reports, field tests and staff time of federal, state and local governments and many environmental groups funded totally or partially by government (taxpayers’ dollars). These agencies and groups usually rally around the “politically correct” stance rather than delve into a “cost-benefit” analysis suggested by your editorial. It is important for all Malibuites to understand that the “tear down the Rindge Dam” movement is coming from government agencies and lock-step environmental groups, not the taxpayer.
The scary part of this movement to “save the steelhead” is that it is but a microcosm of many such dubious “PC” actions throughout the land, where cost-benefit analysis to determine priorities and relativity to the health and welfare needs of the human species is usually the last concern, if at all. Your editorial on “costs” and “worth of a steelhead” should be a basis for discussion in economic, environmental and social circles across the land. Let us hope reason and reality will become more dominant in our society than strictly “politically correct” massive movements funded by overtaxed citizens through their elected and unelected government representatives.
Ronald L. Rindge