President Eisenhower’s famous warning, “… beware the military-industrial complex” has its doppelganger with us today. Beware the public agency-environmentalism complex. Yes, we are better for the environmental movement, per se. However, from writer Vive Decou (Malibu Times, April 20) we learn that Jodi Clifford, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has said $2.1 million is needed for a study of whether to remove the Rindge dam. Why? If the dam were removed instantly, a small fraction of the trapped sediment, about 75,000 cubic yards, would be deposited as a debris flow below the dam for a distance of perhaps 300 feet downstream. Something like 20,000 cubic feet of water would be released. Downstream, the width of the 1.8-mile reach ranges from 200 to 800 feet and has a total area of roughly 30 million square feet. Spread over that area, the water released would not noticeably raise the stream level. And if the dam were removed in increments, the effect on the stream below the dam would not even be noticeable. $2.1 million? For what, Jodi?
As to the doppelganger aspect, environmentalism is badly served by people like Jim Edminston of California Trout who have no compunction in falsely asserting that the dam has caused millions of dollars in sand replenishment, or Heal the Bay’s Mark Abramson who Decou quotes as saying the dam presents a “danger.” What danger, Mark? The environmental movement is blighted with a cast of characters who, remora-like, live on it: politicians blindly eager to let voters know they are for it, agency managers who want to expend funds even unwisely, special interests advocates who falsify to help their cause, and contract facilitators who, through ignorance or by design, misinterpret environmental impact. A pox on all their houses! What happened to common sense?
Don Michael