All the monsters are back in their film cans but the DEIR nightmare continues. If you haven’t yet chocked to death on greenhouses gases, pages 2-44 to 47, remind us of the nuisance of noise. While no one wants excessive noise, the concept of tolerating it for a relatively short periods of time for an obvious benefit seem absent from their analysis. Real life is diminished by their supreme reason for a preconceived version of the public good. This logic continues with fatherly protection from construction vibration. “…mitigation…based on the project’s anticipated vibration would be determined during project-specific CEQA review.” How soon does the ‘when is enough moment’ come when we can’t afford to do anything anymore or have we already passed that? What are the unable to mitigate significant impacts of freezing the economy and relegating the American dream to history books?
We are further informed on page 2-49 that we have “…uncertainties related to future water supplies…” Assuredly we understand that without adequate future water we will all have a wild and scenic time.
The obvious need for increased fire protection with any increase in population (2-54 to 55) leaps from that necessity to mitigation which proposes “In order to evaluate and maintain the effectiveness of County services, The County will develop service standards for library, public safety, fire response, emergency services, human, and social services. Actual performance will be compared to these standards on an annual basis, and results presented to the Board of Supervisors with recommendations for action if necessary.” Isn’t this a regular, ongoing function of government? And what new group of pension rich agenda driven civil servants will staff this watchdog agency? And what is the real implication of substituting arbitrary standards for the assumed mature judgment of the people we elected to govern us? How this document leaps via the environmental review process from a needed general plan concern to a new means of social control smacks of the statements of leaders about public safety and such in countries presumed to be far different than ours. Calling this DEIR monstrous is not a metaphor.
This section from page 2-57 onward deals with traffic. Along with the regular impact fees for highways, mitigation must include “alternative transportation” (2-57) which is defined as “…pedestrian, bicycle, transit, and neighborhood electric vehicles…” (2-61). While I have seen new big city developments that didn’t provide any reasonable sites for bus stops, most of this has little implication for county areas. The text again reminds me that this DEIR is often just expensive cut and paste.
Part Three, the Project Description calls “…for providing adequate housing, including action programs” (3-1). This theme continues with “Project Objective 9: Maintain and enhance access to services, including health services, emergency services, quality child care and senior services, and educational opportunities for children and adults” (3-5). So a general plan for land use has morphed in a social policy plan that goes as far as to pretend to define quality care. How did this happen and who was responsible? A government social policy plan, by necessity, must be secular. The vital child care provided by churches, as just one example, is not in their equation.
Objective 2(3-4) pushes both sensible in fill development and the medieval village style town centers. The freedom to live where you want, except for the most affluent, is gone. Has the frontier saying that it’s time to move on when you see the smoke from your neighbor’s chimney been forgotten? Is part of our very spirit dissolving? “Encourage development of higher-wage jobs and support business, especially locally-owned and unique businesses” states Objective 4 (3-5). While that all sounds good, it ignores the obvious. Any significant employment creator requires capital from outside the county. Presently, those investors are greeted with a lawsuit rather than a handshake and legislative uncertainty about future water supplies.
“Accommodate the most recent population growth, housing, and employment projections in an orderly manner,” states Objective 3. But life and its reflections in economic activity and housing demand is never orderly. How many leaders of the 20th century valued order above all else?
Copyright 2015, Mark L. Bennett
No comments:
Post a Comment