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In This Issue...
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Opinions
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Stop the Waste of Resource Conservation Dollars
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Stop the Waste of Resource Conservation Dollars
By Robert LaRosa
Note: The following opinion piece is written in response to an article published in The Post on Oct. 17, 2006.
Santa Cruz County voters who approved state bond measures for water and wildlife protection ought to know what millions did not buy. Every day $1,000,000 goes for improving the state’s watersheds and saving its threatened species â€" some of it to Santa Cruz County â€" with little to show.
Central Coast steelhead trout and Coho salmon teeter on the brink for loss of spawning habitat and lack of water, yet plentiful tax dollars flow to local environmental projects. Most recent is a $4 million watershed restoration grant for the County’s Resource Conservation District (RCD).
Engineering and ecological design aside, environmental improvement has been illusory. Instead, resource conservation dollars have paid for multi-layered administration; re-hashed studies that conveniently ignore buried spawning beds and streams drained to their dregs; and educational programs that rely on mailers. Even work that offers tangible benefit misses its mark because follow-on maintenance and repair are woefully absent.
Projects offering practical, on-the-ground results, whether public or privately funded, must navigate an onerous labyrinth
of environmental regulations. Sadly, layers of bureaucracy stifle all but the most mundane proposals. Add to this an uninformed citizenry, public officials who shun risk, and political appointees adept at circumventing the will of voters. The result is a “shadow industry” where government affiliates like the County Resource Conservation District can turn voter-approved initiatives into cash cows that funnel jobs to other public agencies and politically connected consultants.
Too Much Talk, Too Little Work
Santa Cruz County residents assume that the state’s treasury is buying healthier creeks, but nothing could be further from the truth. There are recent examples. The State’s Dept. of Fish and Game and Coastal Conservancy joined the County RCD and their cronies (same ones as usual), to look at ways of improving the Soquel Watershed. This secret partnership produced a study that was loudly criticized by local scientists and environmental activists; the district’s elected supervisor judged the report a failure. The total price for this colossal mistake: $350,000.
Federal political appointees limit biologists with the Santa Cruz office of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to field observation of migrating salmon species. Fish scientists continue to watch as salmon and steelhead populations disappear from San Lorenzo Creek. Though the fishes’ endangered status nets bigger budgets and burgeoning personnel rosters, salmon species continue to slide into the abyss.
Protective of their turf, government agencies and affiliates are reluctant to support the initiative of self-funded landowners and nonprofit activists working to improve stream habitat.
Only minutes from the Resource Conservation District’s Capitola office is a wildly successful volunteer project that actually attracted the Coho salmon that RCD leadership only talks about. Curiously, the County RCD has ignored both the project and its nonprofit operator, but like its government colleagues, the affiliate seeks public grants that offer “political capital” for growing the agency’s agenda.
Citizens Should Press for Public Process
The latest example is taking place in the Soquel Watershed. Instead of improving Soquel Creek’s lower reaches critical to fish migration, the RCD is overseeing construction of a bridge on the creek’s west fork for the convenience of Scotts Valley residents. Fish scientists and Soquel environmentalists are openly skeptical of the million-dollar project, which includes removal of a small dam supposedly to benefit Coho salmon (the salmon’s existence at the site has never been verified).
Rather, bioengineers point downstream where the re-moval of known impediments to steelhead spawning, plus installation of protective structures in the lagoon estuary, are crucial to saving what’s left of anadromous fish species (those that spawn in fresh water and migrate to the ocean).
Publicly funded watershed proposals are tainted by questionable expenditures that shortchange voters. An in-formed and willing citizenry must press for public process that produces cost efficient projects directly benefiting natural resources. Part of this process ought to include exploiting cost-conscious initiative â€" enlisting citizen stewards with demonstrated expertise in stream habitat restoration.
Local bureaucrats soon will be spending millions for water and wildlife. Their big budget designs â€" hatched behind closed doors and spouting vague promises â€" should not be tolerated. Moreover, history shows the folly of handing over cash for so-called oversight to the same people paid for the job.
Rather than quality control money disappearing into the operation’s “black hole,” a fraction of the project budget should cover community activists’ costs for scrutinizing the project plan and evaluating its success. Neighborhoods need to step up and help elected leaders decide the best way to spend resource conservation dollars in their communities.
Robust, open dialog between public agencies and local officials that includes individual landowners and environmental activists is a good start.
Achieving more with fewer dollars by rewarding individual stewardship is even better.
Editor’s Note: Robert LaRosa is founder of the Nature Institute, a program of the Nature School, Inc., California’s first environmental education and ecological restoration charity. He voluntarily restores habitat in Soquel Creek and manages water quality projects in San Diego.
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