Fellow Bellevue meeting attendee Don Shank writes:
My vote for the most jaw dropping moment was when the lawyer from Wilbur Smith Associates, seeking an example of how growth brings progress, said that without the Owens River Aquaduct Los Angeles would still be a sleepy little pueblo. He considers this a selling point? The Owens river valley suffered a social and environmental disaster as a result of the aquaduct, inspiring an armed rebellion and acts of sabotage, in return for which they got the rampant corruption and land speculation that spread the L.A. city limits like a malignant cancer. Anybody out there got a spare copy of Mark Reisner's "Caddilac Desert" they can send that guy? We kind of like our sleepy little pueblos along the Nooksack.
Yep, I think a lot of us will be scratching our heads at that stellar bit of public relations work that lawyer did for his friends at Wilbur Smith for some time. But I guess that's why our state hands over the big bucks to these guys.
I've been studying up on Southern California history a bit myself thanks to work of Mike Davis, whose highly readable social histories of Los Angeles are found in his books City of Quartz, Dead Cities, and The Ecology of Fear. Mike Davis's main approach is too examine how in many cases so-called natural disasters are really social disasters. In the process of going back and unearthing the toxic cocktail of poor planning, speculation, corruption and rampantly promoted growth he comes up with a lot of great material that informs our situation here that I'll be sharing with you in the next few posts.
This gem is from the preface to The Ecology of Fear:
"No place on Earth offers greater security to life and greater freedom from natural disasters than Southern California."-- Los Angeles Times, 1934
Comments