Californication

"Destruction leads to a very rough road, but it also breeds creation." - Californication

The album Californication was released in 1999. Anthony Kiedis, lead vocalist of the rock band the Red Hot Chili Peppers, wrote the song to tell the story of wandering souls who were looking for the American dream in California. I wonder what those souls would think of California now after the fires, the crime, the homelessness...

The NYT's ran an article today that states...."LA Fires Shows Limits of America's Efforts to Cope with Climate Change." This isn't about climate change. The electorate in California and its elected representatives became climate alarmists almost 20 years ago when Al Gore published an Inconvenient Truth in 2006...this is about failed leadership and public policy.

We've failed to fortify our state, our communities and our neighborhoods against the potential impacts of climate change and learned nothing from our recent history with fire in California. Humanity's ability to adapt is what separates us from other species and allows us to survive. However, we still don't have a plan in California....not even a good evacuation plan...just ask people in Pacific Palisades and Los Angeles.

In June 2009, a Butte County civil grand jury report concluded that the roads leading from Paradise, CA had "significant constraints" and "capacity limitations" on their use as evacuation routes. In defiance of this warning, the town of Paradise proposed a reduced number of travel lanes on the roadways and received state funding to implement a "road diet" along Skyway, Pearson Road, and Clark Road, three of the town's main thoroughfares and evacuation routes. The result...In November 2018, the Camp Fire became one of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in California's history burning over 150,000 acres, destroying 18,000 structures and killing 85 people.

On October?21, 2019, a small brush fire ignited in Pacific Palisades. The fire burned 42 acres within a few hours, forcing the evacuation of 200?homes. Luckily only three firefighters suffered injuries and one person was treated for respiratory ailments. A shot across the bow just like the Humbolt and Butte Lightning Complex fires warned Paradise in 2008, right?

Wrong. Santa Ana winds and low rainfall totals are typical climate conditions in Southern California. Despite the known conditions and risks, the City of Los Angeles didn't adapt. It didn't adopt and implement mitigation measures to protect neighborhoods and to protect lives. At least five people are dead. 10,000+ structures destroyed including homes, schools and churches. 100,000+ people displaced. $50+ billion in damages. Thousands of acres burned.

The anger is palpable and deservedly so. No mea culpa from the Governor or Mayor. Maybe we need to blame ourselves for the people that we elected to protect and serve us. Will the destruction and lives lost lead to a rebirth in California? Will we hold our leaders accountable? What should we demand?

Public safety is paramount, but hasn't been a priority for decades. We've forgotten that protecting the health and welfare of citizens comes first. Our police and fire men and women are our first line of defense. We've cut their budgets and literally hand cuffed them while doing their jobs. Prop 36's passage in November may be a harbinger of things to come. We'll see.

Investment in public infrastructure like roads, bridges and water supplies should be prioritized too. California roads rank poorly compared to the rest of the nation despite some of the high taxes in the US. Funding for road maintenance and repairs in California is insufficient due to competing budget priorities. Sacramento even diverts money from the gas tax to the general fund. This involves the state using gas tax funds to pay off debt service on transportation-related bonds that were initially issued with General Fund money. California had the highest number of structurally deficient bridges in the nation, with over 1,500 bridges classified as such.

The last major reservoir built in California was New Melones in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties. It was completed in 1979. The Sites Reservoir is a proposed off-stream reservoir project in California, designed to be a key part of the states water management strategy. Originally conceived in the 1950s and still not built, the reservoir is designed to be operated in a way that benefits fish and wildlife, while also meeting human water needs. The project is still in the planning and permitting phase facing potential challenges from environmental review and litigation. Other recent reservoirs proposals like Temperance Flats and Del Puerto Canyon are in the early planning stages but also face significant opposition from special interest groups.

Desalination plants could have also provided another water source for fighting the fires in Los Angeles. Redundancy is critical in responding to natural disasters as we learned from the Paradise Fire. Despite the desperate need for more water supply in Southern California, desalination is a dirty word. The Poseidon Water Project in Huntington Beach was rejected by the California Coastal Commission in May 2022 due to concerns about environmental impacts, cost, and energy use. The project had been conceived almost 20 years ago. The plant had the potential to deliver 50 million gallons of drinking water per day. To put this in perspective, Pacific Palisades relied primarily on three storage tanks located at higher elevations within the neighborhood with a total capacity of 3 million gallons.

We've also stopped managing our natural resources. Forests from the Cleveland National Forest near the beaches of San Diego to the isolated wilderness of Modoc County need to be managed to prevent future disasters. Strict air quality regulations prevent widespread use of controlled burns that starve fires of the fuel that allow them burn out of control. Environmental groups continue to block logging that once allowed forests to regenerate, wildlife to flourish and keep fire risks manageable. The result: a massive wildfire complex called the August Complex, sparked by lightning in 2020, burned over 1 million acres across several Northern California counties, including Mendocino. It was the largest wildfire in California's recorded history. Because the fire was in a remote location of California, the economic and human toll was limited. If this fire erupted closer to population centers, the devastation would have been biblical. Unfortunately, we're seeing this sort of biblical devastation in Pacific Palisades and Los Angeles today.

California's approach to public safety, infrastructure investment and management of its natural resources are broken. The problems are systemic. Let's get back to the the basics. Block and tackle. Elect those who put people first by investing in public safety, infrastructure and our natural resources.