LA Water Grab

In yet another example of politicians not being willing to think ecologically, the City of Los Angeles is making yet another grab for the water in the Owens Valley. The Metropolitan Water District LA Department of Water and Power first did this in the early 20th Century. That happened long ago and led to the destruction / draining of Owens Lake and the near complete ruin of Mono Lake.

Now, even though the DWP lost a law suit and is being forced to restore the some flow of water into Owens Lake, the City of Los Angeles is now buying up land in the Owens Valley. By the time the colonize the entire valley, there will be no one to complain about shipping all the water down to LA.

Los Angeles has a Mayor who likes to make a lot of publicity for doing the right thing, like planting a bunch of trees, and then out of the clear light of publicity, they do what they really want which is to grab all the resources they can. Makes Villaraigosa look like Schwarzenegger. I am not sure this state can afford another Terminator clone.

Greening LA

When I hear the words Green and LA in the same sentence I have a wide range of images, not all of them with positive connotations. In fact I have indulged myself in a rant against one part of Mayor Villaraigosa's Green LA plan. There is one view of water wasted on picture perfect suburban lawns while we are beginning to wonder whether we will have enough for a shower.

However, Siel gives us another picture from the Emerald City. She nets out what an environmental coalition called Green LA is trying to accomplish.

Enter Green L.A., a coalition of 50 or so environmental and community-based organizations in L.A, working to shape city policies. According to Jonathan Parfrey, director of Green L.A., the coalition basically came together when Mayor Villaraigosa got elected, because many groups saw the new mayor's enviro-commitment as an unprecedented opportunity to push the city into a greener direction. After all, back in 2005, Villaraigosa said "Let's dare to imagine Los Angeles as the cleanest and greenest big city in America." So enviro and community-based groups linked arms and launched Green L.A. in Dec. 2005 to take Villaraigosa at his word.

The list of what they are trying to do is almost right. There is one topic that is missing from the list. That is to influence LA's Planning Commission, Building Code, permitting process to back adhere to the standards put forward by Architecture 2030. Anyone who has viewed Ed Mazria's recent webcast knows that this is job 1 (to steal a line from Ford).

Every city seems to be getting in line to do something. Chuck Reed has a big public Green Vision for San Jose. Like Villaraigosa's Green LA plan, it is long on goals and short on effective specifics. Gavin Newsome made the same claims for San Francisco since 2004. None of them has it right, but Siel has shown us where our non-profits are making a difference.

It would seem to me that there is a real opportunity here for local Green Party candidates to step in, point out the obvious failings of the Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose paper plans and to begin attracting real backing from those who still care about the environment. Take the time to watch Mazria's web cast is you have not yet done so.. I did mention it before.

The LA Difference

The Greening of LA has, unfortunately, little to do with the Green Party. Oh, sure, there are a lot of individual Greens who are working hard to make things better. However, I am no ashamed of referring to Antonio Villaraigosa as the Mayor of LaLa Land. He seems to epitomize everything the rest of us think about Los Angeles; all surface, a suit and smiling face with no more real substance than a Saturday AM cartoon rerun.

Maybe I should take that all back, though, as it was his Million Trees Campaign, however misguided as I believe it to be, that brought together the thousands of students who walked past Lisa Taylor's table.

Further exploration leads me to conclude that there is a disconnect between the citizens of LA and the political leadership, one that may have serious environmental consequences. The LA Times has recently reported on Villaraigosa's attempts to encourage water conservation. It is clear that he may have talked but that no one was listening.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's call six months ago for voluntary water conservation in a record dry year has failed to persuade Los Angeles residents and businesses to rein in water use substantially, city records show.

The groups that are trying to convince the smiling mayor to do something substantive, loosely identified by the Times as "evironmentalist" have formed a coalition called Green LA. The members of this coalition are what you would generally call the usual suspects: Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, Heal the Bay. There are also very local, active organizations like the Bellona Wetlands Land Trust (Green Party members in leadership) and the South Central Farmers for which Linda Piera-Avila has so effectively advocated.

I was more intrigued by the name of an organization called Global Green USA. Now this is not Global Greens (plural) as we might think of it, but rather the United States affiliate of Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev.

It would seem that in LA, the Green organizations getting press are not the Green Party, even though you would never know it by the name. It is almost as ironic as Global Green USA being so closely associated with a one time Soviet leader. You never know from a name what you are going to get. We go from Green LA to Global Grenn USA and never manage to identify this party. We have lost the "brand" or the identification with leadership on environmental issues.

Global Green USA has a lot to say about the importance of water as a Global Issue. That does not get down the the pipes and pumps of water in California. The environmentalists meeting with the Mayor are asking for more leadership.

"More than anything, I want a commitment from the mayor to work toward a more sustainable future and to reduce water use in Los Angeles," said Miriam Torres of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water, who was among those at the meeting. "People in Los Angeles have to think of water as a precious resource and not a commodity."

I think that they are asking for active involvement in dealing with the issue and not to just treat this as a photo op. The Mayor has gotten enough negative press and it might do him good to be seen as actively involved in assuring LA's future. The idea that he would just now turn to substantive action illustrates that it was never really important.

Villaraigosa followed up Nov. 13 by resurrecting the Drought Busters program last used during the early 1990s. Six DWP employees are driving around the city in Toyota Prius hybrids, responding to more than 400 complaints about leaking sprinklers, missing sprinkler heads and other water waste.

I would encourage all So Cal Greens to follow up on their endorsement of Cal-WIN's Sustainability Principles with a campaign of letter writing, City Council calling, activism.