Preordained result

“Preordained result”, Carmel Pine Cone – Oct. 20, 2023

By now the vote of the MPWMD is well known. The result was preordained. The board’s vote regarding the takeover of Cal Am was based on a referendum authorizing a feasibility study but was misinterpreted as a mandate. This is the stuff made for bureaucracies.

As the board was stacked, so, too, the audience. The pro-government people came well-prepared, many with scripts voicing support. They subjected the audience to unending palaver devoted to emotional appeal and devoid of facts and engineering know-how. There was a smattering of folks trying to focus on facts, but the two-minute time frame was aimed at limiting the presentation of any logic while more than adequate for hand-wringing appeals.

The quest to impose the eminent domain takeover will cost millions and deliver not one drop of water. This process flies in the face of the mission statement of the MPWMD in which it is required to “augment the water resources of the Monterey Peninsula.” The board’s plan is to use processed sewage for all current and future water needs. This is myopic and potentially dangerous.

Given the demographics of the audience, few will have to pay for this fiasco, but their children and grandchildren will not be spared.  I doubt that anyone on the board will have to face the consequences of this frivolous adventure. But that, too, is characteristic of bureaucracies — never having to be responsible for failures.

This meeting was very revealing to me. I now know why California is doomed. The mindset in the room reveals why this state has spent billions on a train to nowhere and is forcing housing on cities that do not want it while the roads are in ruin and nothing has been spent on building dams, reservoirs, or de-sal plants. This mindset is destructive to the overall well-being of our area. This may drive productive people out and this may be what the not-in-my-backyard people want. You might think that the clear thinkers would like to stay and fight, but the tyranny of the majority is overwhelming.

Michael Addison, Carmel