RE: elected leaders' versus citizen input

[James Marple <jesl@carolina.net>]

 Hamilton: You point out a major problem with EPA involvement, that local governments may be essentially deaf to the comments of citizens who disagree with their policies and practices.  It has been my experience that most local appointed officials are constrained and directed by the wishes of business communities that are dominated by individuals who profit from resisting-perverting-delaying-obstructing-misrepresenting the introduction of latest and best planning and design technologies.  I've seen a broad range of reasons offered for this but none that justify the stone wall erected to prevent public input from reaching elected officials.  'Bureaucratic inertia' is the most common reason given for the failure of local governments to adopt commonsense rainwater management planning and design.  But this is mostly a myth, an invention of bureau chiefs and their accomplices/mentors in the private sector who seek to perpetuate inappropriate planning. Strong elected officials can instruct their staffs to do whatever is best immediately, just as they may cut 'red tape' to honor one of their own or please constituents who become emotionally involved in particular issues.

We cannot reasonably expect local government managers to either fully realize or be deeply concerned about their place within a watershed, to recognize with more than lip service that their reactions to inflowing pollution are dictated by upstream neighbors while their actions  impact downstream ones. Public input that might make this a major concern is routinely stifled in order to maintain the status quo. As an example: 

We cannot expect officials on California's South Coast to become informed enough about the obvious truth that their community's fortunes are closely tied to their ability to deal with watershed management.  The day-to-day pressures which forge their decisions override the fact that managing rainfall in their own jurisdiction lies at the heart of pollution control. Were they to place the welfare of 'outside' residents on a par with those of local ones they would be exposed to the certain condemnation of local profiteers who seek to keep attention focused on 'business as usual', the perpetuation of bureaucratic mismanagement that allows influential persons to manufacture windfall profits from the abuse of federal and state programs.  These programs seem to offer something for nothing and are therefore fine tools with which politicians can gain and retain office despite obvious failures to put local resources to best use.  On top of this is the generally  unrecognized but unarguable fact that sensible watershed management consists in putting their abundant rainfall to best use in compliance with CA Water Code instructions to "conserve all or any stormwaters by guiding these into soils of the district ... to prevent pollution of these waters ... to prevent waste or misuse of these waters".  Such planning would fill the immense aquifers of this region and eliminate need to import water running off 173 million acres of land that produces unimaginable volumes of pollutants.  This approach makes good sense, of course, to any reasonably astute person, but it is politically impossible because of the inability of EPA and other federal agency officials to get across the message that storing rainfall is the quickest, surest and cheapest method for correcting pollution problems.  

How might planning processes be opened up so that every concerned citizen, many of them highly talented and energetic, may aid the EPA in its efforts to regulate intelligently while also educating citizens about their planning options?  I'd like to see something come from these discussions along those lines but since this would be highly offcnsive to those who presently exert tremendous control over information sources and government, I won't be holding my breath.