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"Strokes and Chokes" — Desert Post Weekly editorials |
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A give-it-back stroke goes to the campaign to get the federal government to return 29,775 acres of lands from the Eagle Mountain Range to Joshua Tree National Park. In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Joshua Tree National Monument, but in 1950, Congress deleted 265,340 acres from the park and a study was commissioned to determine what possible mining potential the area might have. By 1952, Congress handed over 465 acres to Kaiser Steel Corporation to mine. The law enacted stated that the property shall revert to the government should the mine not be used for a period of seven years in some manner consistent with a mining operation. Since that time Joshua Tree had vast areas that received federal wilderness designation, was categorized for Class I Wilderness Airshed status and was designated as an International Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations. The monument became a national park in 1994, and Congress added 234,000 acres to its borders. Now, there is a campaign to return the nearly 30,000 acres surrounding the Eagle Mountain area where Kaiser once mined to the national park. If you would prefer to see these lands returned to the national park system for preservation instead of becoming a part of the grounds of the world’s largest dump — a repository for Los Angeles County garbage — at the tune of 20,000 tons a day, 24/7 operations for a whopping 117 years, then log on to the Internet and sign your name to the list of supporters at the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice Web site at www.ccaej.org. Select “Give It Back!” from the Desert Protection Project menu, and join the organizations and individuals who choose conservation of mountains over mountains of garbage. Steve Brown |
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A century of garbage choke is dumped at the doorstep of Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson for his recent statements in favor of opening the world’s largest dump at Eagle Mountain on the southern border of Joshua Tree National Park. Wilson summed up by saying “the impacts are virtually non-existent.” Wow. I never would have expected such a blatant whopper to fly out of Wilson’s mouth, but it showed up in The Desert Sun recently, in black and white. Roy, just so you know, there are environmental impacts right now from the railway that leads to the site — and the dump isn’t even in operation yet. You can talk yourself blue in the face, but I’ve walked portions of the line and have seen firsthand the barrier the railway creates for endangered desert tortoises. Mitigation? Don’t make me laugh. There wasn’t any when I was there. Other than, perhaps, visions of steady revenue for the county per each ton of LA garbage dumped there daily for the next 100-plus years. With all due respect, no one with even a glimmer of environmental awareness — and I’m not talking radical extremism here, just common sense and a very basic grounding in pertinent scientific principles, all things that Wilson has — could honestly say that the establishment and operation of this dump will create no impact. That’s beyond ludicrous to the point of raising unfortunate questions about the ethical integrity of the supervisor, something I hate to consider. But, Wilson said it, and also tried to conveniently paint Donna and Larry Charpied, longtime opponents of the dump, as creating a lot of “hysteria” in their ongoing fight. Good move, supervisor. Find the folks in your district who do have some backbone and integrity and then attempt to discredit them. That raises more questions about you rather than them. Now, if Wilson had said, yes, there are likely to be some impacts from this operation, but added that he believed, overall, the project offered more benefits to the county than destruction, he could be considered credible, even if one disagreed with him. But his utter dismissal of the possibility of any impacts and his willingness to attempt to discredit foes of the dump has him sounding like a shill for Mine Reclamation LLC, the company that stands to profit most from making Los Angeles County garbage Riverside County’s largest import. That’s sad. Steve Brown |
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