Admittedly, all that happened on the mural yesterday was that money changed hands and discussions about first steps were made. The good news is that we have our ‘Whereas‘ contract which Mario needs to sign and return, and public works is supposed to contact me today regarding the power-washing. Nothing gets done without starting I guess, so I’m not complaining.
What absorbed my day primarily was the PTSD flashback triggered by the release of a very negative staff report from Mountain House discussing the fate of the beavers and their water-ruining ways. You know how it is: 15 pages of alarm and acronyms so that the whole problem sounds so complex you really shouldn’t worry your pretty little head about it. And an obviously manufactured possible ‘compromise’ offered with such a HUGE price-tag on it that everyone will want the beavers killed. Honestly, I thought the days of panicked research were behind me – but after an afternoon of labor I managed to issue a fairly intelligent response to their ministerial hysterics. This sentence was, of course, my chief motivator:
“It is clearly evident that in controlling the sequence of repairs and the financial burden that follows, beaver removal is the only option.”
It’s actually in moments like these that I’m happy that beaver relocation isn’t legal in California. The only real power that can motivate enough public backlash to get this staff report challenged is the distaste people feel about killing things that are in their way. If there was an option to just ‘move’ them into someone else’s way, and folks could fantasize that they’d done the right thing because the beavers would be happier in the forest or whatever – support would dry up pretty fast. Here’s my response if you’re interested. I’m sure there are all kinds of typos. Their report was given to me at 3 pm and I was pounding out my response until 7.
The MOST interesting part of this report to me was the part where they say staff already had an ‘expert’ come out and advice them about the beavers in 2011. Hmm. I’m laying a finger aside my nose and predicting that we can GUESS who that ‘expert’ was. The same ‘expert’ that advised our public works that flow devices always fail.
