Chasing Down The Muse: State is running on empty

Thankfully, the waves are free.

We are able to swim, surf and sea-gaze by simply showing up. We may have parking meters to contend with, but once on the sand, the world changes.

Being in or near the water provides the perfect tonic in a season fraught with financial concerns. It must be true — look at all the visitors crowding our beaches (as opposed to crowding our stores or our festival grounds). Or the increasing homeless population that has taken up residence on Main Beach and in Heisler Park.

I read with great interest Ken Frank’s Town Hall column on the Coastline Pilot website, www.coastlinepilot.com. Here is a man, a sound fiscal mind and respected city manager, expressing his grave dismay over the coffer-grabbing move by the state of California. Suddenly, our governor has decided to lay his problems on our back. It’s not enough that we pay sales taxes and property taxes to feed the behemoth lodged in Sacramento, now we ordered to open our accounts. We balanced our budget, Arnold, why can’t you?

Walking around Dana Point Harbor this past week, I couldn’t help but notice that I didn’t notice tents and camps and bags piled by the restrooms of the homeless. No, the pathways were clean, the bathrooms fresh and unimpeded, and the breeze coming off the ocean refreshing.

Dana Point’s harbor park is neither as beautiful as our Heisler nor as cared for or tended. Maybe that is enough of an explanation. Or maybe, someone in Dana Point has a good friend at the Newport Beach ACLU office. I can’t help but ponder how many meals, spare beds and clean clothes could have been provided by the $9,000 in funds that the firm received. The problem isn’t with the citations — the problem is that there are too few services, too few funds to affectively provide counseling and temporary shelter for those truly in need. Tying the hands of our local police helps no one — especially the homeless.

Speaking of funds — and the pile of seemingly unsolvable issues — I’ve had the “luck” to drive the 5 Freeway through the Central Valley twice in the last three weeks. Signs loom over barren lands crying “Congress Created Drought.”

At first, I thought all the cutbacks were due to insufficient rain, but an odd piece of research indicated that a tiny fish — a rare Delta smelt — and a hunk of conservationists had started a “waterfall.” In January 2007, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger ordered cuts in the amount of water pumped out of the delta by 30%. Complicate the problem by 2008’s lower-than-expected rainfall and snow melt — 53% of normal — and the federal government decided to allocate only half of what the farmers south of the delta had been expecting.

So between a fish and the feds, our bread basket is running dry, dry, dry. Faced with insufficient water to raise healthy crops, many farmers have elected to plant nothing. It is predicted that 95,000 or more agricultural jobs will be lost and communities will be devastated. State officials are calling the current drought the most expensive ever.

When I drove back over the Grapevine into the Los Angeles basin, I was struck by the verdant green. I weighed lush lawns against produce bins in the grocery store, and I felt nauseous. I was embarrassed by our surfeit and our unconscious use of water. My mind drifted to swimming pools used only occasionally, car washes running into the street, and overly long showers. I felt guilty, even though I do my best to reduce water usage in my own home.

I looked back toward the ocean. Yes — water. Source of life and life giving. I thought of desalinization, of how it works and how that is tangled with what it costs. The lines of commerce and conservation try to connect, but it is not an easy state. What becomes clearer is that answers to our problems will not be forthcoming from our state government. They are moribund with the past and shackled by a future they can’t quite reach. The government isn’t going to solve the homeless issues. In fact, current events seem to be pushing more of the population in that direction. They also can’t solve the water crisis.

The answers come back to us. Take nothing for granted. Act responsibly. And spend as much time as possible in, near or on the water.