Camp Meeker Beat by Tom Austin - April 2017

April, and the days are blissfully long again. It’s time to rotate the old wardrobe – put the sweaters and the fleeces and wool socks back on the shelf and move the shorts to the forefront. Well, almost. I’m sure there will be a few more nippy, overcast days before we get our summer on. And this year at least, there will be water in our summer. There was so much water, in fact, that our drinking water wells were briefly submerged, causing mandatory testing to kick in to verify that our water has not been contaminated by storm water. Fortunately, we have enough storage capacity to ride out that brief interruption.

It’s all about water. Sure sure, you can say “follow the money”, but as much as we try to pretend otherwise, all of our wealth, all of our currency is at root backed not by fiat, not even by gold. It is backed by natural resources. That, along with the stolen resource of slave labor, is what made our country the richest in the world. And that dynamic continues today. If you want to understand how wealth is made and lost in the west county…follow the water. Fresh water in, wastewater out. There’s only so much of it. It’s a scarce resource. Well okay, wastewater is not scarce – we’re all full of it, so to speak. But the capacity to safely get rid of it – that is a finite resource.

If you are thinking of the movie “Chinatown”, you are two steps ahead of the game. And at some slight risk of getting my nose sliced open like Jake Gittes, I will point out that water is a big boy’s game in the west county. Our ownCamp Meeker Park and Rec District was first formed in 1931, but we became big time, relatively speaking, in the 1990’s. That’s because we were made a“County Water District” in 1994 when we were given permission to build a water system for Camp Meeker, based on wells sunk near Monte Rio to draw water from the Russian River aquifer. The other shoe fell in 1999, when we were given permission to develop a wastewater system. Of course, we all know how that turned out, and therein lies the tale.

Here’s how it plays out: There is a finite amount of water available to the west county. The exact amount of water is subject to big money politics (just as Los Angeles “steals” Colorado river water, so too do we “borrow” Eel River water from the fish and from our Mendocino and Humboldt neighbors. We do it because we can. We have more money and people than they do.

Then, of course, there is the matter of divvying up the water between residents, agriculture, and businesses. I’m not going to open that can of worms other than to mention it- the upshot is the number of houses that can be built is limited by the amount of water available. It is also limited by the amount of wastewater that can be safely got rid of. Our “failure” to come up with a wastewater system is the direct cause of the now decades-old building moratorium in Camp Meeker.

This outcome has produced winners and losers. Camp Meeker gets a little of both. Because there is no sewer system, Camp Meeker has failed to gentrify sufficiently for the ever-hungry real estate business. This lack of gentrification goes by the name of “blight” among the development industry, so you know they’re losing on the deal. But that building moratorium is the price we pay for staving off the big G. It allows those of limited means to continued living here, but to some degree it assists in keeping those means limited. This is about the time where ol’ Jake Gittes got his nose ventilated, so I better taper off here and bring this column to a nondescript close. I can only say keep your eyes open and pay attention. Occidental is coming up on their moment of truth with their wastewater issues, and it is likely that some of that wastewater will be making its way to treatment plants in Guerneville along Bohemian Highway, either by truck or (eventually) by pipeline.

Follow the water.