“You can’t stop progress,” I’ve been warned my whole life as I worked against the predictable devastation I saw coming in progress’s wake. Maybe that’s true, but the news this past week suggests that progress can be re-directed.
Saturday’s front page article in the
Fresno Bee showed fingerling Chinook salmon from the San Joaquin River. Last fall, spring-run salmon made it to the
foot of Friant Dam and reproduced for the first time in 60 years, re-starting
the cycle many thought was lost forever.
Like the migrating birds returning to Tulare Lake’s man-made wetlands,
the salmon run appears to be more resilient than most of our imaginations. What we thought was lost to “progress,”
Mother Nature resupplied once we committed ourselves to restoring the
conditions we’d stripped from her plan.
Even more pertinent for those of us
in Tulare County who dream of a more sustainable future was the news that the Boswell
Corp. withdrew its plan to build Yokohl Ranch.
“You’re kidding,” said one friend I called; “No way,” said another. Ten years ago the dream of saving Yokohl
Valley from this plan was ridiculed by many, made cynical by the King of California’s power - even those of us who were infected
by the dream of preserving it. One of my Tulare County heroes whose cinch
straps had worn thin fighting for another, much smaller valley, said it wasn’t
worth trying to fight it. Whatever Boswell wants
is inevitable.
And I don’t kid myself about that
power dynamic. That company has decided
that it doesn’t want to spend its resources this way, that’s all. Whether that decision was affected (at least
in part) by the costs of deflating opposition to their project, we may never
know. But there are some positive
lessons I get from this news.
The most important one is that
sacrifices count. Mine were small: time spent writing, worrying, talking, more
writing. Others’ were larger: members of
the Tulare County Citizens for Responsible Growth worked for years to document
facts, then use them to lobby for and enlighten the general public and its
governmental officials. Some of the individuals involved in the group realized another component was missing, that there was a void in our public awareness of the true value of our beloved, human environment here. One answer was the development of the group sponsoring the website www.tularecountytreasures.org (check it out!) which tells stories of the individuals who have shaped our relationships to this place, sometimes sacrificing themselves for the greater good.
There were larger sacrifices,
too. One long-time Yokohl family
rancher, Tom Daly, who died in 2014 while working calves for a friend, refused
to sell his land to Boswell although the offered price was 5 to 10 times higher
than the going rate. And all of these
people made their sacrifices according to deep beliefs, which they held and
acted upon despite the widely-held notion that Boswell’s proposed 10,000 unit
development, described as self-contained, self-sufficient (i.e.,
“sustainable,”) would be good for this county.
Those sacrifices, large and small, were made because we believe Yokohl
Ranch would be bad for this county, not just bad for Yokohl Valley.
The real progress I see is that we
appear to have an opening to have that discussion. How should the water resources of this county be used? What kind of development would be good for
those of us who actually live here in the center of a small, fertile universe? Let’s get talking.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a land reformer who writes.
You can send her your ideas of progress c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA
93247 or leave a comment below.
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