Stupid, Stinking, Dumbass Local Government

Have you ever had to read one of these? I have. I hate them. They make a pit in the bottom of my stomach. For the past 25 years the Sacramento County government, overseen by a Board of Supervisors, has been trying everything they can think of to turn our farming community into whatever project of the moment strikes them.

They got their toe into Sloughhouse more than 35 years ago when they snuck in and bought property without telling the seller they intended to turn it into Sacramento County's dump. This is lie #1. 

Picture this, if you will: Sloughhouse is a long narrow valley between Deer Creek and the Cosumnes River. To the north it's bordered by foothills. To the south is the slightly higher plain that is Wilton. Jackson Road is a two lane highway that goes through the valley, taking traffic to Amador County to the east. Sloughhouse is about 15 miles from the city of Sacramento to the west, and 5 miles from Rancho Murieta to the east.

The dump - Kiefer Landfill - sits in the foothills just north of Deer Creek. The oldest part of it is unlined, which means that dump juice leaks into the Deer Creek aquifer. The dump was supposed to close after it had been in operation for 25 years. This is lie #2.

The dump did not close, the county decided to make it bigger. Because it was polluting water under neighboring farm properties, they declared that everything within a designated space around the dump would become a "Buffer Zone" for their festering problem. This would be cheaper than actually cleaning up the problem, though they were gambling that the pollution wouldn't spread beyond their arbitrary line (a gamble they lost). This zone included parts of several people's properties. They bought some out, they threatened condemnation on others. They didn't end up with everything they initially wanted. Like my property and a couple of other pieces. I'm not sure why they gave up on mine, perhaps the appraiser went back to the office and reported the snarling, rabid lady who met him at the door and told him in no uncertain terms to get his ass off the place and don't ever come back? I'm sure he'd seen the same at my aunt's house, but my property was not needed for a dump expansion. Whatever.

Some farmers owned land that stretched from the foothills (where they had their houses), on down through the bottomland. They sold their entire pieces to the county, opting not to keep just the bottomland. (You can't get a permit to build a new house on the bottomland because it's a floodplain.) So this put some cropland into the county's hands as well.

In their Negative Declaration for the buffer project the county said their intention was to have all lands remain in the same use that they were previously. (For those of you abroad, a Neg Dec means the project won't cause significant damage to require mitigation.) Well, this was lie #3. 

Ever since the county has owned land here they've been trying to change everything. First, the farmers who were leasing the property had to go through the county's bid process, because the county of course doesn't operate on a handshake like the rest of us have for a hundred years. 

At least twice a year I hear of some new project that some county idiot is proposing for MY community. Once I heard they wanted to turn it into a golf course. None of us play golf. Isn't it more important to supply food? Another plan was to turn it into some kind of park. Those of us who live here joked that they could put in lookout points where people could park off the highway and observe the growing mountain of the dump. There was a plan to put a bike trail along the Cosumnes River, which would have made it considerably easier for people to steal copper from our water pumps. No one ever came out here and asked what we residents thought about anything.

Now, you need to know that the only thing that has saved us so far is our own County Supervisor, Don Nottoli. He was born and raised in nearby Galt. He worked for our previous supervisor when he was young and took over that office several years ago. He knows us all by name. He and his assistant Pat have come to our rescue, not only from the county, but also from Caltrans' stupid projects. If it wasn't for Don, we'd probably be long gone. So I don't include him in my assessment of county government.

I think it was in 2009 that the county first started talking about creating a special planning area (SPA). They held carefully contrived public meetings that pretty much allowed them to ignore the very vociferous comments they got from this community. And now they've put their plans into a 400-page EIR. Citizens have the opportunity to write comments and submit them. That deadline is April 3. I just got the EIR last week. They plan ahead to cut your comment time down to as short as they can because, once again, they know they are not going to like what they hear. 

So that's a couple of weeks to examine every word in the document with a fine tooth comb, because it's a landmine of hidden intentions, partial truths, and glossing over big problems. I have only read 4 pages so far, and found that they want once again to widen Jackson Highway to 4 lanes through Sloughhouse. Why? Caltrans tried this and gave up, there's no room down here for a 4 lane highway without cutting a wide swath through valuable farmland, or removing every house down here. The houses were all built when Jackson Road was used by stagecoaches, it's NOT as one county employee (who probably moved here from Los Angeles or the Bay Area 5 years ago) suggested, that we were all stupid to build our houses so close to the road that has now become a major thoroughfare. Of course if you eliminate all the houses, you get rid of us pesky people who live here.

I'm beginning to understand what it must have been like for my Polish ancestors, living where every conqueror in Europe rode through. We in Sloughhouse have done a great job of preserving our riparian habitat, of taking good care of our farmland, and of providing reasonably-priced fresh vegetables directly to the public. Even through a constant attack from our own county government. 

I will undoubtedly be in a pissy mood for a while, sorry about that.