Los Angeles Fires Made Worse By Environmental Extremists
By John J. Duncan Jr.
duncanj@knoxfocus.com
A few days before the horrendous fires started in Los Angeles, the New York Times carried an article about the huge 1970s controversy over the snail darter that delayed construction of the Tellico Dam.
The Times story “How a Mistaken Identity Halted a Dam’s Construction” reported that “a team of researchers argued that the fish was a phantom all along.”
Dr. Thomas Near, a professor and head of a fish biology lab at Yale, said, “There is technically no snail darter.”
It is ironic that the story about the non-existence of the snail darter would come out just before reports that the fires in Los Angeles were much worse because of environmentalists’ efforts to protect a two-inch fish called the delta smelt.
Former New York Times reporter Nellie Bowles, writing in the Free Press, said, “Infrastructure that could have provided more water for those fires has been on hold, tied up in red tape. Ten years ago California voters approved spending $7.5 billion to build water storage and improve state water facilities” but not one has been built “a decade into various environmental regulations and reviews…”
She added, “Also, there’s a little fish; it’s called the delta smelt … that environmentalists discovered and have used for decades to block any water releases in Central and Southern California. That little delta smelt is native to the waters, and oh so endangered. Residents of Los Angeles should have kept a few delta smelt as pets and perhaps a little water could have gotten to them.”
I remembered the controversy over the snail darter very well, from both sides, because I represented two farm families in condemnation cases against TVA when I practiced law to help them get more for their farms.
But the overwhelming majority of people in Loudon and Monroe Counties wanted the dam, so my father authored an amendment to an appropriations bill to exempt the Tellico project from the Endangered Species Act.
The Congress was heavily Democratic at the time and this was a Republican amendment for a project in a Republican district. But my Dad was both well-liked and well-respected by the Democrats, too, and the amendment passed, and President Carter signed the bill. Construction of the dam began in 1979.
While protection of the delta smelt is one of the major causes of water problems in Los Angeles, Jonathan Lesser wrote in the City Journal that the fires were “not the result of climate change.”
He said the problem is largely due to “environmentalists’ demands to leave forests undisturbed” and that “instead of removing dead and diseased trees and undergrowth, the state, following environmental restrictions, has allowed that natural fuel to build up, creating the conditions for explosive wildfires.”
A Los Angeles television weatherman on Jan. 1 and the National Weather Service on Jan. 2 both warned that the area was under a very high risk for fires. Then on Jan. 4, the mayor left to celebrate the installation of the new president in Ghana.
The fire broke out in the Pacific Palisades community on Jan. 7. A 117-million-gallon reservoir nearby had been left empty for over a year. Patrick Butler, a former Los Angeles Assistant Fire Chief, said, “It is unfathomable to me how this happened, except for extreme incompetence and no understanding of fire operations.”
In the politically correct politics of Los Angeles, the fire chief was appointed because she is a lesbian, and the mayor was elected because she is a black woman. In today’s Democrat party, sexual preference and race count far more than things like knowledge, ability, experience, etc.
One prominent California reporter commented that the mayor won overwhelmingly in the wealthy area, which was the hardest hit. Wealthy liberal elitists, heavily Democratic, will go to great lengths to show that they are not racist, even though most have spent almost no time with black people except for the few token blacks admitted to very elite private schools.
Far Left environmentalists around the country may be pleased that California and Los Angeles County followed all the environmental rules even though it caused several deaths and as much as $250 billion in property damage. They seem to care more about delta smelts, spotted owls, and non-existent snail darters than they do about people.
As we now know that there is no such thing as a snail darter and that protecting the delta smelt caused the Los Angeles fires to be much worse, maybe more people will realize that we should not always cave in to the false religion of environmentalism.
