“Sea drone rescues U.S. army helicopter crew near Strait of Hormuz” read a BBC headline on my phone’s news feed one morning last week. A photo of an Apache helicopter, like the one that went down, sat below the words, looking like an enormous armored insect. Knowing the vulnerability of helicopter crews, I thank God they survived their mission. But I can hardly bear the truth that we have not found better ways to live, better use of our manpower and natural resources.
“Is there hope for the future?” sang Judy Collins 63 years ago in “The Bells of Rhymney” as folk music led the way to protest songs. That one line took root in me, though the rest of the song’s lyrics remained a mystery until now. Rhymney is a village in south Wales, home of poet Idris Davies who, according to Wikipedia, was the only person to write about the miners and coal fields of South Wales in the early 1900s. In 1958, Pete Seeger put to music a poem Davies published in Gwalia Deserta (literally “Wasteland of Wales”) in 1938. The most famous recording of the song was by The Byrds in 1965, but when Pete sang it, he left little doubt about the meaning. Is there hope for the future? It’s a valid question.
That question was pestering me as I went to the June 9 Lindsay City Council meeting. On the agenda for that night was an item to approve the selection of Cal Water to become the purchaser and provider of water and sewer service for our city. That proposal would change this critical infrastructure from public to private, which has the potential to make Lindsay’s water both unaffordable and unresponsive to residents’ needs, as if that weren’t already a concern. I am against privatization of water of any kind, agricultural or municipal.
I first learned about this plan in an excellent front-page article of the May 20 Sun-Gazette, demonstrating the importance of our local news media. In addition to the reasons given in that article, the perceived need to sell off our water infrastructure is caused in part by the depleted general fund from past administrations’ follies, and the lack of current revenue from an almost-dead downtown, something I picked up only by attending the meeting.
That day, as I prepared written comments, I remembered scenes from my past involvement in Lindsay’s government triggered by revelation of staff salaries far above our median family incomes. I remembered the march, which I watched from afar: red-shirted, red-flagged rebels led in part by a disabled man whom we called Wheelchair Tim. I remembered the gigantic city council meeting held in the high school gymnasium, standing room only, when one of our most revered bilingual elders asked how the city manager could take such an exorbitant salary when many of this town’s citizens lie awake nights wondering how they’re going to pay the water bill, and how mayor Ed Murray replied that the costs of water are fixed by ordinance, missing the point completely. I remembered standing outside the council chambers in the dark, temperatures dropping, as we waited to hear who would replace city manager Scot Townsend after he abandoned his post. I remembered the difficult effort we began afterward to recall the entire city council, which failed, followed by the successful election of three new council members that began Lindsay’s turn-around.
On our current city council we still have two members who were elected then, plus three newer members and many new staff, who’d held two town halls for members of the public just days before the June 9 meeting. It was a very different experience than 15 years ago, and I was gratified by the civility and less pretentious presentations. The room was full of Lindsay residents wanting to speak against the water sale, and we were treated with respect. The water sale agenda item had been removed from the agenda, and former mayor Val Salcedo made it clear that we need to know if and when this subject will be brought up again.
Most of all, I was grateful, finally, for the time I spent over a decade ago with other members of this community getting us to this point. And I think that at least here, in this small town, even with no real natural water supply to support it, because of our more responsive local government, there is hope for the future.
Trudy Wischemann is a home-bound water researcher who writes. You can send her your thoughts on government c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247. This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of the Mid Valley Times newspaper.
