Apropos Judy Meier’s short but excellent piece ("Denial is not a Solution") in the 2 January 2006 issue of the Borrego Sun (p. 2) the Borrego Water District Groundwater Management Plan, adopted September 2002, offers the following observations:
"most of the land [in Borrego] has been owned by state agencies or by individuals or corporations not living or located here. . . speculating on enormous increases in value due to future growth. Therefore, in the past there has been a strong emphasis on growth. . ." (p. 3)
"this is overwhelmingly a retirement community and most people in retirement . . . did not come here to get involved in such complex issues as water rights and water use. All this places severe limits on what can be done by a local water agency with no land use authority using only local cooperation . . ." (p. 4)
To restate these points more bluntly:
Most of the land in Borrego has been held by absentee owners only interested in profit.
Most people in Borrego are old. Most old people think they have paid their dues and want someone else to pickup the cudgel and fight society’s battles or just don’t care.
These two factors make it impossible to solve our ground water problems.
Not much can be done about the land ownership/development problem without first solving the problem of an aged population that has largely opted out. Next time you are in the P.O., look around. What do you see? Oldies, right? So who will fight these battles if the oldies won’t. As Pogo says: "We have met the enemy and he is us."