Voters will get clean air only when they demand it

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http://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/valley_voices/story/1811847p-1890032c.html

Voters will get clean air only when they demand it

By Patience Milrod, Fresno

(Published Saturday, March, 9, 2002 3:15AM)

The Feb. 25 Business Week features Fresno! Exposure in this national

business news magazine is exactly the kind of coverage that could bring us

new industry, new investors and prospective new employers.

And as our mayor and other municipal savants tell us, attracting new

employers is the one surefire method for working ourselves, as a community,

out of the hole we share with double-digit unemployment and the many ills

and problems it brings us.

Fertile soil

But business leaders who read Business Week are not learning all the ways in

which the San Joaquin Valley could be fertile soil in which to plant their

enterprises and see them flourish. Instead, they're reading a piece entitled

" A Lush Valley Struggles to Breathe, " which recounts in a -- well --

businesslike manner the problem: Our geography makes us a basin, in which

filthy air collects.

Increased population means more vehicle traffic, which produces 60% of the

smog here.

Three of the four smoggiest cities in the country are in the San Joaquin

Valley: Fresno, Bakersfield and Visalia-Tulare-Porterville.

The effect of this pollution on our economic mainstay, agriculture, is

devastating. But it's worse for human beings, especially our children, who

are developing asthma at astronomical rates, which exceed by many orders of

magnitude the rate of population growth. Would you move a business here?

Crow of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District

pinpoints the problem: " We'll be fighting a battle of attrition until the

Valley comes up with better land use and transportation planning, and finds

a way to reduce the vehicle-miles people are traveling. "

This may sound a little hopeless, but Crow actually gives us a blueprint for

making the changes that will clean our air, and lift our economy:

Think regionally

" The Valley " must act -- our local governments must now think and plan

regionally. Land use planning has long been the province of each city

council or board of supervisors, who cling jealously to the prerogative. But

we all share the same air, and as lin noted in a different

context, we will all have to hang together or we will certainly hang

separately.

This means we as voters must insist that our council members and supervisors

look beyond their own fiefdoms, that counties cooperate with cities and with

each other, and that they plan -- together -- to attack the air quality

problems that plague us all.

We must integrate land use and transportation planning. This means when you

plan a subdivision, you make sure it's feasible for the folks who live there

to take transit, walk or bicycle to the places where they work and shop.

Transit use means fewer cars means cleaner air. Not a complex idea nor a

novel one, but one which the Fresno County Council of Governments (comprised

of local government officials and charged with transportation planning for

Fresno County) has for 15 years refused to promote. What will bring

officials to this kind of coordinated planning? It'll happen when we as

voters insist on it.

We must reduce the vehicle miles we travel, which is to say our automobile

use. This is difficult to do when much of our town is built in such a way

that you cannot secure a gallon of milk without using a gallon of gasoline.

It's still harder when buses run a half hour apart, and can only eventually

get you where you need to be.

Less driving, better air

This is where issue No. 2 comes in. If new developments are built in such a

way that enough people live within a quarter-mile of each bus stop, it

becomes feasible to run transit service that works well for its riders. And

if we're riding transit, we're not driving. And if we're not driving, the

air is cleaner.

As you know if you've been watching our town ooze out across the landscape

over the past 30 years, traditionally each developer comes forward and

wheedles " let's just do my project -- it can't hurt. "

Certainly in past years, these pleas have enjoyed the additional oomph of

generous campaign contributions.

But it's crunch time now. We can no longer do business as usual. It's time

to remind all officials that their constituencies include not just campaign

contributors, but posterity -- our children, and our children's children.

Will they struggle in a decaying economy? Will they be crippled by asthma?

Will they leave, running for their lives, jobs or both? Or will they inherit

a healthy economy, in a blooming Valley, across which they see the majestic

Sierra Nevada every morning?