If Lake County voters approve Measure E the biggest winners will be the growers in Yolo County who depend on our water for much of their almost half-billion dollars in annual agriculture production, as residents will be taxing themselves to fund the entire cost of the quagga mussel prevention program for the next decade.
The only leverage we have to get Yolo to pay its share will be gone and Lake County growers will actually be forced to help pay the cost of protecting their downstream competitor”s water.
The Board of Supervisors (BOS) has only made one attempt to get funding from Yolo years ago and didn”t bother to show them the current plan before asking the Lake County taxpayers to cover Yolo”s share of Measure E.
Another outrageous aspect of measure E is the citizens oversight committee. A committee where 66 percent of the citizens will actually be elected officials and some of those will be the same BOS members who are to be overseen.
The last report on the county algae program was disheartening. Its funding was pulled and redirected to the weed program, because we were told not only were much of the algae removal efforts ineffective, in some cases they were possibly counterproductive and once algae is in the lake there is no efficient way to get it out.
But $414,000 is slated for dealing with algae every year in Measure E, though there is little reason to expect any noticeable improvement because the plan is to keep doing the things we know don”t work.
To keep a lot of algae and weeds out of the lake requires not feeding them loads of nutrients and 70 percent of those nutrients going into the lake come from Middle and Scotts creeks. The Middle Creek Restoration Project has been in limbo for the last five years until just recently, because as the project manager stated the county “lost focus.”
This project was supposed to be done in 2008 and in 2012 we are still years from even beginning construction.
I also think Vector Control should lose its special district status and private contractors could do the spraying the same way they do for the weed program. I think savings could be used to fund quagga and algae programs.
Contracting the spraying and cutting out abstract studies and funding the research and development programs of giant pesticide makers could save us money.
It should be done regardless of Measure E.
Vote no because we need and deserve a better plan than Measure E.
Philip Murphy
Lakeport
