LWV: All Wet - UPDATED, 8:30PM

(Click to Enlarge)

Etching of Artesian Well from a
Pacific Land Improvement Company advertisement (January, 1888)
From: The City of Claremont History Collection,
Honnald Mudd Library Special Collections

The Marilee Memorial Marsh will be considered at tonight's Claremont City Council meeting, where current Mayor and former League of Women Voters (LWV) president Ellen Taylor will hand off a promised $25,000 over to LWV representatives Marilee Scaff and Freeman Allen.

Scaff and Allen are seeking a grant of over $7.6 million from the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy (RMC) to purchase a plot of land around the Thompson Creek Dam in Northeast Claremont with the idea of turning the area into a cienega or wetlands or marsh (take your pick).

Before this area was developed water used flow out of the mountains and into the alluvial plains at the mouths of the area's canyons. Some of the water would soak into the riverbeds and floodplains and fill up underground reservoirs. The excess would spring up out of the ground in spots in the form of artesian wells at cienegas, as this bit from the Bernard Field Station website explains:

The San Antonio alluvial fan, like the other fans and bajadas of the Los Angeles Basin, is able to hold a large volume of ground water, derived from snowmelt and rainfall in the mountains, which is mined (pumped) for domestic and agricultural use. Before pumping began to lower the water table (meaning that pumping extractions exceed replenishment, that is, the ground water is in overdraft), some of the water-bearing layers (aquifers) actually brought water to the surface as artesian flow. Called cienegas by the Spanish, these areas supported startlingly lush growths of bulrush (Scirpus), cattail (Typha) and other aquatic vegetation, and served as breeding areas for local amphibians and other aquatic and semi-aquatic animals. Once such a cienega was located where Pilgrim Place is now. After the 1969 rains, artesian water flowed along Sixth and Berkeley for several months. Other local cienegas included one at the present site of Wig Beach and several north of Foothill Blvd. The only surface water flow after the 1978 rains was north of Foothill and east of Padua Ave.

[Emphasis added.]

As we noted yesterday, the LWV grant application makes a very brief mention of the fact that when you put water in the ground around here, it can pop up in other, lower-lying areas. The LWV doesn't really explain how that problem is avoided. Presumably, in order to keep a cienega near the Thompson Creek dam wet, you either have to keep adding water as it flows away down gradient, or you have to confine the water artificially, something which would add significantly to the cost of the project.

A reader contacted us with another problem with the LWV marsh grant application. The reader pointed out although the grant application is dated June 6, 2008, it claims on page 18 that the city of Claremont's $25,000 is already pledged. The actual wording on page 18 says that in addition to a pledge by Pomona Valley Protective Association of $25,000 for the project:

The City of Claremont is to match PVPA's $25,000.

Huh? The City Council isn't even voting to approve the $25,000 until later tonight - June 24th! Talk about a done deal. Hey Richard McKee, Mr. Brown Act, why don't you look into this one?

The point of the LWV's listing the city's and the PVPA's money is to show the Conservancy that there is seed money out there and wide community support. It'd be nice if it were true at the time the grant application was written, but it was not and verges on a fraudulent claim as a result. Of course, to the grant writers, since they also run the city, the matter of public discussion and deliberation was a mere formality.

At least this proves our point about what we've been arguing in these posts. The LWV can lie in their grant application on June 6th, saying in essence that the $25,000 had been approved, when it really won't be allocated until later this evening. Fittingly, the grant application is signed by current LWV president, Claremont Police Commissioner, and city Affordable Housing Task Force member Barbara Musselman. It is also lists the contact persons as "C. Freeman Allen, Ph.D, WTF Co-Chair" and "Marilee Scaff, Ph.D, WTF Co-Chair." We thought the WTF was a particularly apropos acronym for the Water Task Force.

You can watch the meeting here.

Below are the LWV grant face page dated 6/6/08 (left) and page 18 of the grant application (right), declaring the City's $25,000 contribution a fait accompli, when in fact it hadn't yet been presented to the Claremont City Council. We rest our case:

(Click on Images to Enlarge)

UPDATE: 8:30PM

No surprise here. The Claremont City Council voted 5-0 to support allocating the $25,000 for the grant. As the grant application indicated, it was already decided long before tonight, as most things are in this town.

The two LWV representatives, WTF'ers C. Freeman Allen and Marilee Scaff, were given unlimited time to make a presentation (the public, if they had wanted to, might have gotten four minutes to speak, depending on Mayor Taylor's mood). Such is the way these things are weighted against the general public.

Scaff made a point of citing the enormous public support she's noticed for this project ("the whole community") and named those members of the public she's spoken with: the city of Claremont, Golden State Water Company, the Pomona Valley Protective Association, and so on. Notice that she didn't name the average citizen - you perhaps.

That's because you peons don't register on Scaff's radar. She will, however, take your $25,000, and let's not hear any complaining about it, you ungrateful rabble.

Councilmember Calaycay, who voted "YES" along with the rest of the council, did ask a question of the two LWV representatives. Calaycay asked if the $25,000 the city was allocating had any designated purpose. C. Freeman Allen answered, saying, that they have no idea what the money would be used for. It's not programmed at all. Allen did say that the money could be returned if it wasn't need.

Right.

Calaycay also raised the fact that the LWV grant application is competing against a $1.5 million grant by the city of Claremont for Padua Sports Park. Ironies abound here. In Marilee Scaff's remarks, she said that the LWV Thompson Creek project was important because it would save "50-60 acres of sage scrub" habitat - something that Scaff said is one of the most threatened habitats in California.

Yet, at the same time, the city of Claremont in seeking money for Padua Sports Park is asking the same Conservancy for $1.5 million to destroy 10 acres of the same sage scrub habitat that Scaff wants to save - and the LWV, Ellen Taylor, and the rest of the Claremont City Council in on the scam: Give us money to destroy the habitat here, give us more money to save it over there.

This, ladies and germs, is Claremont's hypocrisy in a maddening nutshell, and the State of California, through the San Gabriel Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, is being asked to join in the scam to the tune of $7.6 million for the LWV marsh project and $1.5 million for Padua Sports Park. Such worthy projects. What's a little lie here, a little hypocrisy there?

It isn't criminal, but it outta be.