Who chooses alternatives?

[James Marple <jesl@carolina.net>]

Chuck Elkins:  Your recognition that "the person who chooses which regulatory or policy alternatives to collect data for and then to analyze, has great influence over the shape of the final decision" is so deadly accurate it should be stated at the beginning of every environmental document or exercise in public input.  I've been so often referred to such person's that I know most EPA folks are well aware of this.  

My experience with California's laid-back politicians and voters has been that even the most knowledgeable and concerned don't consider this, don't bother to look past information that bureaucrats layd before them, apparently preferring to not jostle the the boat or force themselves to revise their database by admitting new knowledge into it. Almost all are willing to accept false basic premises of prestigious planners as long as these don't conflict with conventional wisdoms, even if common sense says something is not quite right.  (As with pumping dirty water from northern California to its South Coast while four times as much pure water is deliberate disposed of.) The falsity of commonly accepted conventional wisdoms leads to the absurdly inappropriate planning we see here, and the reasons for easy acceptance of these go clear back to kindergarten among native Californians who have been saturated with the notion that their southern counties don't receive enough rainfall to support the population.  (In fact, the 'catchable' rainfall would support three times the entire state's population.)

Any normally educated and thoughtful person could soon discover that a region which receives 18 inches of rainfall and could store all of this underground at insignificant expense should not be importing water.  Yet Southern California pumped in another eight billion gallons over the mountains last week, bringing 15,000 tons of complex chemicals, heavy metals, trihalomethanes, minerals and assorted pathogens from mines, farms and the sewers/streets of Sacramento and Las Vegas.  Why haven't politicians adopted EPA-recommended Best Management Practices like those Florida mandates to retain and treat pollutants where they are generated while replenishing aquifers and halting floods?  We cannot blame EPA officials for this, since they've tried hard to communicate to Californians the knowledge that urban/agricultural/silvicultural BMPs will achieve these multiple purposes.   

So the reason must lie elsewhere, and the three dozen professionals who advise me indicate complete agreement with your view that the persons who choose which alternatives to pursue have great influence over the shape of final decisions.  In fact, most of us would go so far as to insist that the persons who choose which regulatory or policy alternatives shall be presented to politicians are the real managers of public affairs.  The planning options they provide shape policy and by omitting practical alternatives they can ensure that politicians and the public do not pursue avenues that will upset profiteer applecarts.  We give this group primary responsibility for misleading 30 million Californians whose heads have been softened by constant exposure to false perceptions of planning alternatives.  These bureaucrats-engineers-journalists, soldiers in the mercenary army of profiteers, set the agenda and so dictate the continued waste/pollution of California's superabundant natural resources.