BROWN FARM FIASCO (cont.): LAS CRUCES BUILDING STORM DRAIN TO POUR MONEY DOWN

My previous blog about the Brown Farm Fiasco indicated three options in response to the failure of Public Works (PW).

Option One: do nothing (= admission of abject failure)—unlikely because the mess is so large, the cost so great, the eyesore so public, and the problem still unsolved.  Options Two: patch and scratch—unlikely although easy and inexpensive to do with a little gully filling, site re-grading, seeding, and face-saving because it pretends that PW got it almost right the first time.  Problem: ineffective after the first big rain, with no grass now and none surviving later, much less slowing the flow, without constant watering, and ATV tracks making new erosion pathways.  Option Three: buffer the three stormwater surges as they enter the site and funnel them by rock channel or sewer pipe to the destination pond, regrade and deep-contour-plow the site to absorb or hold on-site rainfall, and let nature seed the site.  Problem: more expensive though effective, and a non-PW idea.

A neighborhood rumor, which I discuss as if true, greeted me on my return from a one-night trip out of town.  The PW decision is none of the above.  Rejecting Options One and Two is easy to understand for the reasons given; rejecting Option Three is hard to understand and needs a public explanation in light of PW’s new and different idea, which itself needs a public justification—transparency and accountability in advance.

The rumor: PW’s Option Four: build a storm sewer under the north side of Cedardale Loop, with a drain to catch street run-off before it enters two conduits and a discharge opening cut through a concrete ramp.  Additional grading and channeling would then move the water to the destination pond, unless PW plans to leave the water in a pond below the escarpment in which mosquitos with West Nile Virus can breed—the avoidance of which is the reason for the Brown Farm project in the first place.  Problems aplenty: it is very expensive, destructive of a street and ramp in excellent condition, disruptive of traffic in front of about 18 neighborhood residences, and only partly effective because it does nothing about the stormwater from the third conduit, the one with a run-off large and forceful enough to toss and break an unsecured concrete pad.

From PWs perspective, Option Four has important merits.  It is grand in scale and labor-intensive; it is just the thing to turn a department blunder into a bureaucratic and budgetary triumph, and a morale booster.  Problem: from a public interest perspective—that is, the value of an effective solution at affordable price—Option Four demonstrates that the local tradition of petty politics and petty personalities offer little but ineffective and expensive consequences.  It raids the city’s treasury to cover the incompetence and protect the hurt feelings and dented vanity of PW department and project managers, and engineers.  If City Manager Ifo Pili approves this indulgent boondoggle, we shall know all which we need to know about his management style—not much management, not much style.  And, if City Council allows such an ill-conceived and costly project, its members—Miyagishima, Gandara, Stuve, Vasquez, Bencomo, Sorg, Flores—should be removed from office at the earliest opportunity or, in the case of Vasquez and Sorg, scorned when they depart, for betraying the public interest.