EDITORIAL SLUDGE POLITICS GRANADA HILLS CAN'T GET A BREAK FROM LOCAL OFFICIALS.HERE'S a quick and easy way to devastate dev·as·tate tr.v. dev·as·tat·ed, dev·as·tat·ing, dev·as·tates 1. To lay waste; destroy. 2. To overwhelm; confound; stun: was devastated by the rude remark. a community, brought to you by your local government: First, seize a beloved public area - say, a park, one situated in a largely residential zone, one with several sports-playing fields, one that hundreds of local kids depend on. Next, raze raze also rase tr.v. razed also rased, raz·ing also ras·ing, raz·es also ras·es 1. To level to the ground; demolish. See Synonyms at ruin. 2. To scrape or shave off. 3. the sports fields, then smother them with ... sludge! Watch children weep! Hear parents moan! See housing values plummet while crime and children's waistlines soar because kids are left without healthy after-school activities! It's a plan positively worthy of Ebenezer Scrooge Ebenezer Scrooge is the main character in Charles Dickens' 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. He is a very cold-hearted, selfish man, who has no love for Christmas, children, or anything that even provokes happiness. or, in this case, the city of Los Angeles
For 20 years, the MWD MWD Metropolitan Water District of Southern California MWD Measurement While Drilling (oil drilling) MWD Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (stock symbol) MWD Molecular Weight Distribution MWD Military Working Dog has leased land off Balboa Boulevard, west of the Golden State Freeway The Golden State Freeway is a north-south freeway running through Kern County and Los Angeles County, California. Originally built as U.S. Highway 99, it was re-signed as Interstate 5 in 1964. , for the Granada Hills Recreation Center. Throughout that time, nonprofit groups have maintained five baseball diamonds and a half-dozen soccer fields on the site, providing programs to keep thousands of local kids busy. But the MWD plans to take back the property at the end of the season so it can turn the area into a repository for all the gunk it filters out at the nearby Jensen Water Filtration Plant. And with that, what was once a community treasure may soon become a community eyesore eye·sore n. Something, such as a distressed building, that is unpleasant or offensive to view. eyesore Noun something very ugly Noun 1. . In typical bureaucratic fashion, no one is really responsible for this outrage. The MWD says that it has no other choice, and that it gave the city plenty of time to come up with an alternate site for the fields. Meanwhile, L.A. officials are pleading with the MWD to postpone its plans for a year, thus giving the city more time to find a solution. But no one in City Hall seems to have any clue what that would be, since city officials have made no effort for two decades to supply parks for an area that has seen a lot of development. It's nothing new. City officials have long cared more about well-connected developers than local communities. And it's the utter lack of coherent and worthwhile city planning that would allow for a sludge field in parkland. But taking away kids' soccer and baseball and giving them sludge is beyond the pale, even by L.A. standards. |
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