EDITORIAL SWAMP BY ANOTHER NAME CITY HALL PEDDLES SLUDGE AS ``WETLANDS''.QUESTION: What's the difference between a swamp and a wetlands?Answer: If it's in your back yard, it's a swamp. If it it's in someone else's, it's a wetlands. For City Hall, safely over the hill from the San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. , flooding 60 acres of the Sepulveda Dam Located in Los Angeles, California, the Sepulveda Dam is a project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, built in 1941 to control winter flood waters along the Los Angeles River. Recreation Area with treated wastewater is about creating ``wetlands.'' Surrounding the reclaimed sewage with boardwalks and a nature center makes it a ``wetlands park.'' But for residents of neighboring neigh·bor n. 1. One who lives near or next to another. 2. A person, place, or thing adjacent to or located near another. 3. A fellow human. 4. Used as a form of familiar address. v. communities, it's still just a swamp. For all San Fernando Valley residents, it means losing 60 acres of precious and scarce open space forever. And that's just the beginning. The proposed ``Sepulveda Wetlands Park'' is only a pilot project. After getting Vals used to 60 acres of stagnant recycled toilet water in their community, the Department of Sanitation drools at the ides of expanding the project to a full 300 acres. The ostensible Apparent; visible; exhibited. Ostensible authority is power that a principal, either by design or through the absence of ordinary care, permits others to believe his or her agent possesses. purpose of dropping a massive, stinky, mosquito-breeding swamp into the Valley is to clean up the L.A. River. The state Regional Water Control Board is requiring the city to reduce nitrogen levels in the treated wastewater it pumps into the L.A. River. Swamp plants such as bulrushes and cattails eat nitrogen, so turning a part of the basin into a massive sludge puddle is an easy way to get into compliance. For an extra $20 million, the city could build a wastewater treatment facility to clean the water without despoiling one of the Valley's few open spaces. For a city government that managed to find 15 times that sum to spruce up spruce up Verb [sprucing, spruced] to make neat and smart Verb 1. spruce up - make neat, smart, or trim; "Spruce up your house for Spring"; "titivate the child" City Hall, $20 million shouldn't be too great an investment in the future of local communities and their environment. But City Hall always takes the cheap way out whenever the Valley's interests are at stake. Downtown bureaucrats and politicians think they can hoodwink hood·wink tr.v. hood·winked, hood·wink·ing, hood·winks 1. To take in by deceptive means; deceive. See Synonyms at deceive. 2. Archaic To blindfold. 3. Obsolete To conceal. Vals by hanging the ``wetlands park'' label onto the project and ply us with a few boardwalks. Sorry, we're not that gullible gul·li·ble adj. Easily deceived or duped. [From gull2.] gul . A swamp by any other name will smell just as bad. |
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