I figured that if I didn't take Jorge--my
contractor/neighbor--up on his invitation to go fishing with him, I'd never hear
the end of it. So with great reluctance I agreed to throw on my woolies and meet
him by my mailbox well before the cows and roosters in the area began to get
restless. Maybe, I told myself, the fish will be so impressed by this show of
enthusiasm that they will line up to take my bait…but I knew better. After all,
in the thousand or so hours I'd spent in the company of hook, line, and sinker,
I've never--repeat that, never--caught a fish. Indeed I've come up with a
hundred specimen of weed, trash of every type imaginable, and even a snake or
two that happened to get snagged by mistake, but not once have I brought home
anything resembling a fish. The only redeeming feature in this venture into the
masochistic world of damp and cold was the opportunity to spend time with
Jorge…a pleasure by any standard. Besides, I wanted to impress him with our
magazine, Stormwater.
"Stormwater," he growled after we had settled down to await
the arrival of our quota of scaly prey. "Just another one of those unfunded
mandates the enviros are trying to ram down our throats." Nine times out of ten,
when Jorge shares his opinion with me I accept it at face value, but this was
one of those rare cases where I felt the need to pursue the subject …especially
under the present circumstances in which we were taking part in his favorite
pastime.
Whose Water Are We
Talking About?
"How about the fishing, Jorge," I opened up the discussion,
"is it as good as it was when you were a boy?" Admittedly it was a loaded
question, but one that I was pretty certain would get some heat in the boat in a
hurry. "Of course not," he replied, going on to cite examples of the degraded
conditions. "But there are a lot more people fishing these days."
"Yes," I agreed, "and a lot more people doing a lot more
other things." And that's really the rub. Everything we do--no matter how good
or how necessary--has consequences that may not be obvious at the time. Fishing,
it turns out, provides a pretty good illustration of some of the unanticipated
impacts we have on things we care about. Even if we haven't experienced
first-hand the severe depletion of salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest, we've
all heard about the situation and recognize the contribution of logging and
development activities to the problem. School-trained environmentalists seem
fond of such high-sounding terms as "loss of habitat" as if by their use, these
abstractions will somehow lead us to solutions that can be mandated and
implemented by governmental fiat. But as any fisherman who has seen a favorite
stream or pond literally choked to death by silt and algae knows, there's
nothing mysterious about the process nor does the solution lie in the hands of
self-appointed saviors, no matter how often or how sincerely they wring them.
"Yeah, but they're the ones who are doing all the yelling and
the demanding and passing all the regulations," Jorge pointed out with
uncharacteristic bitterness. Maybe it was at least partly to do with the fact
that we had been sitting for almost an hour without so much as a nibble. "Who
put them in charge?"
"Well maybe you and I did," I suggested. We're the ones
closest to the situation…the ones involved in the disturbance and the ones who
are actually in a position to do something about the solution. "When you and
your crew carve a road or cut in pads for a subdivision, do you know where the
dirt goes?. In fact how much of the dirt from the job you did for the Forest
Service last year end up in this lake?" The look on his face told me I'd gone
too far.
"Look," he said between tightly clinched teeth, "we did
everything the permit said…and more. The detention pond they designed for the
runoff was too small so we enlarged it just to make sure that mud wouldn't get
flushed down into Matillija Creek."
"What about next year or the year after when the pond silts
in and can't catch all the runoff? What happens then?"
"Well," Jorge said after a pause, "someone will just have to
go up there and clean the sucker out, I guess."
"Who's going to pay for it," I asked. "Anybody bother putting
a line item for long-term maintenance into the change order?”
"Not that I know of," he admitted, much of the steam gone
from his anger. "I get your point."
Thankfully for the sake of our friendship the words had
barely escaped him when his line snapped taut. "Hot doggies," he whooped,
turning to the task at hand. "Crank up the barbecue." By the time the first
shaft of sunlight hit us, thoughts of stormwater and silt were but a dim memory.
Jorge had caught both our limits, and my perfect record remained solidly
intact.