City, County and Neighborhood News

I don’t have much use for social media. Deleted my accounts years ago. But I’d like to see what TikTok can do with an Environmental Impact Report.

Despite their reputation as weapons exploited by self-interested neighbors and extortionist labor unions—all true—environmental reports dispense useful information. I’ve read dozens. Learned something every time.

Trouble is they are tough to read—ponderous, repetitive, silted. No narrative energy. No character development. Just facts presented in proscribed formats. Boxes checked, dry as cotton.

Which is why I waited three months to tackle the city’s new environmental report on the Sacramento River Parkway Project, otherwise known as the levee bike path.

I finally have something nice to say about the Land Park Interstate 5 bicycle bridge fiasco. The mess proves civil engineers are civilized people.

Even when faced with angry clients and legal threats and questions about their competencies, civil engineers working on the bridge never blew their cool.

At least not in public. And never in writing.

Talking to a politician recently, I mentioned the need for elected officials to support public access along the Sacramento River Parkway.

This politician understands the problem: private fences blocking public access, a few homeowners trying to delay completion of the levee bike trail.

“I agree with you,” the politician tells me. “The city needs to finish the bike trail. The public needs access. But we have to respect those homeowners. They need compensation.”

Now I get frustrated. The politician, whom I’ve known for years and consider smart and informed, sounds oblivious to the biggest obstacle slowing the bike trail through Pocket and Little Pocket.