City, County and Neighborhood News

At last, the wheels of justice turn for public access to the Sacramento River.

After stalling for 51 years, the city is grabbing easements via eminent domain along the Pocket levee. The process shuts down outrageous claims by property owners who think they own the river.

The eminent domain process ends a half-century fight by homesteaders near the levee to stop the city from completing the river parkway bike trail.

The numbers don’t mean anything. Not the 50 years, not the final scores, not the cumulative sums of families served and participation trophies handed out.

What matters is Greenhaven Soccer Club’s steady presence as a community unifier, the glue that holds people together.

For a half-century, the soccer club has taken children shy and awkward, children blessed with athletic grace, children who would rather pick daisies, and kitted them out in kelly green shirts and shorts and brought them together for weekend celebrations.

Just when I thought the story about public access to the Sacramento River Parkway was winding down, losing its punch, along comes the Central Valley Flood Protection Board to restore the outrage.

The useful idiots at the flood board spent a month this summer agonizing over four property owners who want to build permanent fences across the levee top in Pocket and Little Pocket.

For decades, the Central Valley Flood Protection Board played useful idiot to a handful of property owners in Pocket, Greenhaven and Little Pocket.

The flood board, a state agency mandated to stop levees from collapsing, agreed to serve as security consultant for a few levee-adjacent settlers about 50 years ago.

Ever since, those clever property owners came crying to the flood board whenever the city tried to finish the Sacramento River Parkway bike trail, a regional treasure conceived in 1975.

“We need fences to keep peasants off the levee,” the property owners shouted. The flood board responded, “Your wish is our command.”