The most incredible thing about people who live along the Sacramento River is not that they think they can stop public access to the new levee parkway. Of course they think they can stop access. They blocked the parkway for almost 50 years.
The incredible part is how they plan to prevent future access. Desperate and isolated, having lost the political support they exploited for five decades, they are down to their final play. It’s a Hail Mary.
They have pulled the big red safety alarm. Let me tell you how the scheme works.
As public access relentlessly advances, a few residents who turned the riverfront into a private playground now seek to cast the levee as an urban hellscape, a place of crime, homelessness and depravation.
Their goal is to convince authorities that public access leads to chaos. They whisper a subtext: “Let’s turn back the clock and return to the safe old days, when riverfront property owners built fences to keep the masses out.”
The strategy has simmered for a while. When I first heard about it, I dismissed it after checking with Sacramento Police. The cops told me levee fences didn’t prevent crime. Data proves the point. Sections of levee long open to the public—the trail south of Garcia Bend Park, for example—were no more crime-ridden than fenced-off sections.
In some cases, private fences kept trouble in, not out.
I laughed when I learned the majority of police activity in fenced-off sections didn’t involve mayhem caused by outsiders and homeless people. That’s right. Riverfront property owners brought many of their own problems.
There were domestic disputes inside an illegally fenced levee area in South Pocket. Up river near Benham Way, waterfront residents turned dogs loose on people walking along the levee. One homeowner sprayed water on neighbors innocently strolling past. Another levee resident tried to teach a teenage boy community values by dousing the lad with insecticide.
In other words, the alleged “safety problems” on the levee included troubles caused by the very people who would benefit from restrictions on public access.
Today the safety alarm is pulled whenever the question of levee access comes up. When I asked Katie Butler, a new board member of the Pocket Greenhaven Community Association, whether she supports access, she politely refused to answer. But she gladly recited a list of safety horrors.
“I pretty much stopped running on the bike trail about five years ago for safety reasons after too many encounters with homeless people,” she told me. “I do pop up on the trail near Garcia Bend every now and then, but it starts to feel unsafe down by the water tower.” Of course it does! The area is unfenced.
Cady Wachsman, a new Pocket Greenhaven Community Association board member from San Francisco, also declined to explain her position on access. But she’s big on safety. “I’m a supporter of safe, responsibly planned and managed public bike trails in the area,” she said. Yes indeed, and who isn’t?
Fortunately for citizens who fought for decades to win public access to the levee (among them the late, great Mayor Anne Rudin), authorities disconnected the safety alarm. They know it’s false.
State flood officials—owners and guardians of the levees—said private fences must be torn down after the Army Corps of Engineers reinforces the levees with slurry walls. New fences will not be permitted. The city has budgeted money to pave and finish the levee trail once the repairs are done, likely next year.
There are legitimate safety concerns around the levee. The city has found an appropriate response. Police will install cameras and license-plate reader equipment at key access points, making it easy to monitor and catch troublemakers who drive into the area.
That’s terrific. But cops have another problem: how to stop unsafe behavior by people who live next to the levee and swear they care about safety.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
