EL Cid High School Newspaper Editorial: 1998

By 2050 the United Nations predicts that the world population will be close to 10 billion people.  The Surfrider Foundation projects that by the same year, six billion people will live within 100 kilometers of coastal margins worldwide.  That is the ENTIRE world population at the moment.  Besides the problems of feeding, educating, and caring for this massive amount of new people, you should worry for another reason.  You live in the most beautiful, temperate, and ecologically blessed city in the richest nation in the world.  And you bet that people all over the world are going to want to live here.  Who wouldn’t?

But if you’ve visited Los Angeles, you know what this recipe amounts to: an overcrowded, polluted, inhospitable megalopolis.  San Diego’s evolution will be somewhat different due to the fact that it has been constructed according to planned development, but the potential for San Diego to become a behemoth of suburbia is foreboding.  Encroachment of development on natural features has already devastated numerous areas in San Diego.  The I-15 corridor is functioning at holding capacity due to an orgy of development in Poway, Rancho Bernardo, and Escondido, and the military is happily developing housing on top of San Mateo Creek (its outlet is at the surfing beach Trestles), one of the last pristine and untouched coastal headlands left in California.  I guess there was no place else to build on 125,000 acres of property, except for a fragile ecological environment.     

Unfortunately, there is more bad news.  Defying a statewide trend, San Diegans have voted against limitations on development and for the agendas of developers.  But I don’t believe the majority of San Diegans really realize what they are doing or, as in the situation of most disillusioned or apathetic voters, what is going on without their participation. 

One case in point is Proposition B, the Rural Heritage and Watershed Initiative, which aimed to limit the development of about 600,000 acres of land in the eastern two-thirds of the county, near Grover Cleveland National Forest.  The initiative failed, 59. 5 percent, or 316, 088 votes, cast against it, and 40.5 percent, or 214, 351, in favor.  Not only is the voter participation in such a vital issue disheartening, but the decision is another failed opportunity to preserve our natural features before they are gone forever.

The spin that special interest groups are applying to these development campaigns is also troubling.  Carmel Valley and Del Mar maintained a pro-development line by approving Proposition M, which outlines the construction of 5400 homes surrounding Black Mountain Road, immediately adjacent to the proposed site of the new USDHS.  The Pardee Construction Company agreed to contribute money for the completion of Highway 56 if the bill was passed, and so proponents showcased the entire bill as a vote for freeway funds, which was not the central issue of the bill.  In another contortion of ideology, advocates of the development of 4000+ houses east of Fairbanks Road (Proposition K) used class tensions as a tool for campaigning.  They distributed a cutout of a Roles Royce and said something to the effect of: “The rich people don’t want us to use their roads,” as if the proposition to conserve land was based on one class’s hatred of the other.   

It may be hypocritical for us to now say that we like San Diego how it is and that we don’t want any more people cramping the city.  The Native Americans may have said the same in the sixteenth century and the Mexicans in the nineteenth.  But because industrialization has enabled humanity to develop sprawling urban centers only in the last century, the possibility that San Diego will turn into Los Angeles, an overpopulated mess, is very real.  Right now, this very second, is the best chance we have of ensuring the responsible and reasonable development of our city.  

The best thing you can do is to be aware that these things are happening around you.  Exercise your right to vote as soon as you can, and know that there is a monied interest out there that may not be functioning on a level of genuine concern and compassion for the environment.  The future is our world, and we have the most to gain by protecting it.  If you value San Diego, raise your voice in the name of responsible and reasonable development.