Jim Engelke's "No Plant Option" Is a "No Go Option" for Borrego

Jim Engelke’s discursive "Viewpoint" ("Borrego Water District, Farmers Should Consider No Plant Option," Borrego Sun, 3 November 2005, p. 6) oversimplifies, distorts, and flat-out misrepresents facts about agriculture and groundwater in the valley. Its only saving grace is its opacity. Most readers – even those who follow the groundwater situation closely – will likely give up when their eyes glaze over after the first couple of paragraphs and not be fooled.

• Engelke describes the newly established Groundwater Mitigation Fee of "something in excess of $4100" (actually $4,168) as applying to a "typical house on a typical lot" (whatever that means). His description is flippant and misleading. It implies that if the house or lot is somehow "atypical," then the fee may not apply or other variables may come into play; neither of which is true. Given the confusion already dogging this simple program, the BWD does not need help to confound the public.

• Engelke refers to the mitigation fee as an "interim fee" and cautions that "revisions should be expected." "Interim" means "temporary, provisional, in the meantime." While the program is not chiseled in stone and the fee may change annually according to an established formula driven largely by the cost of farm land, there are no expectations that it will be frequently "revised" in the usual sense of that word. Engelke’s depiction of it as ephemeral, therefore, only adds to the muddle and generates anxiety.

• Engelke states that "agriculture, golf, and residential development have collectively used more water than can be replenished by natural means." That bland understatement plays down the fact that the amount of water pumped from our sole-source aquifer every year is approximately five times the annual recharge. It is an obvious and transparent attempt to minimize the overdraft to make his fanciful and impractical proposal look feasible.

• Engelke characterizes the groundwater mitigation program as "lemons for houses." This may be just his attempt at humor; but, more likely, it is another conscious attempt to trivialize the mitigation program in order to make his own ill-conceived and unfounded proposal look better by comparison.

• Engelke asserts that "the community has options relating to agriculture." According to him, the BWD can:

   

  • "purchase agricultural lands along with the citrus crop;" i.e. the current mitigation program, although neither recognizable nor identified as such in Engelke’s disquisition;
  • "purchase the crop from the farmer in exchange for a no-grow easement on the land." This is badly stated, self-contradictory, and needlessly bewildering; for if there were a "no-grow easement," then there would be no crop. What he presumably means is that the BWD would pay a farmer not to grow a crop at all; i.e. the old Federal Land Bank concept. In this case, it amounts to purchasing the water rights for agricultural land while leaving title to the land itself with the seller; a strategy already being considered by the BWD as Engelke knows;
  • "purchase a no-plant option from the farmer. . . the farmer will not replant a water consumptive plant (citrus) in exchange for money and he retains the right to plant whatever non-consumptive plant he/she chooses" – Engelke’s favorite. According to him, the "no-plant program pays the farmer to establish a sustainable farming economy in the valley." Quite apart from the fact that this "option" guarantees full-employment for lawyers and the question of where the enormous amounts of money required to pay for such a program year after year would come from, there is one huge, obvious, and fatal flaw in it: It is impossible to "establish a sustainable farming economy in the valley." We live in a desert, rely on a sole-source aquifer, and there is not enough water. It is as simple as that, and Engelke knows or should know it; so his proposal is either hopelessly naïve and uninformed or disingenuous or both. Even without agriculture, if nothing else changed, we would still use 140% of the annual recharge (BWD figures for 1999). But other things have been and are changing – rapidly –all of them dramatically increasing demand for water.

Engelke contributes nothing new toward solving of our increasingly serious groundwater problem; raises a great many questions and answers none; and muddies waters already turbid enough. And that’s the charitable interpretation of his screed.

As an architect and "environmental planner", Engelke frequently attends both Borrego Springs Community Sponsor Group and BWD meetings to represent clients. In both of these venues he often presents highly imaginative concepts that he proposes to incorporate into clients projects. All of these, as one might expect, benefit the client. Most do so at the expense of the community. They are never well conceived or thought out. They are almost always accompanied by and rely heavily on concept drawings that appear, as much as anything, intended to draw attention away from the concepts and to their visual expression; i.e. attempt to sell the sizzle rather than the steak. Inevitably his presentations raise far more questions than they answer, and inevitably Engelke attempts to trivialize or avoid these questions rather than answer them. He is nothing if not consistent.    12/01/2005

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