Re: Home built septic tank
- From: jJohn Klausner <somis.7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 01 Jan 2006 09:42:14 -0800
Larry Caldwell wrote:
The Oxnard Plain is disappearing under concrete....In article <43b612c5$0$4182$5a62ac22@per-qv1-newsreader- 01.iinet.net.au>, please@askifyouwannaknow (Farm1) says...
The issue here in this ng has usually been that the "fears" are "facts". Urbanites who relocate just don't understand that the country has rules and newcomers who want to make their place in a rural communtiy don't trangress those rules. The urbanites just tend to think that the locals are unfriendly and ignorant whereas it is their own action that has resulted in them committing an offence against the locals. They are so insensitive that they usually don't even know that they have done anything wrong.
In the USA, the real problem rarely surfaces in this news group. Urban sprawl destroys the productivity of the land. Over half of California's Central Valley is now out of agricultural production. This is an area that once produced 80% of America's vegetables. The vegetable deficit (vegecit?) now is imported, mostly from Mexico, where urban sprawl is not a problem.
50 years ago, Los Angeles County produced more agricultural goods than any other county in the USA, and Orange County was #3. Now, neither one produces anything, and people spend an hour on the freeway each direction just to get to work.
The problem is more severe in the USA than in any other country because of the US love affair with the automobile. In most US cities, an automobile is a virtual necessity. Universal car ownership has created a demand for more and better roads, while degrading the urban environment. It is possible to find urban housing developments of thousands of houses with no sidewalks, no parks, no public buildings and no gathering places.
Sometimes it gets positively surreal. About 12 years ago I attended several meetings on the Nike campus, the world headquarters of the famous sport shoe company. It was a beautiful place, with jogging trails and a lake, surrounded by heavily travelled 4 lane streets with a 45 mph speed limit, and not a sidewalk or crosswalk within miles. The only way to get there was to drive.
The urban mind set is to shut themselves in boxes. They shut themselves in little boxes to travel, and shut themselves in bigger boxes to live. They don't even walk on streets in the city. My wife grew up in the city, and it has taken me years to break her out of her boxes. I finally have gotten her to picking a path and ambling a few miles just to see the countryside and visit the neighbors.
Just plain stupid, imo. I don't know how to preserve farm land fairly - that is, I think it's not right to prevent a farmer from selling his land if he chooses to, so locked in zoning isn't right - but it seems like there should be _some_ way. The only solution I've thought of is buying development rights, so that the land can only be used for farming without paying huge amounts for the right to develop. Problem with that, of course, is that governmental bodies _want_ land developed - it raises tax income. As the expression goes "land rises to it's highest use"...and some people seem to think that growing houses is a higher use than growing food. Go figure.
SueK
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