Perfect Deniability for Sprawl

Albuquerque Journal coverage of the new Albuquerque City Council President deliberations includes Councillor Harris's little aside about the Water Authority. 

One key decision for a council president is agreeing on appointments to the board of the Water Utility Authority, which is overseen by three city councilors, three county commissioners and the mayor.  Harris said he would support appointees who understand the need for water conservation but that "it would be very important to me that the water board shouldn't be making land-use policy."

That's the developers' job. 

This isn't some little side of beans and rice.  It is the whole enchilada -  our water management future.  Or rather, why we don't have one.   I contend, like a skipping cd, this was intentional.  The idea behind creating the Water Authority was to green light land use decisions and free those that make them from pesky concerns and limitations posed by water policy or any potential future water policy.  Land use worries are severed from water worries, so no worries!

Management and meager planning efforts are now divided statutorily.  Separate policies of separate agencies apply to falsely separated aspects of inherently related features - land and water.  Water is not in the Council's perview, and land use is not in the Authority's perview.  So anything having to do with both of them, which is a whole lot, is screwed unmanageable.

Presto: An inability to manage growth in anyway.  The perfect deniability for sprawl.

Comments

[pedro]

Bingo! Why is this stuff so prolix? Thanks for hauling up the flagpole for all (on yor blog) to see. Now how do we get this into the Journal?