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| Nhat V. Meyer McClatchy-Tribune |
The patch of dirt
outside my door at the front of my apartment building smells like dog
urine. The grass is long dead and worn away. Next door, the duplex has a “lawn” of mixed
dry weeds and crab grass (the only grass that seems to thrive without water). The owner of that building has reduced his
watering to once every two weeks. Across
the street, the homeowner ripped out his lawn altogether and replaced it with
white rocks. Papers and trash swirl in
the street and the slightest breeze brings a dust storm of gritty particulate
and dead, dry leaves. The neighborhood
looks windblown and arid. A foreclosed home
around the corner has been redeveloped into small apartments. Where those potential renters will park is
anyone’s guess because the street parking is always full from the tire store
and car dealerships on the boulevard up the street. My neighborhood has become an industrial
wasteland due to drought and overcrowding.
In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck’s Joad
family sees California as a modern promised land where the earth is fertile and
opportunities abound. The grandfather dreams
of sitting himself in a tub of grapes and “squirshing around,” symbolizing the
abundance of the farmlands of the region.
In California, Grandpa Joad thinks, you can bathe in grapes! What they find is much different from their
idealized version.
Anyone traveling to
California today might also find a land very different from what he or she has
envisioned. California is not the promised
land. It is a place that does not live
up to its dreamy fiction, and the drought has made that all the more apparent to
anyone who takes a good look around.
Freeways are littered with trash. The landscaping is dead due
to the lack of water, and pot holes and the rough pavement can rattle a car’s
suspension system until it feels as if the tires will fall off. Trees stand dead and brown, diseased or
dehydrated. The famous stucco houses and
apartment buildings are streaked with dirt.
Los Angeles, in many places, has become an ugly city.
Homeless people from
all over come to L.A. because the weather is mild and consistent. But with global warming, we are having more
and more triple-digit days and that makes it rough on the homeless population. Los Angeles is ill-prepared to deal with a
heat crisis like we see today in Pakistan with close to a thousand people dying
of heat-related conditions. The number of tents in parks, in alcoves on thoroughfares, on the sides of the freeways,
has grown. Signs proliferate: “Will work for food.” “Homeless vet.” “Large family needs assistance.” And of course, every sign has the same sign
off: “God bless.” In what promises to be a smoky, hot, dusty
summer, God’s mercy will definitely be needed by those who live rough on the
streets and alleys of L.A.
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| Mindy Schauer Orange County Register |
Of all of Los Angeles’
most pressing needs—affordable housing, renewed infrastructure, better city
services—the most serious is water, the stuff of life. The drought is killing us. There are a few signs of hope, however. The Pacific is warmer and that might lead to
a wet El Nino winter. In addition, there are red crabs washing upon beaches from Orange County to northern Los Angeles County, usually a precursor
to the El Nino phenomenon. We can only hope this means a wet winter is
coming, but it would take several wet years to undo the damage that has been
done by this drought.
Los Angeles has always
been a city challenged by water issues.
Joan Didion wrote about it in one of her essays entitled “Holy Water.” William Mulholland stole the water rights from
the Owens Valley with his construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Global climate change has only exacerbated
the problem now, and the prognosis, whether or not politicians disagree with
the scientists, is dire.
Down the street from
my dog-piss dirt patch, the city recently installed artificial turf on the
center median of the boulevard to avoid using water to feed plants that spend
their lives choked by exhaust fumes from traffic. Wood chips, rocks, and cactus have replaced
the green lawns throughout the neighborhood.
The city is brown and dry and hot and dusty, and that will be a fact of
life in L.A. for some time to come.
