July 31

DISABILITY JUSTICE, RACE, AND A RIVER LEVEE UPDATE

I’ve been reading the blog of Mia Mingus, an important leader in transformative justice and disability justice (among other things). I started with a transcript of the short speech Moving Toward the Ugly: A Politic Beyond Desirability. Here are a few excerpts that particularly resonated with me, personally and politically:

“Ableism must be included in our analysis of oppression and in our conversations about violence, responses to violence and ending violence. Ableism cuts across all of our movements because ableism dictates how bodies should function against a mythical norm—an able-bodied standard of white supremacy, heterosexism, sexism, economic exploitation, moral/religious beliefs, age and ability. Ableism set the stage for queer and trans people to be institutionalized as mentally disabled; for communities of color to be understood as less capable, smart and intelligent, therefore “naturally” fit for slave labor; for women’s bodies to be used to produce children, when, where and how men needed them; for people with disabilities to be seen as “disposable” in a capitalist and exploitative culture because we are not seen as “productive;” for immigrants to be thought of as a “disease” that we must “cure” because it is “weakening” our country; for violence, cycles of poverty, lack of resources and war to be used as systematic tools to construct disability in communities and entire countries.”

“As the (generational) effects of global capitalism, genocide, violence, oppression and trauma settle into our bodies, we must build new understandings of bodies and gender that can reflect our histories and our resiliency, not our oppressor or our self-shame and loathing. We must shift from a politic of desirability and beauty to a politic of ugly and magnificence. That moves us closer to bodies and movements that disrupt, dismantle, disturb. Bodies and movements ready to throw down and create a different way for all of us, not just some of us.”

“Because we all do it. We all run from the ugly. And the farther we run from it, the more we stigmatize it and the more power we give beauty. Our communities are obsessed with being beautiful and gorgeous and hot. What would it mean if we were ugly? What would it mean if we didn’t run from our own ugliness or each other’s? How do we take the sting out of “ugly?” What would it mean to acknowledge our ugliness for all it has given us, how it has shaped our brilliance and taught us about how we never want to make anyone else feel? What would it take for us to be able to risk being ugly, in whatever that means for us. What would happen if we stopped apologizing for our ugly, stopped being ashamed of it?  What if we let go of being beautiful, stopped chasing “pretty,” stopped sucking in and shrinking and spending enormous amounts of money and time on things that don’t make us magnificent?  

Where is the Ugly in you? What is it trying to teach you?”

Photo by Jane Orbuch, meme by Joy Schendledecker

I make a connection between this speech and the second defacement of the Black Lives Matter street mural in front of City Hall, last Saturday evening. It is a sign that we continue to minoritize, racialize, disable, and “other” Black people in our community.

Santa Cruz is founded on white supremacy, genocide, and xenophobia. Some (white) neighbors get VERY touchy and defensive when this is brought up, but it’s objectively true. Repeated defacement of the mural, and mistreatment of BIPOC community members, is evidence of our racist intergenerational inheritance.

My ADHD brain also made a connection between this speech and what has been happening with the San Lorenzo River levee since last December. It has certainly been made more ugly with the clearing of plants and the grouting of animal burrows. The ugliness of bureaucracy led to 150 native plant babies being grouted. It’s an ugliness which is decidedly not magnificent.

We have disabled, colonized, oppressed, exploited, and expropriated our magnificent river for too long. I understand that we have to work with the infrastructure we’ve inherited, that we need to protect people living nearby. AND how can we apply principles of healing justice to respect the magnificence inherent to the river? How can we move away from the bureaucratic violence of capitalism towards holistic ecology and recognition that when we disable the river we disable our ecosystem–which includes ourselves?

Below I am passing on (lightly edited) information from Barbara Riverwoman, who, along with a few others, has been doggedly (and magnificently) following this issue, connecting community members, and sharing information in emails and Jurisdictional Bibliography of San Lorenzo Urban River Flood Control.

I first wrote about this in a February column: Of Consent Agendas and River Levees, Or, Is the San Lorenzo River a Person?

July 28, 2023

Dear Members of Protect Our River,

I heard officially from Janice Bisgaard in the Public Works Department that the City will be asked to approve the PW Request for Proposal on Tuesday, August 8.

I hope that all our work, as well as the article in Lookout, will stir some interest in the issue – and help encourage people to write letters and show up. We will not stop approval of the RFP, but we must bring more and more public awareness to the many forces at work to destroy our natural environment, including urban green space. This is a good chance to do some public education.

It’s always interesting how a relatively minor misstep–like misdirected grout by an incompetent contractor–will attract public attention to something that is much more seriously flawed. It is powerfully symbolic, though–cement poured on 150 young native plants! Maybe Russ Brutsche can capture this!

Every plant matters!

-barbara

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July 25, 2023

Hello friends in Sierra Club,

Thank you so much for your interest in protecting the water quality and wildlife habitat of the urban San Lorenzo River. A broad network of support makes so much difference.

I am writing to share the perspective of someone who, as a birder, has been paying careful attention to the flood control policies and practices of the City since 2015, especially on the riverine reach of the levee from Water St. to Highway 1.

I have been engaged with the FEMA certification project since December 2022 when most of us in the environmental community first heard that FEMA was planning to enact a much more aggressive management policy than had been carried out under USACE in the previous decades since the levee was constructed.

Since 2015, I have  monitored the annual flood control work on the levee to verify that the City was complying with the specifications contained in the local governance document San Lorenzo Urban River Project regarding vegetation removal on the inboard side of the river.  In the past, the concern about flooding focused on high waters OVERTOPPING the levee.  As a result, the focus of the management policies emphasized primarily removing large trees from the inboard side of the levee in order to ensure unobstructed flows. Low growing vegetation, especially on the outboard side, was never a consideration in those years because detection of seepage and destabilization of the levee was not a consideration.

In July, 2020 the Army Corps of Engineers turned the management of the levee over to the City of Santa Cruz and gave the City three years to bring its management strategy into line with FEMA guidelines. Although the FEMA guidelines were the same as those of the USACE, FEMA emphasized a much more stringent enforcement policy if the City wanted to continue to qualify for a major 50% discount on FEMA insurance protection.

This situation coincided with the fear of a possible increase in the population of ground squirrels (a diurnal species) and perhaps an equally but less visible increase in the population of nocturnal gophers.

The tunnels of these rodents have indeed, historically, been responsible for destabilizing levee systems. In 2014 a levee collapsed on the Secchia River in Italy due to animal burrows, resulting in flood damage in excess of $500 million (see this link). Some argue that this was caused primarily by lack of maintenance, and others say the hydrology of that river and the San Lorenzo River differ significantly.

In any case, there is no research or documentation to date here in Santa Cruz as to whether or not there is significant destabilization of the levee. So far, the current management policies are based on a feared potential, not a documented reality, as well as an understandable desire for a lower insurance rate.

It is difficult to know how the two new concerns weighed in the balance. Was it a serious concern of the City about increased risk of levee failure that pushed the City to accept unquestioningly the necessity of the environmentally damaging new policies?

Or was it pressure from the City, business community and all property owners in the floodplain, to protect their discounted insurance rates.

Perhaps the city would say a combination. We will probably never know unless MBK Engineering or the City of Santa Cruz releases such information, or reports that there is no documentation.

In any case, an entirely different set of flood control measures were required to protect against a levee collapse, as opposed to protecting against the overtopping of the levee.  The response of the City was to roll out an environmentally damaging method of detecting a possible collapse before it happened. They therefore followed to the letter FEMA guidelines that required a clear line of view of the entire outboard (and inboard) bank in order to spot any seepage, the most reliable predictor of levee failure (also called levee breach or levee collapse). This required the aggressive new policy of removing all vegetation that in any way obscured complete visibility of seepage. It also required, as a complementary policy, that all rodent tunnels be fumigated and filled with grout.

This development set off many alarms among the community concerned about the wildlife habitat on the levee and the water quality of the river. Paramount among the environmental concerns were the possible eradication of two ongoing restoration projects being conducted by the Coastal Watershed Council on the inboard side of the transitional reach, and by the Estuary Project on the outboard side of the estuarine reach. It appeared that both of these restoration projects were seriously threatened by the new directives.

There were no ongoing restoration projects on the riverine reach of the River, but activists identified tens of thousands of square feet of dense native manzanita patches along this reach that possessed a very high wildlife value (nectar in the spring for hummingbirds and pollinating insects, as well as berries in the fall for a range of songbirds). Secondly, the dense woody root system of the manzanita served as excellent erosion control. And, ironically, the dense foliage and root systems of manzanita served as a very effective deterrent to ground squirrels, since not a single ground squirrel cover could be detected in or near the manzanita patches. It was too dense for the squirrels to squeeze through.

The activist group, Protect Our River, communicated by letter and in person with the City about this situation, and proposed several specific variances. But the City went ahead and tore up every inch of the manzanita, leaving wide stretches of disturbed soil, the kind of environment most attractive to burrowing rodents.

(Left) Red-tailed Hawk looking backwards, April 4, 2020, Riverine stretch, San Lorenzo River, Photo by B. Riverwoman;
(Right) Same hawk, about to take flight from willows in the same area. Photo by B. Riverwoman

The priority issues for our group are now:

• that the City discuss with us the possibility of allowing the manzanita to come back (as it already is beginning to do) since there is no sign of levee destabilization in the areas of manzanita, and in fact the dense patches function as an effective deterrent to ground squirrel occupations of the area.
• that MBK Engineering and the City of Santa Cruz release any and all information they have regarding the current state of destabilization of the levee due to burrowing animals;
• that the City seriously consider utilizing electronic imagery to obtain an electronic image of the inside of the levee and possible burrows to verify the extent of tunneling, and;
• that the City seriously considers nature-based solutions to vegetation management per recent congressional legislation–including the planting of rodent-deterring vegetation like manzanita (and the elimination of rodent-attracting food litter); raptor boxes; and more.

On behalf of our group, Protect Our River, I want to thank the Sierra Club again for taking an interest in this rich urban environment. It is the #14 top birding hotspot in all of Santa Cruz County!

Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any comments or questions.

Sincerely,

Barbara Riverwoman

river@cruzio.com, (831) 454-0252.