Earth to Mayors and Developers.....

"Danger Will Robinson, Danger!" Remember that "Lost in Space" refrain as the Robot warned of pending doom? We need that robot now more than ever and he needs to be in the Mayor's Offices of the the Southwest and the offices of our tunnel visioned developers.

For the last week the Planet's scientific community have been crying, Danger Earth, Danger! And, it seems, Danger for the American Southwest especially. Think long term and permanent drought. And yet sprawl development plans are steaming ahead full speed with out any thought of their impact on our water resources. A perfect example right now is the annexation in Las Cruces that will essentially triple the size of the city with mostly state trust land. There has been little or no planning done on this resource. The feeble planning that is going on has been turned over by the land office to a developer who contributed over $30,000 to Pat Lyons in the last election. It was not bid out for a master plan so that the Land Office and citizens of Dona Ana County can be sure their tax dollars and water supplies are being looked after. It has been on the fast track and aided and abetted by the Las Cruces City Government with little public involvement.

In the meantime, I wait for a voice of reason to come out of some Mayor's office somewhere, or even a city councillor, to put a brake on things and ask some tough questions about future growth options in the face of global warming being real. Have Marty Chavez of Albuquerque, Mayor Mattiace of Las Cruces, other Mayors and city councils just decided to check out on these hard questions? Or are they so afraid of the developers that caution can just be thrown out the window to rest in a potential dust bowl.

Here is a simple thing to do. A Mayor of one our bigger cities should call together a panel of scientists, planners, citizens and yes, even developers, to look over current sprawl development practices to see if they are in our best interests. How hard can that be? Or do we conduct this giant experiment in the southwest to see if it all doesn't really matter that we change sprawl behavior?