One of our better pro-Valley’s Edge pieces, by former Fire Chief Bill Hack, might have missed a point. The project’s “comprehensive wildfire mitigation strategies” have a lot to do with Valley’s Edge having unlimited access to Chico’s groundwater supplies. In all seasons we can count on Edge residents pumping several times what the rest of us use to try to stay green. And in dry years when Chico is on water rationing Valley’s Edge will be pumping all the water it can draw to keep ahead of unpredictable winds and fires. That’s why we haven’t built there up to now, and why with our water table increasingly at risk we won’t need Valley’s Edge water crises and fire evacuations to tell us it might have been a mistake. And the wrong place to locate affordable housing. Nice try though.
We also need to face the possibility that Valley’s Edge won’t remain a workable 40-year plan because it won’t have 40 years. Not on our water reserves and the cost of fire insurance when water gets scaled back there just like here. Worse, like with Paradise, we’ll have to do a lot of catching up to replace lost homes in Valley’s Edge with homes that should have been built here in the first place. That in Chico’s 40 year plan? And are more police, firefighters and equipment for handling fire evacuations in? Or is that not a covered mitigation strategy just yet either? Vote “no” on O and P.
— David P. Smith, Chico
