Which Crossing is Okay?

We need a bridge!

            It’s time for another guessing game here on Save Briggs Road! Which of the river crossings shown below have escaped condemnation by the powers that be?

            All but one of the photographs below were taken in Soledad Canyon, not far from the location of our desired crossing.

      1. It is not unusual for a culvert-based crossing to wash out during a period of heavy rain. This photograph depicts the remains of such a crossing. Prior to the washout, what was the status of this crossing?

      2.  This bridge enjoys a bit of notoriety for its novel construction. It features the traditional culverts, with a garnish of railroad ties marinated in creosote. The crossing has gone the way of all such structures after a heavy storm, with the culverts slipping and rolling downriver, and the railroad ties steeping in the wet sand.

      3.  Is there such a thing as over-building a crossing?

4.  Here vehicles cross over the frothy flood via a railroad car bed. Note the safety railing at the sides.

5.  This picture was taken during construction of a culvert bridge, four days after its predecessor was wiped out. (We've been waiting almost ten years for the privilege.)

6.  Is it more environmentally sound to anchor the culverts in concrete, or is it better to allow the swollen river to push aside all obstructions? We know of a case where the river undermined a concrete barrier and left it buried forever at the river bottom.

Another View

Now for the scoring. If you judged only one of these bridges to be allowed to stand until the next flood, you get only one point, for not understanding how things work in Soledad Canyon.

In fact, however many of the bridges you judged to escape censure by the authorities, that is your score. Yes, the perfect score on our quiz is six. Not one of the photographs presented here represents a forbidden crossing.

What, then, constitutes a forbidden crossing? A crossing to be used by the residents of the Briggs Road Community is, by some strange definition, in violation of the edict set by the people-in-charge. We are not aware of any other type of crossing to run afoul of the authorities.

You may have noticed that I did not divulge the location of any of these bridges. That is because it is not our wish to have any of them or their descendants condemned. The point is this: What’s the Big Deal? If every one of these bridges is allowed to stand until Mother Nature takes it out, what is so special about a crossing accommodating the Briggs Road Community? Over the years we have cooperated in the creation of several such crossings, none worse than the worst on display here.

One last thought: Allowing the Briggs Road Community to cross the Santa Clara River benefits every single party involved in this struggle, be it a governmental agency or private interest—assuming that each is being honest about its intentions. I am not at liberty to spell out each of those benefits, but certainly there is no harm in suggesting what a bundle of good will and good press would settle on the shoulders of every involved member of Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich’s staff. 

It should be all right to point out that re-opening the much shorter access to Soledad Canyon Road takes our traffic off of the many more miles that run directly through Conservancy holdings. 

And surely there is no need to mention the importance of having a secure and reasonable access route for Briggs Road residents. That's only right.

More on the Peculiar Email

In the study of logic two statements are said to be logically equivalent if they are both true (or both false) under the same set of circumstances. And if one statement is the contrapositive of the other, then the two statements are logically equivalent. In symbolic terms, the statements “If A then B” and “If not B then not A” are contrapositives.

Let me give you an example from real life. The statements “If you are granted a building permit then you must have legal access” and “If you do not have legal access you will not be granted a building permit” are contrapositives. Therefore the two statements are logically equivalent.

Our legal research assures us that Los Angeles County has the right to deny a Certificate of Compliance, and thus a building permit, for a plot of land that does not have legal access. We have called the county offices, without identifying ourselves, and been assured that absolutely no Certificate of Compliance will be issued without legal access.

Any office that issued a building permit for any parcel along Briggs Road must have believed that Briggs Road had legal access.

Mr. Novak says, in that peculiar email: “One point about access that is important to bear in mind:  according to Building & Safety records the property-owners you represent have “official” access off the back (other) road, the one that is essentially impassable. Our building officials checked the records, and all of the owners pulled their permits identifying the other road as their access.”

You see, in order to be logically consistent, he had to say that. Otherwise there is a big problem about having issued all those building permits. But in order to say that, he had to say something else that was even more untrue, and imply yet another untruth after that.

Whatever kind of access Mr. Novak imagined the Department of Building and Safety imagined the property owners had, and whatever the word in quotes “official” is supposed to mean, the Briggs Road community does not have legal access out the back way. We have very tentative physical access, but have been informed rather abusively that our access is not legal.

So whose mistake is that? Building and Safety when they approved the permits? The alleged researchers at Building and Safety when they informed Mr. Novak that we had access the back way? Or could this all have been a convenient fabrication?

And, again my question: suppose all of this is simply a web of unfortunate but innocent errors. This email was sent less than a month after the first closure of our access. Mr. Novak is gone now, but why would the County of Los Angeles perpetuate the error and even compound it with other obstacles?

But wait! There’s more!

Mr. Novak admits that the back way is “essentially impassable.”

WHAT ABOUT THE FIRE DEPARTMENT?! The Fire Department would never ever ever sign off on an access road that was “impassable.” In fact, their requirements are very explicit and quite strict—and the back way fails because there are many hairpin turns, many grades are too slippery and steep, and the road is too narrow almost the entire way. 

And you don’t get a Certificate of Compliance without the Fire Department.

There is NO WAY our neighborhood acquired building permits based on the back way. In reality, one of our first neighbors to successfully land a building permit remembers very specifically riding back and forth with a fire department official over the front, traditional route. That official declared our front access adequate for fire protection and it was on the basis of his approval that subsequent Certificates of Compliance were issued. There was none of this nonsense about the back way being official. It was probably never even mentioned.

So we are the victims of a big shift in policy, it would seem, but with no explanation, no redress, no compensation. How can one explain that? I wrote a poem:

L is for the land that we have learned to love so well,

I is for our isolation,

A is for the access that we crave, legally implied, and

R is for the railroad and riparian crossings in our way.

***

I hope you are all reading the many comments we are receiving. Apparently there are a lot of people out there with knowledge and experience and ideas that surpass our own. And I have to say this: if the officials of Los Angeles County and the State of California are ever able to stand up and admit that a wrong has been done and to actually correct it, I, for one, want to be one of the first to acknowledge their courage and conscience. It must be an extremely difficult thing to do; witness how few in politics are able to concede errors in judgment.

But it would be so much more pleasant to have things go that way than into some of the other outcomes our readers have suggested.

A Powerful Sea

Sometimes I reflect on the great, arrogant public entities that have fallen by the wayside, victims of their own hubris. Sure, we think about Napoleon, and then Hitler, invading Russia. But there are numerous other examples right here in our own country. Lyndon Johnson was dissuaded from campaigning for re-election by, among other things, a vocal youth movement. Voting with their feet and their wallets, the People have rejected Detroit, Montgomery Ward, Sears, A & P, not to mention scads of lesser politicians. Right now California is suffering the beginning of a major exodus, motivated by the rules and laws that treat the populace as if they were the ignorant and corrupt ones. When I visit other states I am surprised to hear them remark how Californians are flooding in.

It seems so obvious to those of us on the outside looking in. What happens to those powerful organizations and people? Are they not pained by the disapproval and animosity of the populace? Maybe they are unaware of it. Maybe they don’t care. Do they care when finally the walls tumble around them and the world sees them for what they are? Or do they just move on to the next conquest?

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity.” (Edmund Burke)

Fair enough. Let’s all ask ourselves whether our appetite or our moral judgment motivates us. Is it just too greedy for a neighborhood to want a right of way restored that harms no one and has been supported in a court of law?

If only we knew the reasons for others to oppose this community’s legal access to the roads of Los Angeles County, we could honestly assess the ethics of one position over the other. None of the reasons given so far are remotely believable, but if they are in fact the honest intentions of those who would choke this neighborhood to death, we reject them as insufficiently honorable.

Based on the kind of response I personally experience from people all over Los Angeles County, our major opponents in this little drama are well known and actually—no, I am going to say it—actually despised by an astoundingly wide spectrum of Californians. I wouldn’t wish on anybody the reactions I see, which far surpass my own. It’s one thing to disagree with a person, agency or party politically, but these forces have tapped into something more threatening, more personal. And it’s not just here. The other day I told our story to a lady from Texas. If ever, ever anything I do ever generates such a look of horror and disgust on the face of a respectable person, may I find a deep hole to crawl into.

Well, enough about that. Let’s talk about you. During a social upheaval that helped change American policy, there was a saying:

 “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

And then there’s this:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Mistakenly attributed to Edmund Burke, but a pretty good quote.

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Yup. Briggs Road is not the only community suffering, at least not according to what people are saying to each other. Perhaps each pocket of the County that has issues feels that they are so vastly overpowered that there is nothing they can do. Well, that’s true—as long as each of us floats comfortably, for now, in that vast sea of indifferent citizenry. It doesn’t have to be that way. A sea is powerful when it moves.

There are so many of you! It is heartwarming to know that you are visiting and reading. Let’s hear your reaction to our predicament. And let’s hear your story.