thedrifter
06-28-07, 09:05 AM
Logan Jenkins
Marines should dump canyon attack plan
UNION-TRIBUNE
June 28, 2007
It's taken a bit of rumination, but I think I understand the strategic importance of the Battle of Gregory Canyon.
When I first heard intelligence chatter of a late-July attack on a dairy within the 1,770-acre footprint of the long-planned landfill, I shook my head in utter disbelief.
As sometimes happens when I'm dazzled by breaking news, Humphrey Bogart materialized in a cloud of smoke.
Bogie, expelling a world-weary drag from his unfiltered cigarette, offered this “Casablanca” chestnut: “Of all the trash dumps in all the towns in all the world, the Leathernecks walk into mine.”
What, I marveled, had the Pendleton Marines been toking when they decided to conduct anti-terrorist training on North County's most bitterly disputed land, the source of more than 15 years of legal, economic, environmental, aesthetic and religious conflicts?
What had happened to their political GPS?
To Marines scouting the countryside near Camp Pendleton, the abandoned Verboom dairy, just off state Route 76, might have suited their theatrical purposes to a T.
To a critical mass of civilians, however, Gregory Canyon is North County's killing field of screams – terra infirma, so to speak.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, happens in that fractious neck of Fallbrook's hinterland without knee-jerk reactions from anti-landfill insurgents, an attorney-rich coalition that includes the Pala Band of Mission Indians, local NIMBYs and diehard enviros.
Think about it.
Gregory Canyon Ltd. has spent upward of $40 million trying to pave the legal way for a modern dump beside the San Luis Rey River and, despite the confident projections of spokespersons Richard and Nancy Chase, it's anyone's guess when – or even if – trash will be buried there.
Gregory Canyon.
It's a bucolic no-man's land waiting – and waiting and waiting – for the regulatory gods to finally declare, “Gentlemen, start your dump trucks.”
Into this land-mined battlefield marches America's 911 Team, creating a new state of emergency.
As soon as the news of the mock attack broke, crazy conspiracy theories ran wild.
Could it be that Gregory Canyon, destined to crater as a dump, would turn into a location for special-ops training? Would Blackwater USA, the private security company, turn its back on Potrero and set up shop in Fallbrook?
What about the danger of fire? And who was paying off whom?
And why couldn't the Marines find anyplace to train on their 200-square-mile home?
The duly reported facts deflated many of the more feverish fears.
The Marines reportedly cased the dairy and called Gregory Canyon Ltd. Seeing no down side, the company agreed to let the Marines train at the dairy. Supposedly, no money will change hands. Firefighters will be near. The Marines sometimes require off-base training challenges to stay sharp.
In a June 18 letter to Richard Chase, Gary Erbeck, director of the county Environmental Health Department, made this unequivocal statement: “The training exercise is important to Homeland Security.”
The use of capitalization in this context is ambiguous.
Either “Homeland Security” is so important it needs to be dignified with capital letters, or the Department of Homeland Security believes the exercise is important.
Either way, Erbeck offered his patriotic seal of approval along with his assertion that risk to the land's health is nil:
“Sensitive habitat areas have been demarcated as out-of-bounds, and no operations will occur in these areas. The homestead is located in an area with suitable upland arroyo toad habitat, but toads have never been encountered in this area in numerous surveys. No impacts to toads are expected.”
The toads, if they do hop around there, will survive.
Now that's a relief.
Let's get serious for a moment.
This training exercise, during which actors posing as terrorists will be captured or killed, is destined to be, at least in part, a PR show designed to instill pride in the nation's military mission.
Given the recent – and future – publicity, the Marines will be performing on a public stage, especially on the third day when the live rounds are fired and the bombs go off. Boom!
To make the training more genuine, perhaps gawkers on hilltops could be invited to wear turbans or burkas. Now that's great footage at 11!
Meanwhile, Gregory Canyon Ltd. will be cashing in on its own patriotic PR coup. The message: The landfill site is not so fragile after all.
To local enviros, those are fighting words. That's why they're yelling “Fire!” long before there's smoke.
These battle-weary folks understand political symbolism. They want Gregory Canyon tied up in the courts for the next century. To achieve that end, they need the land to be valued as a delicate eco-system, an organic link to the river, not a movie set featuring explosions. They'll battle the Battle of Gregory Canyon with all their might.
On the whole, Marines are better off blowing up things on their own sprawling bases.
But if they must mock-invade civilian territory in the name of Homeland Security – or even plain old homeland security – they probably should pick locations where the collateral damage is not so predictable.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
Ellie
Marines should dump canyon attack plan
UNION-TRIBUNE
June 28, 2007
It's taken a bit of rumination, but I think I understand the strategic importance of the Battle of Gregory Canyon.
When I first heard intelligence chatter of a late-July attack on a dairy within the 1,770-acre footprint of the long-planned landfill, I shook my head in utter disbelief.
As sometimes happens when I'm dazzled by breaking news, Humphrey Bogart materialized in a cloud of smoke.
Bogie, expelling a world-weary drag from his unfiltered cigarette, offered this “Casablanca” chestnut: “Of all the trash dumps in all the towns in all the world, the Leathernecks walk into mine.”
What, I marveled, had the Pendleton Marines been toking when they decided to conduct anti-terrorist training on North County's most bitterly disputed land, the source of more than 15 years of legal, economic, environmental, aesthetic and religious conflicts?
What had happened to their political GPS?
To Marines scouting the countryside near Camp Pendleton, the abandoned Verboom dairy, just off state Route 76, might have suited their theatrical purposes to a T.
To a critical mass of civilians, however, Gregory Canyon is North County's killing field of screams – terra infirma, so to speak.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, happens in that fractious neck of Fallbrook's hinterland without knee-jerk reactions from anti-landfill insurgents, an attorney-rich coalition that includes the Pala Band of Mission Indians, local NIMBYs and diehard enviros.
Think about it.
Gregory Canyon Ltd. has spent upward of $40 million trying to pave the legal way for a modern dump beside the San Luis Rey River and, despite the confident projections of spokespersons Richard and Nancy Chase, it's anyone's guess when – or even if – trash will be buried there.
Gregory Canyon.
It's a bucolic no-man's land waiting – and waiting and waiting – for the regulatory gods to finally declare, “Gentlemen, start your dump trucks.”
Into this land-mined battlefield marches America's 911 Team, creating a new state of emergency.
As soon as the news of the mock attack broke, crazy conspiracy theories ran wild.
Could it be that Gregory Canyon, destined to crater as a dump, would turn into a location for special-ops training? Would Blackwater USA, the private security company, turn its back on Potrero and set up shop in Fallbrook?
What about the danger of fire? And who was paying off whom?
And why couldn't the Marines find anyplace to train on their 200-square-mile home?
The duly reported facts deflated many of the more feverish fears.
The Marines reportedly cased the dairy and called Gregory Canyon Ltd. Seeing no down side, the company agreed to let the Marines train at the dairy. Supposedly, no money will change hands. Firefighters will be near. The Marines sometimes require off-base training challenges to stay sharp.
In a June 18 letter to Richard Chase, Gary Erbeck, director of the county Environmental Health Department, made this unequivocal statement: “The training exercise is important to Homeland Security.”
The use of capitalization in this context is ambiguous.
Either “Homeland Security” is so important it needs to be dignified with capital letters, or the Department of Homeland Security believes the exercise is important.
Either way, Erbeck offered his patriotic seal of approval along with his assertion that risk to the land's health is nil:
“Sensitive habitat areas have been demarcated as out-of-bounds, and no operations will occur in these areas. The homestead is located in an area with suitable upland arroyo toad habitat, but toads have never been encountered in this area in numerous surveys. No impacts to toads are expected.”
The toads, if they do hop around there, will survive.
Now that's a relief.
Let's get serious for a moment.
This training exercise, during which actors posing as terrorists will be captured or killed, is destined to be, at least in part, a PR show designed to instill pride in the nation's military mission.
Given the recent – and future – publicity, the Marines will be performing on a public stage, especially on the third day when the live rounds are fired and the bombs go off. Boom!
To make the training more genuine, perhaps gawkers on hilltops could be invited to wear turbans or burkas. Now that's great footage at 11!
Meanwhile, Gregory Canyon Ltd. will be cashing in on its own patriotic PR coup. The message: The landfill site is not so fragile after all.
To local enviros, those are fighting words. That's why they're yelling “Fire!” long before there's smoke.
These battle-weary folks understand political symbolism. They want Gregory Canyon tied up in the courts for the next century. To achieve that end, they need the land to be valued as a delicate eco-system, an organic link to the river, not a movie set featuring explosions. They'll battle the Battle of Gregory Canyon with all their might.
On the whole, Marines are better off blowing up things on their own sprawling bases.
But if they must mock-invade civilian territory in the name of Homeland Security – or even plain old homeland security – they probably should pick locations where the collateral damage is not so predictable.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com.
Ellie