At home, Sarah Palin's dead lake

[Neil D]

Sept. 19, 2008 | WASILLA, Alaska -- Every morning she's at home here, Sarah Palin wakes up to a postcard view from her lakeside home. Out the windows of her two-story wood-framed house stretch the serene, birch-lined waters of Lake Lucille. Ducks go gliding by the red-and-white Piper Cub floatplane docked outside. With the snow-frosted Chugach and Talkeetna mountains looming in the distance, the scene seems to define the Alaska that Palin celebrates: rugged, majestic, unspoiled.

And, yet, the lake Sarah Palin lives on is dead.

"Lake Lucille is basically a dead lake -- it can't support a fish population," said Michelle Church, a Mat-Su Valley borough assembly member and environmentalist. "It's a runway for floatplanes."

Palin recently told the New Yorker magazine that Alaskans "have such a love, a respect for our environment, for our lands, for our wildlife, for our clean water and our clean air. We know what we've got up here and we want to protect that, so we're gonna make sure that our developments up here do not adversely affect that environment at all. I don't want development if there's going to be that threat to harming our environment."

But as mayor of her hometown, say many local critics, Palin showed no such stewardship.

"Sarah's legacy as mayor was big-box stores and runaway growth," said Patty Stoll, a retired Wasilla schoolteacher who once worked in the same school with Palin's parents, Chuck and Sally Heath. "The truth is, Wasilla is just plain ugly, it's not a pleasant place to live. It's not thought out. And that's a shame.

"Sarah fouled her own nest, and I can't understand why. I hate to think it was simply greed or ambition."

Among the environmental casualties of Wasilla's frenzied development was Palin's own front yard, Lake Lucille. The lake was listed as "impaired" in 1994 by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, and it still carries that grim label. State environmental officials say that leaching sewer lines and fertilizer runoff caused an explosion of plant growth in the lake, which sucked the oxygen out of the water and led to periodic fish kills.

"Sarah," a recent biography of Palin by Kaylene Johnson, features a photo of a beaming Palin, sitting in a rowboat on Lake Lucille clutching a fishing rod. But, according to local fishermen, the Republican vice-presidential candidate would have to be very lucky to reel in something edible.

The Alaska Fish and Game Department dutifully stocks the lake with coho salmon and rainbow trout each year -- but the fish don't last long.

Fishing on the lake "was tough," reported Alaska fishing guide Carlyle Telford on his Web site when he tried his luck on Lake Lucille last year, "because the vegetation is decaying and floating. When you retrieve every cast, the fly comes back with crud on it."

In a recent phone conversation, Telford said he hasn't returned to Lake Lucille since then. "I think the lake's pretty dead," he said. "That's why I haven't been back."

Wasilla, where Palin grew up and still resides, sprawls between two lakes -- Lucille and Wasilla Lake. Cottonwood Creek, which flows in and out of Wasilla Lake, has also been labeled "impaired" by state environmental officials, after foam was detected on the water surface and subsequent testing found excessive concentrations of fecal coliform bacteria.

The two lakes are the town jewels, the only eye relief along a harrowing corridor of strip malls, big-box stores and fast-food drive-throughs that is Wasilla. "Lord, help me get through Wasilla," reads one Alaska bumper sticker.

The population in Mat-Su Valley began booming in the 1970s with the Alaska oil pipeline and the influx of oil workers from Texas and Oklahoma. But while some valley towns tried to control growth -- like nearby Palmer, which was originally settled by Midwest farmers as part of a Roosevelt social experiment in the 1930s -- Wasilla took a frontier, boom-town approach. Soon the Parks Highway, which cuts straight through Wasilla, and its arteries were lined with a chaotic bazaar of quickie espresso shacks, moose-stuffing taxidermists, Bible churches, gun stores, tattoo and piercing parlors, mattress barns and the inevitable box stores with their football-field parking lots.

John Stein, Palin's predecessor as Wasilla mayor, tried gamely to get a handle on the commercial free-for-all. He made an effort to restore the health of Lake Lucille, which, he said, "was turning into a bog."

"We brought up a scientist to study both lakes," Stein recalled. "We also worked with the state to filter storm drainage from the highway."

Controlling runoff from the six-lane highway is a key to saving the lakes in Wasilla. Other cities have their industrial pollution problems; Wasilla has highway pollution. "Anything that comes off an automobile -- oil, antifreeze, de-icing agents, heavy metals -- all of that can run off into the lakes when it rains," observed Archie Giddings, Wasilla's public works director.

But while Mayor Stein tried to impose some reason on Wasilla's helter-skelter development, and its growing pressures on Mat-Su Valley's environmental treasures, when Sarah Palin took his place, she quickly announced, "Wasilla is open for business."

"That's for sure," Church said. "Sarah was so eager for big-box stores to move in that she allowed Fred Meyer to build right on Wasilla Lake, and her handpicked successor, Dianne Keller, has done the same with Target."

Under Mayor Palin's reign, Fred Meyer, an emporium that sells everything from groceries to gold watches to gardening tools, lost no time in leveling a stand of trees overlooking the lake for its big-box store. When Fred Meyer applied for permission to pump the storm drainage from its parking lot -- with all the usual automobile sludge -- into the lake, outraged citizens finally cried enough.

"We mobilized public opposition," said Church, who led the Friends of Mat-Su, a pro-planning group, at the time. "We forced them to put in ditches and grassy swales to catch the runoff.

"Sarah was such a great cheerleader for Wasilla, but she did nothing to protect its beauty. She'd go to these Chamber of Commerce meetings and say, 'Wasilla is the most beautiful place in the world!' And we'd just sit there gagging."

A city official in nearby Palmer, who has lived in the Mat-Su Valley his whole life, sadly admitted: "Sarah sent the growth into overdrive. And now they're choking on traffic and sprawl, all built on their ignorance and greed.

"I try to avoid driving to Wasilla so I won't get depressed," added the official, who asked for his name to be withheld, to avoid Palin's "wrath."

"You get visually mugged when you drive through there. I take the long way, through the back roads, just to avoid it."

Wasilla City Council member Dianne Woodruff hears the same lament about her town all the time. "Everywhere in Alaska, you hear people say, 'We don't want to be another Wasilla.' We're not just the state's meth capital, we're the ugly box-store capital. Was Sarah a good steward of this beautiful valley? No. I think it comes from her lack of experience and awareness of other places, how other cities try to preserve what makes them attractive and livable.

"The frontier mentality has prevailed for so long in Mat-Su Valley -- the feeling that 'you're not going to tell me what to do with my land,'" added Woodruff. "That's fine as long as you have endless open space. But when you start to fill in as a city, you can end up with a sprawling mess. With million-dollar homes next to gravel pits -- and dead lakes."

In recent years, after Palin's departure from City Hall, Wasilla has been "changing and learning," according to Woodruff. The city has taken steps to control toxic runoff into its two lakes.

But Wasilla still doesn't test the lakes' water quality -- that's left up to volunteer groups, which periodically take samples from the lakes, according to city officials.

Why is there no official effort to test the local waters?

"That's a good question," said Wasilla public works chief Giddings, after a long, thoughtful pause. "I guess we're still ahead of the curve. We haven't seen huge concerns about the lakes yet."

Giddings acknowledged that there has been some public concern about swimming in the lakes, but not enough to prompt the city to monitor the water quality. If the public did start complaining about skin rashes, diarrhea and other health problems, "the state would probably step in," he added.

Would Giddings let his own children swim in Wasilla's lakes? "Yes," he said.

But Laura Eldred, an environmental program specialist with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, offered a more qualified response. She would swim in the local lakes, but would "take the usual hygiene precautions," without specifying what those measures were.

"Sarah did nothing to protect our lakes; in fact, she obstructed efforts to improve our water quality," said city watchdog Anne Kilkenny. The property surrounding Wasilla's two lakes is privately owned, complicating the city's efforts to protect these natural treasures. While her predecessor, Mayor Stein, moved to incorporate the homes surrounding the two lakes -- like the Palin family residence -- so the city could control runoff from the dwellings, Palin campaigned for "no more annexation."

"Sarah hasn't traveled outside of Alaska much," said Kilkenny. "She hasn't seen dead lakes and rivers."

Now Palin can see one right out her window.

I keep telling you guys...this eye candy lady is looking pretty scary. She allows sprawl in her city as mayor, and does absolutely nothing to control pollution??? Tell me, how would the devil come to us ? Looking like eye candy for the eyes and killing us with dead lakes and making bad policy. Oh, did you guys know that Wasallia was meth capital for Alaska????

[Dr. Shane]

I expect to see a lot more swiftboat attacks like this one. A lot of people cannot stand the idea of a conservative woman with power. Sarah doesn't fit their mold of what a woman should be so they will go to desperate lengths to destroy her.

This same thing happened with a number of lakes in Minnesota. We had to clean them up. It is plant growth that sucks the oxygen out of the water. We have a similar problem on the Rio Grande right now and have to work in cooperation with Mexico to clean it up.

[Tom Wetmore]

... If it's the truth, it's not swiftboating...

[Neil D]

Quote:

A lot of people cannot stand the idea of a conservative woman with power. Sarah doesn't fit their mold of what a woman should be so they will go to desperate lengths to destroy her.

Hey, I was willing to let Hillary Clinton be president...It's just that I wanted different political ways of doing things...and Obama did it with answering her with truth....

He's doing the same with John McCain...and it is interesting to see that McCain is doing more swiftboating than Obama is....

And, you have to admit, Obama is advocating that if you want the same stuff to happen as in the Bush administration, go ahead and vote for McCain...McCain ain't doing that...To me, THAT is change....

[Dr. Shane]

It is swiftboating when it is a distraction that has little to nothing to do with the candidate. Should we talk about what Obama sees when he looks out his window - Rezco's house? Isn't that a bit of swiftboating? Guilt by association. Palin lives next to a dead lake so she must not care about the environment. Seems like a pretty big leap there.

[Neil D]

It's not Obama organization that is doing it....

This article was from Salon....granted, it like Obama, but it is not affiliated with Obama's orgnaization....And yahoo printed it up... So, it is hitting the main stream media....

...and as for who brought it here, well, you can blame me, Shane...I have big shoulders..You can say that I "swiftboated" McCain...

[Tom Wetmore]

...Palin lives next to a dead lake so she must not care about the environment. Seems like a pretty big leap there.

Your Republican underwear is showing and it is apparently so tight it is adversely effecting your reading comprehension. If you read the article without filtering it through the 3 little monkeys Republican filter (See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil about any Republican...) you would see that it is no leap at all. As Mayor, she did nothing to clean up the lake and in fact did many things to make it worse. Her posing fishing in the boat is just a primo example of her superficial touch - make an appearance of environmental support for political posturing, but then do the opposite.

Of course that is why she is the perfect running mate for McCain. Say whatever you need to serve the political objective, even if your actions and record are 100% opposite to your political rhetoric. And that, Shane, is what refutes your lame effort to explain away his 90% voting with Bush. Yes he says (read political speech) he opposes Bush, but he still ends up supporting Bush's position when it comes to the vote. Like Mama always said, "Actions speak louder than words."

Tom

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

State environmental officials say that leaching sewer lines and fertilizer runoff caused an explosion of plant growth in the lake, which sucked the oxygen out of the water and led to periodic fish kills.

Those are two separate issues. Are these leaking sewer lines from septic tanks or an out-dated sanitary sewer system? If they are from an out-dated sanitary sewer system the city does need to replace them. If they are from septic tanks the solution may not be so easy as the property owners probably have their septic tanks grandfathered in. The City would need to extend sanitary sewer to them which could be quite costly depending upon how far away the lines are and the capacity of the treatment plant(s).

Fertilizer runoff sounds like a rural problem. The lake must not be completely within the City limits. It would then be in the county or state's jurisdiction.

Clean-up of the lake would be an expensive task and only something that one would try to do after the sewer and fertilizer issues had been resolved. If these issues were beyond the jurisdiction of the City to resolve, no clean-up would happen until after the proper authorities had taken action to stop the problem.

Quote:

The Alaska Fish and Game Department dutifully stocks the lake with coho salmon and rainbow trout each year -- but the fish don't last long.

Sarah's picture with a fishing rod in a boat may well have been taken after the lake had been stocked. Perhaps she is such a good fisher that is why the fist don't last long.

It isn't that I wear ideological glasses. Rather I am skeptical of the news. I don't swallow stuff hook, line and sinker.

[Tom Wetmore]

...Clean-up of the lake would be an expensive task ...

But apparently a far lower priority than building a 16+ million dollar hockey rink for her little town of 5,000...

She could have used some of the millions of pork-barrel earmarks she succeeded in getting for her town and for the state of Alaska...

Or even some of the de-earmarked $230 million in Federal money for the bridge to nowhere that she got to keep and spend even after the bridge idea got scuttled by Congress.

Yes you heard that right! The $230 million that had been earmarked for the bridge project was still released to Alaska by Congress. Palin's administration took it and spent it. Without it being earmarked they could spend it on whatever state project they wanted to!

[Dr. Shane]

The hockey rink produces revenue. Not only direct revenue for the City but businesses associated with it will prosper and thus pay more taxes to the City. Thus (follow this closely) the City can sell bonds to build a hockey rink knowing they will be able to pay back the money.

Before they could clean up the lake they would need to stop the problem. As I noted above, that may not even be within the City's jurisdiction. Trying to get the voters to pass a bond referendum would certainly take a lot of charisma and no doubt be commendable. But I don't think we should have expected any mayor to be able to accomplish that.

[Tom Wetmore]

But this was not just "any mayor". This was Sarah Palin!

And Shane, part of lake clean up IS getting rid of the problem that caused the mess... DUH!

The hockey rink produces revenue. Not only direct revenue for the City but businesses associated with it will prosper and thus pay more taxes to the City. Thus (follow this closely) the City can sell bonds to build a hockey rink knowing they will be able to pay back the money.

And how well do you suppose that is working out for them? Selling bonds is just a fancy way of borrowing money. She left her town $20 million in debt more than when she came into office. And the lion's share of that was for the hockey rink.

Actually, Shane, Sarah Palin raised taxes in Wasilla as part of the plan to pay for her son's hockey rink. She got approval by a narrow margin to impose a 2.5% sales tax in Wasilla to help pay for the hockey rink/sports complex. Direct revenue apparently really wouldn't cover the debt service on those bonds. And how long do you suspect it will take to pay off those bonds? Here is the Wall Street Journal's coverage of that bit:

Palin's Hockey Rink Leads to Legal Trouble in the Town She Led

[jasd]

QR frame:

Sheesh, I read some of the listers as sounding as belonging to the

sistahood of Sandra Berhardt.

[Dr. Shane]

It's six one way and half-dozen the other: raising taxes or passing a bond. Building a hockey rink or any sporting complex is generally seen as an accomplishment for a public figure. Only partisans bent on swiftboat attacks are going to turn something negative.

[Kountzer]

Originally Posted By: Shane

...Palin lives next to a dead lake so she must not care about the environment. Seems like a pretty big leap there.

Your Republican underwear is showing and it is apparently so tight it is adversely effecting your reading comprehension. If you read the article without filtering it through the 3 little monkeys Republican filter (See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil about any Republican...) you would see that it is no leap at all. As Mayor, she did nothing to clean up the lake and in fact did many things to make it worse. Her posing fishing in the boat is just a primo example of her superficial touch - make an appearance of environmental support for political posturing, but then do the opposite.

Of course that is why she is the perfect running mate for McCain. Say whatever you need to serve the political objective, even if your actions and record are 100% opposite to your political rhetoric. And that, Shane, is what refutes your lame effort to explain away his 90% voting with Bush. Yes he says (read political speech) he opposes Bush, but he still ends up supporting Bush's position when it comes to the vote. Like Mama always said, "Actions speak louder than words."

Tom

...3 little monkeys repubican filter...wow that's good stuff. I need to follow your posts more carefully. Maybe I can pick up a pointer or two.

DB

[Dr. Shane]

My son came home from school the other day telling me how funny it was to call a little girl in his class "Ana banana". He told me how everyone was saying it but Ana didn't like it. I told my seven-year old son that if Ana didn't like it he shouldn't join the others in saying it. I told him he needs to be nice to her so she doesn't feel bad. As a father, part of my job is to teach my children how to play well with others.

[phkrause]

good post shane. It just amazes me how politics can change a otherwise nice person into a completely different person. That's basicly why I try to keep out of discussing politics on any of there threads. I personally don't care at all for politics, but I don't condemn anyone who enjoys it. But from what I have noticed people get really carried away with insulting each others reasons for who they happen to pick as there candidate of choice. To me it seems that people should be able to choose who they think seems to be closet to what or who they would want in office without being condemned for there choice. Each candidate has there pro and cons. I've never seen one candidate or party that has everything that everyone would want. Just my observation.

pk

[Tom Wetmore]

I have no quarrel with that be nice to others view. I have repeatedly noted that a number of nice people with whom I generally agree except for politics seem like very different creatures when it comes to politics.

However the "be nice to others" parable/lecture or other similar admonitions seem to have never occurred to anyone until one of those liberal types started following suit. I and several others have pointed out this very thing, especially when the conservative point of view was dominating the discussions and the snide remarks, etc. were directed toward the liberals and their point of view. But we were just characterized as whiners and thin-skinned.

It all just depends on whose ox is being gored.... as the saying goes.

[Tom Wetmore]

It's six one way and half-dozen the other: raising taxes or passing a bond...

A rather strange non sequitur... A bond is borrowing which must be paid off like any other loan. The debt requires revenue to be generated to meet the debt service on such borrowing.

In you previous post you suggested that the hockey rink generated that revenue directly through user fees and indirectly by bringing new business into the community. The implication was that it essentially paid for itself. But the reality is that in order to make it work out financially Sarah Palin raised taxes with a 2.5% sales tax in Wasilla, among other things. Wasilla is also one of only 25 Alaskan municipaliites that levies a property tax. Imposing the new tax was necessary to help pay off the bonds for the sports complex, since the porperty tax revenue and user fees for the hocky rink were insufficient to cover the bond debt payments.

This has been posted before but bears repeating again:

Quote:

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative." During her six years as mayor, she increased general government expenditures by more than 33 percent. During those same six years, the amount of taxes collected by the city increased by 38 percent. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax, which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefitted large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenue during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list, though — borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt but left it with indebtedness of more than $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? Or a new library? No. $1 million for a park. $15 million-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex, which she rushed through, on a piece of property that the city didn't even have clear title to. That was still in litigation seven years later — to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5 million for road projects that could have been done in five to seven years without any borrowing. -- from Crosscut.com

And please notice of direct relevance to the topic of this thread - a needed sewer treatment plant for the city, which would have helped stop the sewage leaching into the lake... Not done on her watch.

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

A bond is borrowing which must be paid off like any other loan.

Yes, it is paid off by the tax payers. She built the hockey rink because the people wanted it. They elected her in even higher numbers the second time and voted for her in even higher numbers yet when she ran for governor. The overwhelming majority in her home town like her. She served the people and did their business for them.

[Woody]

good post shane. It just amazes me how politics can change a otherwise nice person into a completely different person. That's basicly why I try to keep out of discussing politics on any of there threads. I personally don't care at all for politics, but I don't condemn anyone who enjoys it. But from what I have noticed people get really carried away with insulting each others reasons for who they happen to pick as there candidate of choice. To me it seems that people should be able to choose who they think seems to be closet to what or who they would want in office without being condemned for there choice. Each candidate has there pro and cons. I've never seen one candidate or party that has everything that everyone would want. Just my observation.

pk

Very Well Said Pk.

This is the very reason that Ellen White spoke with caution regarding politics. We can see it played out here on the Forum. It divides rather than unites.

[olger]

True Redwood.