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9. Water Politics & The Third Isla Vista Cityhood Campaign
By Carrie Topliffe
The 1980s started slowly in Isla Vista as the reality
of the Reagan years set in. CETA job-training positions at community
agencies were wiped out, cutting back local services dramatically.
After a decade of advisory-only community government, citizen
participation began to wane, as did voting in strictly local elections.
This produced some dramatic results as Carrie Topliffe points
out in this chapter, which originally appeared in the Isla Vista
Free Press as two articles in the spring of 1987.
Topliffe was an elected member of the Isla Vista Park Board 1980-84. She has also been on the board of the Isla Vista Open Door Medical Clinic since 1977.
In November 1985, voter turnout in Isla Vista was the worst in
years, continuing a decade-long trend of declining participation
of Isla Vista residents in local elections. Significantly, it
was the watershed year for control of the Goleta Water Board,
the elected five-member body that supplies water to the unincorporated
communities of Goleta and Isla Vista. After fourteen years of
dominance by environmentalists, the Water District fell under
the control of a group of men determined to ease water restrictions
for new development.
To the beleaguered citizens of Isla Vista, packed into the densest, most poorly planned community in the county, the effects may be dramatic for years to come.
What happened? What changed Isla Vista from the most dependable
liberal voting bloc in the county to a seat of apathy mustering
only a few thousand-vote turnout? Perhaps the answer can be found
in the history of Isla Vista's place in local environmental politics.
In 1971, Llana Sherman, Jose Martinez, and John McCord were elected
to the Goleta Water Board on a platform that called for making
natural resources such as water "an input into the planning
process." In December of that year, they were instrumental
in passing a Board-declared moratorium on all new water hook-ups.
They justified this radical step with evidence that underground
water supplies were being depleted faster than they were being
replenished by natural sources. The Goleta Valley was growing
larger than the environment could reliably support.
In acknowledging the connection between vital environmental resources
and the human community, the Goleta Water Board was in the forefront
of a nationwide move toward environmental awareness. Growth could
no longer be seen as having no limits, nor could natural resources
be stressed beyond their ability to recover without exacting a
terrible future toll.
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