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The Grand Mistake

Hiking across the Grand Canyon allowed me to see what happens when our government fails to budget for clean up.


 

In addition to the 4th Street flooding from the 3 inch rains on May 12, 2023, what I call "The Grand Mistake" can now be seen on the ICISD campus. The Grand Mistake is failing to budget the money to clean up the ecological mess you've left behind.


The origins of the Grand Mistake came to me back in 2019 when I accomplished a bucket list journey of hiking across the Grand Canyon rim to rim. (If you are a hiker/camper and need inspiration, search "Grand Canyon rim to rim" on YouTube.) What the millions of people see when they stop their journey on the rims of the Grand Canyon is what appears to be one of the most pristine natural wonders of the world. What the few thousand per year of us that hike across it see, however, are the mistakes by the National Park Service where they have misjudged the force of storm water and left behind the carcass of their various failed projects to improve the park. As stunning as the the Grand Canyon is below its rims, one trekking across it will inevitably come across mangled metal bridges, exposed water pipelines, abandoned trails and campgrounds, all left behind because it is simply too expensive for the National Park Service to fully remove the projects and return the areas to leave no trace standards.


The Grand Mistake is particularly pernicious with flood control because forecasting the force and direction of floodwaters is often random. There's also climate change that adds to the uncertainty. And, there's no bean counter at any level of government, national or local, who is going to put money in the budget on the front end for ecological clean up in light of that randomness. The costs of ecological restoration is always budgeted by our government after the damage to the environment, and not at the time the project is being planned. And, of course, it takes our government leaders forever and a day to admit and want to rectify mistakes, especially the mistakes of those leaders who have gone before them, so the funding of restoration on the back end is relegated to the lowest possible priority.


And, in the case of ICISD whose focus is athletics, well, there's no funding at all for clean up. The policy goal of the superintendent and school board is to win, at any cost, even when they know about the ecological damage on the front end.


The impact of the Grand Mistake at ICISD can be best seen visually in photos, and with this post I am creating a tag called "Grand Mistake". First up is ICISD's parking lot currently under construction at Fayette and 5th Streets (an impervious parking lot on a hill!), which was flooded on May 12, 2023 to disrepair before its completion. The project is significant because it represents the school board digging into the District's fund balance to pay for a parking lot, and so it is a visual representation of the District going over budget with the 2019 bond funds. Once concluded, the project may be in the pantheon of Grand Mistakes because the storm water runoff from the lot will not only flood a teacher residence immediately next to the lot, it will flood the recent paving of a street next door paid for by the District AND will flood the football stadium. It will also flood the City of Mertzon's right of way and street, causing plenty of erosion. All of this for a parking lot that will at best be used for a few weeks out of the year!


Coincidentally, as part of this post I asked Bing's new AI chatbot what the term in economics is for not budgeting clean up expenses and it lead me to "negative externality". When I probed further for a non economics related term it said, "It could also be called being 'irresponsible' or 'inconsiderate' if its in a shared space."


Yes, there's that. The Grand Mistake happens in a shared space. All of the property managed by our government is shared.


Hiking up the South Rim, Bright Angel Trail, 2019

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