A SIERRA Club activist who closely followed the controversies at the California Coastal Commission once observed that oceanfront property owners who lobbied for easing of building restrictions were trying to “kill the goose that laid the golden egg.” His point was that, by making it impossible to create any new lots or build anything on most of this state’s beautiful coastline, the coastal commission ensured that existing subdivisions and developments remained valuable and exclusive. Therefore, the restrictions actually benefitted the people who fought them.

Or, as another insightful person put it: The easiest way to create affordable housing is to build lots of homes. However, if the housing supply remains fixed, the value of existing homes (in desirable areas, anyway) invariably goes up, putting them out of reach of families with modest incomes, thereby excluding these families from communities that don’t add housing.

Most of the people being excluded are Hispanic or African-American. So to avoid being accused of elitism or racism, California's exclusive communities have learned to make a pretense of wanting more housing. Instead of taking a direct decision not to permit new subdivisions, or even construction of townhouses or apartments on lots of record, they create an infrastructure shortage or environmental crisis which makes building “impossible.”

In other cases, where the majority in a town, acting through its elected representatives, wants to permit a modest amount of new construction every year, its will is easily thwarted by a small group of activists who invoke the state’s insanely far reaching and incomprehensible environmental protection laws to put a stop to anything and everything the activists don’t happen to like.

All that is old news, especially on the Monterey Peninsula.

But what we’ve never understood is why minority communities don’t raise holy hell about the policies which, in effect, keep them from living in nice towns.

We’re not saying the Sierra Club, Surfrider, the Monterey County League of Women Voters and other no-growth groups are racist. Of course they’re not. But these groups’ take-no-prisoners land use policies have a racist effect.

We understand why the alliance of Hispanics, African-Americans, unions, trial lawyers and environmentalists in Sacramento is so strong. Even if these groups don’t see eye to eye on every issue, their allegiance keeps them all in power.

But why do minority groups remain silent about land use policies at the local level? As the decades have gone by, we’ve scarcely heard a word from them about the Gordian Knot of local policies that discourages construction of new housing in Monterey County’s upscale communities. And as our “no growth” water shortage drags on and on, making new housing impossible to build and choking off opportunities for businesses to expand or be created, community advocates from minority groups have stayed on the sidelines.

But all that suddenly changed this week, with the emergence of a vocal coalition of Spanish-speaking and African-American activists at the PUC hearings on our new water supply. They even have a new umbrella group, the Waterwatch Coalition of Monterey County, to lobby for a water supply that’s adequate for their communities’ economic and human needs.

Needless to say, they have a very tough fight in front of them. So entrenched are the no-growth forces in Monterey County politics, so deeply rooted is the fake infrastructure shortage, and so powerful are laws such as CEQA and the Coastal Act, it will actually be difficult to make any progress at all. For example, the water supply project they demanded at this week’s PUC hearings doesn’t contain a drop of new water to help members of the Waterwatch Coalition achieve their housing and job goals. For all its costliness and energy consumption, the regional water project will do nothing more than reduce pumping from the Carmel River to benefit the river’s fish and frogs. You can look it up.

Nevertheless, it was wonderful to see these minority groups asserting themselves and asking for the opportunity to get a bit more of this county’s wealth.