- Definitely not at the water board, the courts or in Sacramento

DO MONTEREY Peninsula residents clean themselves more frequently if there are more showers or bathtubs in their houses?

What about cooking? Does the average Carmelite wash more vegetables, braise more short ribs or scour more dishes if his kitchen has more faucets?
And does a person go to the bathroom more often if there are more toilets available to him?

The answers are so obvious, the questions hardly bear mentioning. In Somalia or Laos, more sinks and bathrooms in houses might cause more water usage, but in civilized places, they do not.

Nevertheless, for three decades, the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District has played fixture cop to everybody who lives in its jurisdiction under the guise of “conserving water resources” and protecting the environment of the Carmel River.

Meanwhile, the district does nothing to actually restrict how much water you use. So while you can’t add a sink to your house, you can let the faucet in one of the ones you do have run all day and night, for all the water board cares. Its water cops will invade your house to count your toilets and sinks, and hit you with stiff fines if they find one that’s not on their books, but won’t say a word if your “legal” ones are left running all the time.

Little wonder, then, that reasonable people conclude that the water board, despite all its protestations to the contrary, not only routinely acts in a way the defies simple logic, it also doesn’t actually give a fig about controlling water use or protecting the river, but is in the business of stopping development — a task which is utterly outside its purview. If the city council in your town or the county board of supervisors decides by a majority vote to issue you a building permit, the water district should not stand in the way.

Nevertheless, that’s exactly what it does today, and has been doing for almost 30 years. The name for this kind of governmental abuse of authority is “oppression.”

Where do the people turn for relief when the government is abusing their rights? They’re supposed to be able to turn to the courts. But last week, Monterey County Superior Court Judge Lydia Villarreal, who has a habit of making wrong decisions, upheld the water district’s indefensible fixture-counting policy. She should have overturned it because it has no rational purpose.

Her erroneous decision leaves the State Legislature as the Monterey Peninsula’s last resort for setting its water laws straight. Will the Legislature do anything? Of course not. It never does.


- And even less so in Washington

So taxes are going up, but not as much as they would have if the country went over the “fiscal cliff.” It’s hard to be happy about that, because, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday, the 150-page legislation hurriedly passed by Congress and signed by the President this week contained hundreds of millions of dollars worth of pork for racetrack owners, Hollywood producers, green energy companies and other special interests lobbyists who have friends in Washington.

A few weeks ago, we were complaining that, while the federal government was telling everybody there was a fiscal crisis in the nation that could bring ruin within a few years if taxes weren’t raised, it was throwing away millions on a new “branding” of the Monterey Peninsula’s bus routes.

Millions? According to the “logic” followed in Washington, that amount of money is, literally, nothing.

The federal government is run so irresponsibly, it makes the water board look like a bunch of geniuses.