The Leaky Pipeline That Needed Repair Every 12.7 Days; Gentrification in the High Desert–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: May 6, 2024

Indy Digest: May 6, 2024

A couple of months ago, a reader asked me if I could find out some information about the number of times the water line beneath one little section of a road had been repaired. That led to this Digest intro, which illustrates the importance of public records—and reveals something about our aging infrastructure.

Full disclosure: That reader is my hubby, and that little section of road is Avenida Caballeros between Ramon Road and Tahquitz Canyon Way, in Palm Springs. We live near the road, and in recent years, it has seemed like Desert Water Agency crews were there every few weeks, if not more often, digging into the roadway to make some sort of fix.

Thanks to public records laws, this should be an easy question to answer. We live in a country and a state where, with appropriate (and some inappropriate) exceptions, the documents produced by, and the communications of, the government are supposed to be available to the public. Of course, that doesn’t mean the government always complies. As regular readers know, we publish a yearly piece looking at the extreme lengths some government employees go to in order to avoid sharing public records. Personally, I have been asking a local elected official’s office for some records that are VERY OBVIOUSLY public for months now, and I’ve been ignored—and other than filing a lawsuit, there’s little I can do about it other than keep asking, since these laws unfortunately don’t include penalties for noncompliance. (Watch the Independent for the story; it’ll be published within a couple of weeks, with or without those records.)

Fortunately, this is a happy public-records story: The two Desert Water Agency employees I worked with, Xochitl Peña and Sylvia Baca, were helpful and responsive to my request, which was not necessarily an easy one to handle: I asked for “a list of all of the repairs/work DWA has done on Avenida Caballeros between Ramon Road and Tahquitz Canyon Way … back to 2018.”

Here is the list I received from the DWA a couple of weeks later. For some reason, it shows that only one repair was made in 2018, and that the first 2019 repair happened on April 18. My hunch here is that this is not accurate; if this were more of a pressing matter, I would have followed up with the DWA to learn more. (Just because a record is public, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily accurate.)

From April 18, 2019, through March 12, 2024, however, the list of repairs—almost all due to “age” and fixed via a “clamp”—is lengthy: It includes 141 fixes. That averages out to a repair every 12.7 days. Wow.

By complete coincidence, my query happened just as work was starting on the replacement of that pipeline: On the day I submitted my request, Xochitl Peña sent me a link to the DWA website’s pipeline-repair page, which included the details on the plans for this little section of Avenida Caballeros.

According to the DWA, that pipeline, like so much of our country’s infrastructure, is pretty darned old: It was installed in 1953, 71 years ago. The replacement work is slated to be finished in July or August, at a cost of $2 million.

Over the last week or two, parts of that section of Avenida Caballeros have often been closed during the daytime. I’m very happy this waterline is being replaced—and I am sure the DWA workers who had to dig into the roadway so often over the last several years are happy, too.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The murders of three tourists in Baja California have raised questions about vacationing in the Mexican state. The Los Angeles Times reports: “The men who were killed were Australian brothers Callum Robinson, 33, his brother Jake, 30, and their American friend Jack Carter Rhoad, 30. … The three men were on a surfing trip in Baja California and were expected to check into an Airbnb in Rosarito on April 27 but never showed up, according to Debra Robinson, Callum and Jake’s mother. The three arrived in Mexico on April 26 for their idyllic beachside trip. Callum Robinson posted photos of the trio drinking beer on a rooftop, as well as pictures of the men at the beach and in a rooftop Jacuzzi. Their disappearance triggered a manhunt and investigation by local Mexican police, the FBI and the Mexican marines. … Mexican authorities have determined that the three men were killed by thieves who were looking to steal their white pickup truck in order to sell its tires.”

• Also from the Los Angeles Times: The newspaper takes a look at increasing gentrification of the high desert by tagging along with … a snake wrangler? Yep. Here’s the Times’ Essential California newsletter writeup about the aforementioned snake wrangler, Danielle Wall. (The newsletter links to an even more-in depth feature.) Key quote: “The communities surrounding Joshua Tree National Park have been rocked by transformative changes since the COVID-19 pandemic sent hordes of city dwellers into more isolated areas. … As someone who humanely relocates rattlesnakes that people find on their properties, Wall has seen these shifts from a unique vantage point. I realized this as I followed her on her eighth call of the day, to yet another home that was being renovated. Just look at Landers, where Wall lives. Between 2020 and 2022, the unincorporated community north of Yucca Valley—historically known as a meeting spot for UFO enthusiasts—saw the biggest jump in typical home values of anywhere in California, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. It was followed by the nearby towns of Joshua Tree and Twentynine Palms.”

• The turmoil on college campuses around the nation continues. Here’s The New York Times’ update page with the latest. A note from UCLA: “More demonstrators were arrested Monday as classes resumed at the University of California, Los Angeles, the site of some of the tensest moments during a wave of student activism at U.S. universities over the war in Gaza. Lieutenant Richard Davis of the UCLA campus police said the protesters arrested in a campus parking deck were charged with conspiracy to attempt burglary. A UCLA spokesman later said that 44 people had been taken into custody. The arrests came as pro-Palestinian demonstrators attempted a sit-in at Moore Hall, student organizers said. About 30 protesters were sitting in a corner of the parking deck around 9:45 a.m. local time, with their hands zip tied behind them. They were later taken to a sheriff’s bus.”

• Politico examines battles between state officials and the Biden administration over research into the avian flu that’s now spreading among cattle: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is at odds with state officials and the dairy industry over its on-the-ground response to the avian flu outbreak spreading among dairy cows, complicating President Joe Biden’s efforts to track and contain a virus that has the potential to sicken millions of people. ‘It’s overreach. They don’t need to do that. They need to back off,’ Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, a former rodeo cowboy who is a possible pick to lead the USDA if former President Donald Trump wins the presidential election, said in an interview. Texas, the first state where the bird flu virus was detected, has not invited the CDC to conduct epidemiological field studies there, even though its health department is open to the research, because, ‘We haven’t found a dairy farm that is interested in participating,’ said Lara Anton, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services. The resistance of dairy farmers is emblematic of the trust gap between key agriculture players in both red and blue states and federal health officials—one that public health experts fear could hamper the nation’s ability to head off the virus’ threat to humans.”

• Today’s recall news involves … coated confections! Food Safety News reports: “Palmer Candy is recalling various ‘White Coated Confectionary Items’ because of potential Salmonella contamination. According to the recall, Palmer Candy was notified about the potential risk by the supplier of the liquid coating used for the white-coated confections. The recalled Confectionary Items were distributed nationwide in retail stores and to wholesale. The recalled items were distributed internationally and were sold at Walmart, Hy-Vee, Target and Dollar General stores in Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. … As of the posting of this recall, no illnesses have been reported in connection with this problem.”

• And finally … if you have a cat that likes cardboard boxes, please make sure you don’t accidentally close a box and ship them off. The Associated Press tells the story of Galena, a 6-year-old cat: “When Galena disappeared on April 10, (owner Carrie) Clark was beside herself. They searched the neighborhood, put up flyers and posted notices on Facebook lost pet pages in Lehi, Utah. ‘Not knowing what had happened to her was pretty excruciating,’ Clark said, ‘I cried my eyes out for seven days trying to figure out what had happened.’ … Clark said she received a ‘text that changed my life’ on April 17, saying that Galena’s microchip had been scanned, so Clark knew she had been found somewhere. Soon after, she got a call saying her cat was near Riverside, California, after being found in a box along with steel-toed boots that had been returned to an Amazon warehouse. Clark’s husband had ordered several pairs of boots, kept one and returned the rest in a large box on April 10. ‘We realized that that our sweet kitty must have jumped into that box without us knowing,’ she said.”

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