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Small town sees big role in future; West Point says it’s now or never to craft political, economic changes

Posted by: Maven on December 7, 2008 at 7:29 am

From Stockton’s Record:

It sounds like an action thriller movie plot: a band of unlikely allies joins forces in a depressed former logging town to thwart grave robbers, restore the town’s industrial base and battle global climate change.

But the two dozen state, local, federal and nonprofit agency leaders who met Friday in a tiny office in West Point are deadly serious. And they say the new administration about to be sworn in in Washington as well as anticipated federal spending to create jobs, repair infrastructure and aid conversion to a more energy-efficient economy make this the time to craft a plan and set it in motion.

What, exactly, are they anticipating?

What they will do is draft a plan that would use federal infrastructure spending and other funding sources to solve long-standing problems, such as the risk of catastrophic forest fires and to create new industries like biomass electricity generation plants fueled with the small-diameter brush that must be removed to restore forests to health.

“I think we have a big role in it,” Skalski said of the Stanislaus National Forest and its 900,000 acres.

To put it in a nutshell: Political and economic changes now happening may finally prompt the larger society that benefits from wood, water and clean air the region provides to pay for proper care of the Sierra and its forests, some officials say. Several of those at Friday’s meeting said that climate change, and the likelihood that President-elect Barack Obama’s administration will agree to international limits on discharges of carbon into the atmosphere, will be key to that future.

Read the full text of this story from The Record by clicking here.

December 7, 2008 · Filed Under Climate change & water supply

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