East County Roundup highlights the best stories about East County
issues found in other publications.

JAMUL’S
PLAN TO BUILD CASINO MAY NOT STAND TEST OF HISTORY

San Diego Union-Tribune (March 30, 2009)—

OVERVIEW

Background: The Jamul Indian Village partnered with Lakes
Entertainment to build a casino in East County that faced significant local
opposition.

What's changing: A U.S. Supreme Court ruling over tribal
land in Rhode Island raises legal questions about Jamul's casino plan.

The future: In addition to any impact the ruling may
have, Lakes Entertainment says the project will be delayed at least five years
because of financial concerns and a suit over access to the casino site.

COUNTY ADOPTS STRATEGY FOR MANAGING BRUSH:

Local environmentalists say approach
relies too much on controlled burns

North County Times (March 25, 2009)--The county on Wednesday adopted a strategy
for managing the dry brush that fueled two of the region's catastrophic wildfires,
but environmental regulations and a lack of funding could make it difficult
to implement key pieces.

The strategy, which emphasizes controlled burns as a way to clear vegetation,
was outlined in a staff report that was criticized by local environmentalists
as too narrow in its scope.

"If you don't look at the full equation, you may put vegetation treatment
where it's not needed," said Richard Halsey, director of the Chaparral
Field Institute in Escondido. "And, in fact, you may actually increase
fire hazards by converting some of this shrub land into (more fire-prone) weedy
grasslands."

THE END OF MOBILE COUNSELING

San Diego Reader (March 20, 2009)-- Today, March 20, marks the final day of
mobile counseling services for residents of the rural East County communities
affected by the Harris Fire. The October 2007 wildfire burned 90,440 acres
across Dulzura, Potrero, Tecate, and Jamul. In its wake, hundreds of homes
were damaged or destroyed, 55 people were injured, and 5 were killed. Numerous
recovery efforts were put in place after the fire, including a free door-to-door
counseling and community outreach service.

For the past four months, the nonprofit San Diego Foundation provided the
service, but because the grant money that funded the program has run out, the
program must end.

HUSH-HUSH ARCHAEOLOGY

How scientists and Native Americans pulled off a major dig before the
feds triple border fence destroyed everything

By Gayle
Early

San Diego CityBeat (March 17, 2009)--During the past year, archaeologists have
been digging like mad to preserve one of the last remaining ancient Indian
village sites in coastal Southern California, racing against the claw of the
bulldozers and massive grind of the steam rollers to get the work done before
the federal government erases in one year what had managed to survive for millennia.

And they did it in almost complete secrecy.

By April 2008, then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had waived
36 environmental and cultural laws that could otherwise block completion of
a triple border fence. Congress granted him this authority in 2005, with the
passage of the so-called REAL ID Act.

That amounted to an end run around the National Environmental Policy Act,
Native American Graves and Repatriation Act, Indian Religious Freedom Act,
National Historic Preservation Act, Archaeological Resources Protection Act
and so on, down to the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act—laws protecting
communities, farms, forests, watersheds, wildlife, antiquities, habitats, migration
corridors and cultural resources.

ROAD 3A AND 3,000 HOME DEVELOPMENT IS NOT DEAD

Maps from 1960s onward show no such road
Valley Roadrunner (March 11, 2009)--It’s nowhere near Halloween nor yet April
1. So the County isn’t fooling when it says that the proposed Road 3A, lovingly
referred to locally as the Hornsville Road, is rising from the dead.

In fact, they say it never died—although if that is true, the County is apparently
disregarding a directive passed by the Board of Supervisors last July.

The Valley Center Planning Group thought that it had killed the road, which,
if built, could lead to a 3,000 home development near the corner of Old Hwy
395 & I-15. But when the subject came up at the March 9 planning group
meeting, the County’s representative made it clear that 3A is still part of
the proposed General Plan Update (GPU) map.

CITY MANDATES 45% OUTDOOR WATER CUTS

Andrew Donahue at Voice Of San Diego posted this on his blog this week:

I just got off the phone with reporter Rob Davis, who called in from Mayor
Jerry Sanders' press conference to provide details of the city's long-awaited
mandatory water cut plan . Here are the details:

The city is going to call for a 45 percent reduction in outdoor water use
from all of its customers and a 5 percent reduction in interior use from
single- and multi-family residential users. It will also call for a 3 percent
reduction for businesses indoors. The cuts are mandatory and will begin July.