The husband of Democrat Jacquese Conaway, the Barstow Democrat who’s running for Buck McKeon’s seat this fall, has written a letter to the editor of the Victorville Daily Press, bemoaning the potential Cemex land swap deal McKeon engineered earlier this year.
The letter, posted online and published today, was sent by one “Bob Conaway” of Barstow. Although it’s possible there’s two “Bob Conaways” in Barstow, I don’t find it likely. Bob Conaway once ran for Congress against McKeon and lists his wife as Jacquese, the current candidate.
Back to the letter: Conaway says the City of Victorville ought to reconsider its recent resolution in support of McKeon’s HR 5887, the same resolution the City of Santa Clarita is urging its residents to support:
I urge the City of Victorville to withdraw its resolution in support of HR (House Resolution) 5887 and for citizens to write Congressman Buck McKeon and Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to withdraw their support for HR 5887, a land swap deal.
Conaway says the resolution amounts to a raw deal for Victorville, which he claims already suffers from excess diesel emissions, chromium problems at a PG&E facility, and nitrate problems. He notes that the CEMEX facility in Santa Clarita would have been only “400 acres,” while under the terms of McKeon’s bill, CEMEX will get 5,000 acres in Victorville, which he thinks would only add to health and pollution issues in the High Desert.
Why is it OK that we get a project that pollutes the air and water — and even more to the point, why is the Victorville City Council saying that increasing the risk of serious health problems for us is OK?
The people in the Barstow and Mojave Valley area stand a four times greater chance of contracting lung cancer from the diesel emissions from trains in the area, we still are still suffering from chromium problems from the PG&E facility (despite claims of remediation efforts underway), nitrate problems in our water, chromium in the air from concrete aggregate crushers in the Oro Grande to Helendale area, VOCs and PM-10s above the levels allowed by the EPA throughout the Mojave Valley, and now you want to add a polluting mining operation that will add to the toxic and noxious air quality?
He ends with some closing words about Buck McKeon and asks why the Victorville city council is so “hell bent” on pleaseing the “wealthy” people in Santa Clarita.
First thoughts from this political novice:
It appears to me that the Conaway campaign (again, assuming the Bob Conaway letter writer is the Jacquese’ husband) is trying to divide and conquer CA-25 by using the poisonous topic of a CEMEX Mega Mine (insert scary music here) to put Buck on on the defensive.
So if it works, how does Buck McKeon defend himself from what might be hordes of angry Victorville and High Desert residents who think he’s selling out their health/future/water/air quality for the rich jerks down in Santa Clarita?
I imagine the Conaway’s strategy is aimed at getting more High Desert residents to the polls in November to offset whatever advantage McKeon has in Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valleys, where residents strongly trend Republican.
It could be very effective, could it not? The narrative becomes that Buck McKeon sold out Victorville and the High Desert for his old stomping ground in the SCV, but a vote for Jacquese Conaway could stop all that.
It’s not clear (or at least I’m not clear) on what CEMEX plans to do with the thousands of acres of land it would obtain under McKeon’s land-swap deal, which still has to pass Congress. But as we saw in Santa Clarita, the mere mention of an aggregate mining facility with all the fears and NIMBYism that imagery entails can be more than enough to get residents outraged.
For what it’s worth, this is the only criticism of the deal I’ve seen in the VV Daily Press, let alone anywhere else. Maybe that’s an indication that there’s no outrage up there in the desert over this deal and McKeon need not worry.