CVWD’s Money-Saving Tactics

In business school, the student learns that organizations can “externalize costs of operation” by acting to pass off their costs to the community or to the ecosystem.  For example, Acme Chemical could dump the byproducts of its chemical factory in the nearby creek instead of building tanks to capture those byproducts and then building facilities to further process the byproducts into harmless materials to be taken away.

CVWD is externalizing a portion of its costs on its neighbors to replace its aging pipelines by using the Williams Reservoir plot located on Ocean View [Boulevard] as a materials depot and materials yard. The CVWD should lease or buy an appropriate parcel that is not located within a quiet residential neighborhood in the Sagebrush portion of La Cañada Flintridge. That neighborhood  is now suffering from constant double dump truck traffic running up and down Ocean View, round-the-clock operation of heavy equipment on the reservoir property and heavy congestion of trucks hooking up and dropping off trailers on narrow streets. This neighborhood used to be a quiet residential section where kids walk to school and people walk their dogs.

The CVWD is saving cost and bringing its pipe replacement activities in-house. Sure, the CVWD is saving money because the CVWD does not have to pay premium prices to have contractors do its pipe replacement work. The CVWD is shifting some of those costs onto the La Cañada Flintridge community because the consequences of the CVWD’s shortsighted decisions are being borne by the Williams Reservoir neighbors.

Greg Hiscott
La Cañada Flintridge