We’ve got some problems here in our little valley. I’ll list some of the major ones right now.

We don’t want high-speed rail to be routed through the SCV anyplace. The Formerly Great State of California still shows it as coming through Acton, Agua Dulce and Sand Canyon, bisecting the entire length of historic Soledad Canyon. At least now, on the proposal’s map, there is a bright orange swath that shows how a tunnel could be drilled through mountains south of Palmdale in a nearly straight line to Burbank. Good solution. The best solution is not to build it at all. Anyplace. Ever. Period.

Level of citizen concern? Hardly any in Santa Clarita, unless you live near the proposed route. Don’t even mention the term “high-speed rail” in Acton or Agua Dulce. Them are fightin’ words.

The November election. Guess what? The same folks who brought you the petition for the billboards are now are arguing about how Steve Knight voted “no” on a measure that would have stopped the sale of Confederate flags on the property of the Formerly Great State of California. Notwithstanding the huge problem of such flags being sold in a state that was in the Union during the late troubles caused by them nasty Yankees. Oh – I’m back in California myself now. I no longer have to be “Virginia PC” and can just write, “Civil War.”

Anyway: I hope that they included the real flags of the Confederacy and not just those that represented the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee. Those were not the “Stars and Bars.”

Scott Wilk voted to approve the measure. So what is the point?

Well, I was going to ask how Tony Strickland voted on that bill. Oh, he can’t vote in the Assembly because he isn’t an elected member of that body. He may get elected in the 25th District. It wouldn’t be the first time we would elect someone who isn’t really here – in our district. We’ve done it for more than 20 years with Buck. A clear case of not being all here or not all there with Tony.

I wonder if we’ll see a petition on this soon. It is causing a huge racial divide here in the SCV. Huge divide. I mean really – did any of you know much about this? Did I just hear a collective “Meh?”

The next “problem” those same anti-billboard ordinance folks want you to know about is that the infamous woman-hating and enslaving craft store chain named Hobby Lobby might open a store here in the SCV. I mean really – how dare a private company not want to buy a product for woman that was mandated by our own United States government? Even the Supreme Court said they didn’t have to buy those items. Now, what if they come here and want us to pray, just to go into the store? Guess we’ll soon see another petition.

Let’s see. A store that pays its workers far above the mandated minimum wage and has a bunch of jobs to fill is just the kind of store we don’t want, right? Wrong. No, you can’t place a measure on the ballot to add another Walmart, folks.

How concerned are the citizens? So far, except for the few I’ve read about, most folks can’t wait for it to open. I just hope it opens soon. I’d love to see a few old-fashioned protest signs at that location. Being a product of the ’60s, I’ve nearly forgotten just how fun a protest can be. Will there be police dogs? I hope so. I like police dogs. Nobody uses fire hoses now. The drought, you know.

Another problem is the proposed high school in Castaic. Considering how long it is taking to build, I’m now wondering if we’ll see it at all. I call it “proposed” because in spite of the formal groundbreaking ceremony, not much has been done. Well, I’m not sure about that. While I do drive a Jeep Wrangler, I’m not sure the tires I have on it are any good for the trail to the school site. I’ll see if I can find a couple of horses to ride out and look at it. Does anyone have a good pack frame for a horse? Hear tell I might need a lot of water and a couple of days of food to reach that site from the road.

So what does the population think? Well, for one thing, it is too close to Val Verde, and they have enough on their plates considering the dump and such. I do have to say many of them are thinking the students will have to get used to odd smells just like the kids at Hart High did until Valencia took out the onion fields and stock yards. But just think: When a student of Castaic High is “down in the dumps,” he isn’t talking about his mood but his location.

Along with our drought, we still have our chlorides-in-the-river problem. Maybe it isn’t a problem we should worry about. You see, we were told that where all those new homes are being built along the river, there is plenty of water in the wells. So they might be pumping those chloride-filled waters to the new homes, along with whatever was in the sludge dumped at the Chiquita Canyon Landfill. Those new homeowners won’t have to buy much fertilizer, or maybe they’ll plant some salt-loving plants in their yards. Either way, a lot of problems will get solved.

Do we still have to pay millions to remove the salt? Is the water from the sludge runoff good fertilizer? Gee, I don’t know. I hope so. That way, we will have some good come from the trash from every place else (more than 80 percent of what goes into the dump). Will Santa Monica, Anaheim, Ventura, Victorville and Sacramento and other sources of Chiquita’s trash have to pay for the water purification system we need to keep the chlorides low?

Hope so. Don’t you? I find it entirely fitting that the city of Anaheim and Mickey Mouse help us with the capricious and Mickey-Mouse chloride level regulation that is so costly.

We only want what is fair.

Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and attended Hart High School. After a career in the U.S. Navy he returned to live in the Santa Clarita Valley. He can be reached at dmanzer@scvhistory.com and his commentaries are archived at DManzer.com. Watch his walking tour of Mentryville [here].