The guest speaker

A few days ago in my humanities class a young woman by the name of Elisabeth Earnley came and gave the class some interesting information. She was part of an organization called AGUA that helps and makes sure that lands are capable of holding water. When developers try to make shopping centers or anything else with concrete AGUA makes sure that they still leave some grassland, and allowing some of the water to go into the ground and in the aquifer. She also let us know that SAWS was not really doing a good job of making sure that developers do this. Many of the developers do get stopped by some city ordinances, but all they have to do is find some loop hole in the system and they still get what they want. Most of the time all developers have to do is just pull a plan out from the past, and say that the new city ordinances don’t affect those plans from the past. She let us know that if we didn’t agree with these actions then we could go to see city council, but the only time that these hearings are held are early in the morning. So that’s why many people have know idea or have any time to make these hearings. Towards the end of the class she gave us some papers with two cases that SAWS passed, but the entire class thought one of them should not have been. She told us that if some people had gone those could have changed that from happening.