Richmond – After a long time of flooding, a chaos for the people within the Rollingwood district, a recently restored restoration of Rheem Creek promised to bring relief throughout the rainy season. The residents hope that the improvements will last.

Since the Fifties, Rheem Creek has acted as a very important drainage ditch for a community that was built on a flood level and a tidal sharpness. It drives about 3.4 miles through Richmond, San Pablo and the non -legal contra Costa County and empties about 2.8 square miles of water into the Bay of San Pablo.

Over time, sediment and debris began to accumulate, since overgrowns which have not overgrown plants the quantity of water that might flow through the canal reduced rather a lot, which led to water scattered in nearby districts for greater than 20 years.

The floods destroyed the fundamentals of homes and garages, damaged buildings and overall cars, said Sarah Puckett, program director for American Rivers, a company that focused on reducing the threats from rivers and water channels.

“There was no way to maintain the stream,” said Puckett. “The canal was so full of garbage, but also invasive vegetation. It was so thick that you couldn't put yourself back in order to maintain it. “

That was until that Rheem Creek Restoration projectenables California Natural Resources Agency and the cooperation between numerous agencies, including the city of Richmond, the Wildcat-San Pablo Creek Watershed Council, the Watershed Project and Urban Tildth.

About 900 cubic meters of dirt were pulled out of 1,200 linear foot of the stream, where it runs between the backyards of houses on the Richmond's Moyer Road and the Greenwood Drive in the district. More than 650 native plants were added to the area by the Watershed recovery crew by Urban Tildth. Garbage collection events took place. Informative posters have been installed that aim to educate the public about the long history of the area and the value of protection.

“In addition to the reduction of the flood risk, which is obviously of great importance for the residents, this project has contributed to reviving this narrow Creek ecosystem in a strongly urbanized area,” said Nathan Bickart, director of Watershed restoration programs by Urban Tild. “This stream will continue to need care and support, and we are happy to be part of the team and the community that make it happen.”

From the start of the project to the end of the building, Rheem Creek restored about three years. For the first time in years it was not flooded when the Schauer soaks the Bay Area this winter.

“When I saw this big excavator behind the house, I thought, Wow, that's great, it actually happens,” said Juan Perez, a resident of Rollingwood. “We are very grateful.”

Perez and his wife Laila Schepps have been raising their three little children on the Greenwood Drive for six years. The couple knew that there was a gorge behind their property when they bought them. What they didn't know was how easy water from the stream and through drainage trenches would flow and flood the surrounding area of ​​their house.

The couple had a small child with another and strived to invest in their new home. These dreams broke at the beginning of the first rainy season.

“We got this house with the idea that we would invest money in the removal and make it ours. The floods really changed, ”said Perez, a carpenter who was excited to quiet down locally by which he grew up.

Water basin surrounded her home and flooded her creeping room, which explained the form that that they had just left. Other parts of their property were damaged, one among their vehicles, and it was a small visit to make even a small visit through the cloudy water filled with garbage from the stream bed and the road.

Over the years, around 35,000 US dollars have been thrown onto the issue, adding recent drains, putting cement and temporary obstacles installed with the intention to try to stop as much damage as possible. This number doesn’t explain that the working days that were missed to remain at home and monitor flood conditions, or the early morning in order that they’ve lifted sandbags.

“To say the least, it was turbulent. It was pretty terrible, ”said Schepps and noticed that every one of this happened throughout the height of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Perez and Schepps determined to alter their lives and the broader neighborhood positively, turned to their local officials to ask for help. Each call led to jurisdiction that identified the finger on the opposite.

Perez and Schepps shared their miracles about those that have been living within the neighborhood for a long time, though they were a chronic problem. Many are tenants, immigrants, older or low -income earners who’re either too busy with their day by day life with the intention to repeatedly contact local civil servants to demand changes or are concerned about “rattling” theorized Perez.

Regardless of this, Perez and Schepps said that the neighborhood and others earn their homeland of predominantly under -provisioned communities from their local government.

“We think about the aspect of environmental justice. We think about why the neighborhood had to fight, ”said Schepps. “It is a bigger thing in neighborhoods with low incomes, quarter with low incomes and the services you receive or not even though you pay taxes.”

Puckett recognized the complicated questions of responsibility behind the administration of Rheem Creek. While many of the floods occur on the district, the stream bed falls into the property boundaries of the Richmond page, which maintains its responsibility.

Now that the difficult part is over, Puckett, Perez and Schepps said that they hope that the community will protect the harbor tirelessly.

“This kind of things take more when it comes to stepping out of our bubbles and life because it affects all of us and we will all get the problem to combat,” said Perez, and shared concerns that folks proceed to throw garbage illegally into the stream.

After years of the victim, Schepps and Perez should not sure that they may stay of their current home, but they now don’t have any problem to offer the following buyer. In the meantime, Schepps said that she has a vision that she has transformed her garden right into a secure place where her children can play.

Puckett said her organization observed more projects within the region and can proceed to tell the general public concerning the value and importance of the care of streams, streams and water meters in an environmentally conscious way, a very important practice, since extreme weather events increase attributable to climate change.

“This project is a model for how communities, cities, counties, residents and project partners can work together in order to increase resistance to climate change,” said Puckett. “We cannot prevent rain and we cannot prevent floods, but we can reduce the risks of the community through these atmospheric rivers.”

Originally published: March 8, 2025 at 6:15 a.m. PST

On November 12, US President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would appoint Elon Musk, the world's richest man, to go a newly formed organization Ministry of Government Efficiency alongside fellow tech billionaire and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The recent department shall be tasked with reining in government bureaucracy, reining in government spending and reducing regulation.

Musk has clearly expressed his support for Trump's campaign potentially illegal financial “freebies” to the voters. Although Musk's direct involvement in electoral politics is recent, attempts by tech corporations and their executives to reshape public policy and governance have a protracted history, from transportation and housing to urban planning.

If we take a more in-depth have a look at a few of these initiatives, perhaps we will get a preview of what Musk's Ministry of Government Efficiency is attempting to do, what government-by-tech might appear to be, and what could go fallacious.

Replacing public services

In 2013, Musk himself proposed a brand new type of public transportation called “Hyperloop” to attach Los Angeles and San Francisco. And Musk's SpaceX is his try and surpass publicly funded NASA in rocket constructing.

But other technology corporations also had similar ambitions.

Uber has made a variety of attempts replace public transport. Companies like Sidewalk Labs (a subsidiary of Google's parent company Alphabet) have made efforts Replacement for urban infrastructure by constructing so-called “smart cities” that collect and analyze data about people’s behavior to make decisions about service delivery.

One economist even has recommended that Amazon bookstores could replace public libraries. Tech corporations have challenged public offerings in such diverse areas Training, Identity verification And Housing.

The limits of disruption

Many government-by-tech projects have one thing in common: the idea that government is fundamentally inefficient and that (unregulated) technology can provide higher solutions.

Silicon Valley tech corporations have long advocated “Disturbance“, the idea of ​​overthrowing a moribund status quo through innovation. Unlike public bureaucracies, the argument goes, companies can “Move fast and break things” to seek out recent and more efficient ways to deliver services and value.

Tech corporations that follow this philosophy have actually provided services that profit lots of us in our every day lives and made enormous amounts of cash. But that doesn't mean that the Silicon Valley model is sensible for public administration. In fact, the evidence suggests quite the alternative.

A story of failure

The tech industry's forays into public service delivery have had mixed results.

In 2017, the Canadian city of Innisfil has replaced all public transportation with Uber. The result was rising costs to the town (fees paid to Uber), more cars on the road, and better transportation costs for low-income residents.

Sidewalk Labs' smart city experiment in Toronto was abandoned in 2021 after privacy and scheduling objections arose.

In housing, disruptions within the tech industry have exacerbated existing problems with Airbnb and other short-term rental providers Contribution to the housing crisis.

Narrow solutions for narrow problems

Technology corporations also are likely to give attention to a comparatively narrow range of problems. Silicon Valley helped us discover a taxi, select a restaurant for dinner, navigate a city efficiently, transfer money to our friends, and find the most effective rental for our vacation.

Fewer solutions have been provided for locating low-income housing, caring for the elderly or reducing our energy consumption. There are necessary reasons for this: Tech corporations wish to generate revenue by tapping into upper-middle class consumers with disposable income.

But these gaps also reflect that Lack of diversity in Silicon Valley itself. The tech industry remains to be predominantly white, predominantly male, predominantly upper middle class and predominantly highly educated. This impacts the forms of problems Silicon Valley sees and the forms of solutions it produces.

This is all bad enough for the private sector. However, the federal government's job just isn’t simply to take care of shareholders or customers (and even just those that voted for them), but reasonably to look in spite of everything of its residents.

Services for the few

The concern here is that the sorts of solutions and “efficiencies” Silicon Valley is producing could find yourself serving the few on the expense of the numerous. Some “inefficiencies” in public services arise from the incontrovertible fact that they’re designed to accommodate as many individuals as possible. For example, provisions and protections for the elderly, for individuals with disabilities, for individuals who may not speak English as their first language require more bureaucracy and more regulation.

Musk has said that public transportation is a “Pain in the ass”where you’ve to face next to potential serial killers. Of course in many places Public transportation carries no such stigma. Additionally, many who would really like to commute in private jets (and even Teslas) have little alternative but to subject themselves to the vagaries of a public bus.

One of SpaceX's goals is to scale back the price of a visit to Mars to under $1 million. This could be a remarkable achievement, however it means Musk's planned Mars colony would remain incredibly elite. Spaceships and hyperloops are completely inadequate as public policy.

Unsexy necessities

While the philosophy of disruption seeks to downplay the importance of existing infrastructure and institutions, the technology industry itself relies on them. Uber relies on cars and roads (including the governments that maintain them), Airbnb relies on brick-and-mortar buildings (and the employees who construct them), and Amazon and eBay depend on transportation infrastructure and postal services.

All technology corporations depend on established and enforced financial, ownership and tax systems. These old infrastructures and institutions could be unsexy and even inefficient.

However, these so-called inefficiencies have often evolved consistent with fairness, justice and inclusivity. The track records of Silicon Valley tech corporations don’t suggest that they share such values.