California: Home of the New 'Three Mile Island'

The Competency Crisis Project (CCP) has finally achieved its objective

There’s a huge lithium battery fire happening in Northern California that Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church calls a “Three Mile Island incident.” Neighborhoods in the area around Moss Landing were evacuated, and crews are letting the fire burn itself out.

That’s bad enough, but Supervisor Church is the same Democrat who said in 2021 that public services suffer “long-term neglect” and then literally ran out the back door of a 2023 public meeting about a catastrophic flood.

As I wrote at the time, “Democrat Glenn Church, who represents Pajaro as Supervisor of District 2, said in 2021 that he was running for election because housing, fire safety, roads, social services, animal control, public safety and water all suffered ‘long-term neglect’ in North Monterey County.”

“People are frustrated that the county government is not taking care of their problems,” Church said in 2021. “New leadership is required to bring the change that is needed.”

Moss Landing is less than 10 miles from Pajaro. The area is home to mostly-poor, mostly-Latino agricultural workers who make up 90% of the local population. In the past two years, they’ve suffered from a catastrophic levee break and a gigantic battery fire spewing toxic fumes into their neighborhoods.

The unincorporated area is at the intersection of Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, where voters in 2022 pulled the lever for Gov. Gavin Newsom by wide margins.

As Church correctly noted in 2021, there is a crisis in state and local government. Unfortunately, he’s part of the problem, and what I call the Competency Crisis Project (CCP) isn’t an accident. It’s the inevitable result of intentional government policies and the people who actively voted for those policies.

The 2023 flood mostly affected the poorest among us, but the CCP didn’t care about that. As the the San Jose Mercury News reported in 2023, “Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church, who represents Pajaro, could be seen leaving through a back door as bewildered residents surrounded public officials to ask for any updates.”

Maybe something positive will happen now that rich Hollywood elites have been burned out of their favorite neighborhood and their favorite form of “green energy” has been declared another Three Mile Island. But don’t count on it. This is still California.