Sept. 19, 2008 | WASILLA, Alaska -- Every morning she's at home here, Sarah Palin wakes up to a postcard view from her lakeside home. Out the windows of her two-story wood-framed house stretch the serene, birch-lined waters of Lake Lucille. Ducks go gliding by the red-and-white Piper Cub floatplane docked outside. With the snow-frosted Chugach and Talkeetna mountains looming in the distance, the scene seems to define the Alaska that Palin celebrates: rugged, majestic, unspoiled.
And, yet, the lake Sarah Palin lives on is dead.
"Lake Lucille is basically a dead lake -- it can't support a fish population," said Michelle Church, a Mat-Su Valley borough assembly member and environmentalist. "It's a runway for floatplanes."
Palin recently told the New Yorker magazine that Alaskans "have such a love, a respect for our environment, for our lands, for our wildlife, for our clean water and our clean air. We know what we've got up here and we want to protect that, so we're gonna make sure that our developments up here do not adversely affect that environment at all. I don't want development if there's going to be that threat to harming our environment."
But as mayor of her hometown, say many local critics, Palin showed no such stewardship.
"Sarah's legacy as mayor was big-box stores and runaway growth," said Patty Stoll, a retired Wasilla schoolteacher who once worked in the same school with Palin's parents, Chuck and Sally Heath. "The truth is, Wasilla is just plain ugly, it's not a pleasant place to live. It's not thought out. And that's a shame.
"Sarah fouled her own nest, and I can't understand why. I hate to think it was simply greed or ambition."
Among the environmental casualties of Wasilla's frenzied development was Palin's own front yard, Lake Lucille. The lake was listed as "impaired" in 1994 by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, and it still carries that grim label. State environmental officials say that leaching sewer lines and fertilizer runoff caused an explosion of plant growth in the lake, which sucked the oxygen out of the water and led to periodic fish kills.
"Sarah," a recent biography of Palin by Kaylene Johnson, features a photo of a beaming Palin, sitting in a rowboat on Lake Lucille clutching a fishing rod. But, according to local fishermen, the Republican vice-presidential candidate would have to be very lucky to reel in something edible.
The Alaska Fish and Game Department dutifully stocks the lake with coho salmon and rainbow trout each year -- but the fish don't last long.
Fishing on the lake "was tough," reported Alaska fishing guide Carlyle Telford on his Web site when he tried his luck on Lake Lucille last year, "because the vegetation is decaying and floating. When you retrieve every cast, the fly comes back with crud on it."
In a recent phone conversation, Telford said he hasn't returned to Lake Lucille since then. "I think the lake's pretty dead," he said. "That's why I haven't been back."
Wasilla, where Palin grew up and still resides, sprawls between two lakes -- Lucille and Wasilla Lake. Cottonwood Creek, which flows in and out of Wasilla Lake, has also been labeled "impaired" by state environmental officials, after foam was detected on the water surface and subsequent testing found excessive concentrations of fecal coliform bacteria.
The two lakes are the town jewels, the only eye relief along a harrowing corridor of strip malls, big-box stores and fast-food drive-throughs that is Wasilla. "Lord, help me get through Wasilla," reads one Alaska bumper sticker.
The population in Mat-Su Valley began booming in the 1970s with the Alaska oil pipeline and the influx of oil workers from Texas and Oklahoma. But while some valley towns tried to control growth -- like nearby Palmer, which was originally settled by Midwest farmers as part of a Roosevelt social experiment in the 1930s -- Wasilla took a frontier, boom-town approach. Soon the Parks Highway, which cuts straight through Wasilla, and its arteries were lined with a chaotic bazaar of quickie espresso shacks, moose-stuffing taxidermists, Bible churches, gun stores, tattoo and piercing parlors, mattress barns and the inevitable box stores with their football-field parking lots.
John Stein, Palin's predecessor as Wasilla mayor, tried gamely to get a handle on the commercial free-for-all. He made an effort to restore the health of Lake Lucille, which, he said, "was turning into a bog."
"We brought up a scientist to study both lakes," Stein recalled. "We also worked with the state to filter storm drainage from the highway."
Controlling runoff from the six-lane highway is a key to saving the lakes in Wasilla. Other cities have their industrial pollution problems; Wasilla has highway pollution. "Anything that comes off an automobile -- oil, antifreeze, de-icing agents, heavy metals -- all of that can run off into the lakes when it rains," observed Archie Giddings, Wasilla's public works director.
But while Mayor Stein tried to impose some reason on Wasilla's helter-skelter development, and its growing pressures on Mat-Su Valley's environmental treasures, when Sarah Palin took his place, she quickly announced, "Wasilla is open for business."
"That's for sure," Church said. "Sarah was so eager for big-box stores to move in that she allowed Fred Meyer to build right on Wasilla Lake, and her handpicked successor, Dianne Keller, has done the same with Target."
Under Mayor Palin's reign, Fred Meyer, an emporium that sells everything from groceries to gold watches to gardening tools, lost no time in leveling a stand of trees overlooking the lake for its big-box store. When Fred Meyer applied for permission to pump the storm drainage from its parking lot -- with all the usual automobile sludge -- into the lake, outraged citizens finally cried enough.
"We mobilized public opposition," said Church, who led the Friends of Mat-Su, a pro-planning group, at the time. "We forced them to put in ditches and grassy swales to catch the runoff.
"Sarah was such a great cheerleader for Wasilla, but she did nothing to protect its beauty. She'd go to these Chamber of Commerce meetings and say, 'Wasilla is the most beautiful place in the world!' And we'd just sit there gagging."
A city official in nearby Palmer, who has lived in the Mat-Su Valley his whole life, sadly admitted: "Sarah sent the growth into overdrive. And now they're choking on traffic and sprawl, all built on their ignorance and greed.
"I try to avoid driving to Wasilla so I won't get depressed," added the official, who asked for his name to be withheld, to avoid Palin's "wrath."
"You get visually mugged when you drive through there. I take the long way, through the back roads, just to avoid it."
Wasilla City Council member Dianne Woodruff hears the same lament about her town all the time. "Everywhere in Alaska, you hear people say, 'We don't want to be another Wasilla.' We're not just the state's meth capital, we're the ugly box-store capital. Was Sarah a good steward of this beautiful valley? No. I think it comes from her lack of experience and awareness of other places, how other cities try to preserve what makes them attractive and livable.
"The frontier mentality has prevailed for so long in Mat-Su Valley -- the feeling that 'you're not going to tell me what to do with my land,'" added Woodruff. "That's fine as long as you have endless open space. But when you start to fill in as a city, you can end up with a sprawling mess. With million-dollar homes next to gravel pits -- and dead lakes."
In recent years, after Palin's departure from City Hall, Wasilla has been "changing and learning," according to Woodruff. The city has taken steps to control toxic runoff into its two lakes.
But Wasilla still doesn't test the lakes' water quality -- that's left up to volunteer groups, which periodically take samples from the lakes, according to city officials.
Why is there no official effort to test the local waters?
"That's a good question," said Wasilla public works chief Giddings, after a long, thoughtful pause. "I guess we're still ahead of the curve. We haven't seen huge concerns about the lakes yet."
Giddings acknowledged that there has been some public concern about swimming in the lakes, but not enough to prompt the city to monitor the water quality. If the public did start complaining about skin rashes, diarrhea and other health problems, "the state would probably step in," he added.
Would Giddings let his own children swim in Wasilla's lakes? "Yes," he said.
But Laura Eldred, an environmental program specialist with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, offered a more qualified response. She would swim in the local lakes, but would "take the usual hygiene precautions," without specifying what those measures were.
"Sarah did nothing to protect our lakes; in fact, she obstructed efforts to improve our water quality," said city watchdog Anne Kilkenny. The property surrounding Wasilla's two lakes is privately owned, complicating the city's efforts to protect these natural treasures. While her predecessor, Mayor Stein, moved to incorporate the homes surrounding the two lakes -- like the Palin family residence -- so the city could control runoff from the dwellings, Palin campaigned for "no more annexation."
"Sarah hasn't traveled outside of Alaska much," said Kilkenny. "She hasn't seen dead lakes and rivers."
Now Palin can see one right out her window.
David Talbot is the founder of Salon. He is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years."
You know sometimes when you have something in your mind, and you create the image so perfectly and it's so great, that when the actual event comes to pass, it can just never match up? After being so overwhelmed and awestruck at the Alaska Women Reject Palin rally that happened a couple weeks ago here in Anchorage, I started to imagine what today's "Hold Palin Accountable Rally," might be like.
My mind movie featured a glorious autumn day, with blue sky, white clouds and golden leaves. I didn't know how many people might come, but I suspected it would be even more than the 1500 that were there at the last rally. I imagined all sorts of new and creative signs, designed to send a message to Sarah Palin, to the Alaska Legislature, to the McCain campaign, but most of all to our fellow Americans in the rest of the country.
Frankly, many Alaskans have felt a bit like we're living in the Dr. Seuss story, "Horton Hears a Who." If you're not familiar with this tale, it involves thousands of tiny people who live on a dust speck, and no matter how loudly they yell, no one can seem to hear them. They keep screaming "We are here! We are here! We are here!" but to no avail. It takes a moment of real desperation, and the participation of every little Who in Whoville, but finally their cries are heard.
That was my mind movie. As I sucked down my coffee this morning driving into town with my camera and my sign, I wanted to kick myself. I feared that this image I had created, of thousands of Alaskans yelling "We are here!" and the media actually listening was just going to set me up for disappointment. At the last rally, which turned out to be the largest political rally in the history of Alaska, there was virtually no media coverage. There were a couple print journalists, and one radio person, but no TV cameras. The real exposure of this event came from bloggers, folks with video cameras putting clips on YouTube, and mass emailings from friend to friend with attached pictures, and accounts of the rally from locals.
The day started out exactly as I had imagined -- a gorgeous slightly chilly fall morning, with sunshine aplenty. I arrived really early, and the sight of an empty park made my stomach shrink, even though the rally was not due to begin for another hour. I made another quick sign. The time went fast. I started hearing honking horns and realized that sign wavers had started to gather along the road. I looked at my watch....12:00. Not nearly as many people as I had hoped. Stomach shrank more. Then I thought....well...it's a beautiful day. People are out enjoying the weather, and hiking. Maybe I should have hoped for clouds. It would be OK, I told myself. Historically, anything over 25 people at a sign waving event in Anchorage is a rousing success. I had to remember this. And people may have just had one good rally in them and that was that.
I started snapping pictures of signs. There were some really good ones. My favorite? "Hey, Sarah! I can see the end of your political career from my house!" That cheered me up. After 20 or 30 minutes of photographing signs, I looked around. I don't know why I hadn't noticed, but a massive influx had happened. Both sides of the city block between 9th and 10th Avenue were packed! I went across the street to the opposite corner to get a good shot of everyone, and... I was not alone. Cameras everywhere! Local TV news from every station, the Anchorage Daily News, unmarked video cameras in various sizes, photographers with lenses 2 feet long scurrying around, people with hand-held devices talking to protesters.... It took my breath away. I had to stop what I was doing, and just stand, and look.
I said it after the last rally, and I'll say it again. This does not happen here.
There were 1500 protesters at the last rally. This time there were more. Someone said they heard a Daily News reporter say he was going to "call it 1000 people." That Daily News Reporter was obviously not at the other rally. I'm telling you now, it was way more than 1000, and more than 1500.
After an hour or so, we were all called to the main stage to hear the speakers. It was difficult to pull ourselves away from the road. There was an incredible amount of support from honking cars, and drivers waving and giving "thumbs up." There were amazing signs. There were pitbull masks. There was a guy dressed like Richard Nixon. There were live chickens. Yes, a woman had a cage of live chickens beneath her sign that read, "Sarah, Don't Chicken Out!"
The one that really got to me, though, was the sign held by a sweet little lady who stood alone with her back to the stage. It read "I'm the mother of the 'rogue' Walt Monegan, and I Love Him." People were rendered speechless, and kept stopping, one by one, to shake her hand, and tell her how much her son was loved and appreciated. Walt is the ex-commissioner of Public Safety that Palin fired because he refused to fire her trooper ex-brother-in-law, that went through a messy divorce battle with Palin's sister. A real human face was put to this situation. That good man who has not only lost his job unjustly, but has been ripped apart in the press by ex-KTUU anchorwoman, now Palin mouthpiece, Meg Stapleton, and Bush-McCain lawyer Ed O'Callaghan, has a Mom, and she is not happy.
The speakers were great. CC from KUDO radio, Shannyn Moore from Air America, Ron Devon reading a letter of support from Rep. Les Gara who was out of state, Libby Roderick, local folk singing legend, John Cyr, head of the troopers' union, and many more. The greatest of all was the final speaker -- Walt Monegan's mom. She stood up, obviously emotional, and thanked the crowd for their support. "I never knew so many people loved Walt," she said, her voice quivering a little. She talked about her son, and that he was a good man. "I'm going to cry......I don't know what else to say but, thank you!" She sat down again, and mopped her eyes, and the crowd went wild.
At the end of the day, there was a huge stack of petition sheets signed, over a dozen newly registered voters, a ton of news coverage, and more than 1500 Alaskans who had their say.
Next week, a small group will take the stack of petitions and deliver them to the Attorney General's office. There is already conversation about when the next rally will happen. Alaskans, like the Whos in that Dr. Seuss story are trying very hard to be heard. So, America....listen up!
We want our Governor held accountable.
We want an end to the stonewalling in the legitimate investigation by the Alaska State Legislative Council.
We want the resignation of the Alaska State Attorney General Talis Colberg who told state employees they could ignore legal subpoenas.
And we want the McCain campaign and their cadre of lawyers out of our state government!
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