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There’s a bully in town picking on the shrimp. Despite
warnings of environmental damage in building its 10th campus at
Merced, the UC is still committed to its more than $250 million
project. Perhaps the UC should sit in on one of the classes offered
in their environmental studies programs ““ before the natural
habitat it has infringed upon and California tax dollars are lost
forever.
The building must stop immediately.
While Merced is home to the new campus, it’s also home to
some of California’s last remaining vernal pools, or
seasonally flooded wetlands, where the Midvalley Fairy Shrimp are
making their way toward the Federal Endangered Species List.
Both the Center for Biological Diversity and VernalPools.org
have requested federal endangered status for the Midvalley Fairy
Shrimp so that the campus does not destroy what’s left of the
3 percent of California’s original vernal pool habitat that
has not been lost due to development.
While California may desperately need another campus to provide
for its growing student population ““ an expected increase by
60,000 students over the next decade ““ and though it has
promised to conserve 6,000 of the 7,000 acres remaining in the
vernal pool habitat the university will build on, UC Merced is an
environmentally and economically dangerous solution.
If the Midvalley Fairy Shrimp makes it to the Federal Endangered
Species List, construction will be halted. Only when that happens,
the university will be even deeper into the project, and deeper
into their pockets. If the UC walked away from the project now,
they’d not only preserve Merced’s natural habitat,
they’d prevent taxpayers from throwing away dollars better
spent elsewhere.
With the state’s uncertain economic future, funding should
be redirected to meaningful and guaranteed solutions to student
enrollment. Otherwise the UC will end up shoving students into
quadruple dorm rooms.
Like campuses before it, Merced will expand. The community will
need grocery stores, apartments and other conveniences. Alternative
campus sites like Fresno, a city already developed enough to
sustain a college campus, should be considered.
The UC knew that the vernal pools existed when the ground was
broken, yet they continued anyway. Building the Merced campus will
destroy an entire ecosystem on the brink of extinction.
Not just fairy shrimp.