Today’s Pantagraph reports in headline fashion on tonight’s Normal Town Council meeting.  The Pantagraph coverage highlights apparently what it considers the most impacting items on the agenda as rural Towanda’s ambulance service and bus service to Normal’s new train station. My point here is certainly not to downplay or minimize the importance of emergency vehicles or emergency response.   Obviously a critical issue worth discussion and resolution.
But, what I find remarkable is the extreme deviation in the reporting of issues of impacting substance, or should I say the absence of them from one day to the next?  While we witness the coverage of possible improprieties by Bloomington Council members, why,  when the next set of questionable issues rear their ugly head, not a word is breathed?
I’m alluding to Normal’s Council agenda item “L” :

L. Resolution Authorizing Execution of an Intergovernmental Agreement with the City of Bloomington, the County of McLean and the McLean County Soil and Water Conservation District for the Administration and Implementation of Watershed Management Programs

Watershed management is a term used to describe the process of implementing land use practices and water management practices to protect and improve the quality of the water and other natural resources within a watershed by managing the use of those land and water resources in a comprehensive manner.

But more importantly, watershed managment is another component of the United Nation’s Agenda 21 and being implemented right here in our communities, without the first citizen even being aware – until now. Here’s what Chapter 18 of Agenda 21 says about watershed management:

18.8. Integrated water resources management is based on the perception of water as an integral part of the ecosystem, a natural resource and a social and economic good, whose quantity and quality determine the nature of its utilization. To this end, water resources have to be protected, taking into account the functioning of aquatic ecosystems and the perenniality of the resource, in order to satisfy and reconcile needs for water in human activities. In developing and using water resources, priority has to be given to the satisfaction of basic needs and the safeguarding of ecosystems. Beyond these requirements, however, water users should be charged appropriately.

What’s that mean?  The government regulation of your water in every aspect you can imagine, just like your electricity through electric aggregation and natural gas, both through the implementation of smart merters.
Is it a coincidence that both Bloomington and Normal water departments are incorporating Smart Meters?
Not to mention some of these requirements are already in place in Normal’s Agenda 21-oriented 2035 Sustainability Plan (page 44).
Consider this excerpt, as well, for another source:

What does Agenda 21, Chapter 18 call for in terms of freshwater protection? First it calls for the regulation on the amount of water withdrawn annually from both groundwater and surface water sources. In terms of agriculture and other uses, Agenda 21 states that water withdrawls “must be limited to a percentage of total annual flow” Agenda 21 also states that percentage water withdrawl is an indicator of the health of biodiversity. If read literally, this statement means the lower the percentage of water withdrawn, the healthier biodiversity. As we are all aware, agricultural irrigation practices increase vegetative production per acre. A common principle of wildlife biology is that wildlife populations are a function of the vegetative resources available. Agenda 21’s assumption that water withdrawl is an indicator of the health of biodiversity therefore seems to contradict with common principles of biology.

Given the extreme parameters that watershed management incorporates, and moreover, the fact that it’s an Agenda 21-required procedure, ambulance and bus service shouldn’t be the only items up for discussion – not only from the Pantagraph, but the citizens of Normal.

Just random notes.

CITYWATCH
Of the people, for the people,
and for the good of the community