Probably not many Angelenos think much about Palmdale and Lancaster way up in the northern reaches of LA County, and if they do, they probably think of them as a single unit, just one indistinguishable zone of meth labs and Libertarian folk art. Well, here's one way to tell them apart: Lancaster is downwind from Palmdale. This is important because Palmdale is looking to build a power plant right on their joint border and Lancaster is not at all happy about the pollution that would blow its way. Capitol Weekly has the full rundown on the dispute (arguments over location, who's going to run the plant, its size, emissions, and the energy source), but the main thing is that Palmdale doesn't buy Lancaster's concerns at all. Palmdale's mayor thinks maybe the problem is that Lancaster's Vice Mayor Marvin Crist "put it on his bucket list as something he'd like to do. 'I think I'd like to kill a power plant.'" If that's the case, hopefully Crist adds "make a better bucket list" to his bucket list. And for his part, Vice Mayor Crist has some interesting ideas about pollution and its impact on respiratory problems in his community: "When all of our kids have asthma and you add to that, it's kind of like putting too much chlorine in a pool. Chlorine's good in a pool, but too much chlorine's bad." See, so all Palmdale needs to do is figure out how much pollution is chlorinated-pool-good, and they'll have themselves a deal!
· A tale of two cities: Palmdale and Lancaster [Capitol Weekly]
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