About 15 years ago, a County of San Diego, Department of Public Works D-9
Bulldozer was ripping up asphalt from a former Whitefront Store parking lot
when it disappeared. The work crew ran to the edge of the crater and found it
was in a 80-year old brick kiln and the roof collapsed from the weight of the
dozer. Seems that instead of doing up front history work, the environmental
document only had a condition for an archaeology monitor to be present during
dozing (which was so vaguely worded that the Public Works people simply
ignored the requirement). Talk about working in a dangerous environment! That place
had more than 10 other buried kilns with dozens of linking tunnels. The
embarassment resulted in a Public Works archaeologist letting an expensive
contract to hire a consulting company, fly Karl Gurcke down from Idaho for a couple
days, and conduct a really expensive data recovery mitigation project.
Ron May
Legacy 106, Inc.