THE DAM BUILDERS have been at work since we were last here. It's been four or five years, so I shouldn't be surprised.

You know how dam builders can be. Give them a pristine mountain valley with a fast-flowing stream, and they just cannot help it. Up goes another dam. They don't care what they flood. And boy, does the place change once those dams go up.

Oh, these dam builders aren't the Tennessee Valley Authority or those clueless heartbreakers who flooded Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.

Nope, when these guys build a dam, they have actually improved things. Ya see, these guys are beavers, and they are doing nature's work. They build dams to make the place a better place.

First off, beavers don't build a 200-foot-tall dam that turns Eden into a stagnant sewer of a reservoir. They do these 4- or 8-foot wooden structures that make little ponds. Sure, they might flood my favorite campsite, (almost, but not quite) and the road the people drive on is just makin' it by.

But come back in a few years, and things will be a little different. The beaver pond will fill in with sediment, and the meadow it creates will have willows and then later aspens, and maybe later a fine forest. Meanwhile, Hetch Hetchy will still be a stagnant sewer.

I will be able to come back in October, year after year, and the aspens and the willows will be golden, and they will be the perfect foreground for the

Sure, I can always stay home and look at those old, grainy black and white photos of Hetch Hetchy Valley before the flood. But ya know, it just ain't the same: Eden is Eden only when it is not under water.

The governor is pushing for a water bill to fund the construction we need to make sure there is enough water for 50 million people in California. And I'm sitting in the trailer in a beautiful canyon on the east side of the Sierra that is a really neat place because only a few people visit at a time.

Cram in many thousands, and it becomes a depressing anthill of humanity, with crime and people acting like rats that eat their young, and nightmares of the worst of human behaviors driven by overcrowding and desperation. It is so very easy to turn Eden into a slum.

Look around. This used to be California, a great place to live and bring up kids and experience the American dream. While you were doing that, it turned into Calcutta, an overcrowded swamp of humanity where we daily lower the lowest common denominator.

And they want to shoehorn in a few million more next door to you. At what point will we wake up and realize that what we need is not a "water bill" but something that will actually address the problem. We need a lock on the door, not a scheme to water a few million more suckers.

Dr. Robert Hallstrom is a veterinarian practicing in Pittsburg. His column appears each Sunday in the East County Times. You can reach him at roberthallstrom@att.net. The opinions in this column are those solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the newspaper.