Published online on Wednesday, Sep. 30, 2009

I learned long ago to ignore marketers and social scientists declaring this place or that place "the last frontier."

There's always another frontier over the hill. And when we run out of space on this planet, we'll start building three-bedroom ranch-style homes, with lawns in front and pools in back, somewhere on the moon.

The real story isn't the last frontier -- it's the next frontier: a place with cheap land, gullible or cheaply bought politicians and a highway or two to carry folks from their new suburban homes to jobs in a sprawling city nearby.

Our next frontier is Madera County, a place so stuck in the past and apparently so broke that county health officials leave dead cows in a canyon creek, never mind the smell.

But those cows -- may they rest in peace -- aren't the only things stinking up the county recently. The chain of events in Madera reads like something from a Carl Hiaasen novel set in one of Florida's next frontiers.

Substitute the San Joaquin River for the Everglades, and everything else is pretty much the same.

Land developers hungry for profits paint pretty pictures for elected officials hungry for tax revenue. People yearn to escape the bustle and crime of the city for the elbow room and views of a river bluff. The only people between the despoilers and the paving over of precious natural resources are a few holdout ranchers, environmentalists, a judge or two and the county grand jury.

Developers, even in this regulation-thick, recession-struck state, are licking their chops. While other officials in the central San Joaquin Valley are talking up smart growth and preserving green space and farmland, Madera's supervisors are content to rely on decades-old plans and allow builders to piece together projects without asking basic questions about transportation, public safety, jobs and, believe it or not, water.

Last December -- with California in the second year of the current drought -- county supervisors gave a thumbs-up to the environmental report for developer Bob McCaffrey's 5,200-home Tesoro Viejo project without being told the source of water for the proposed community.

Water, I guess, is just a minor detail for the supervisors, whose approval of the environmental report was overturned in September by Superior Court Judge James Oakley.

The thing about being a next frontier is that people do start paying attention. What we've learned recently is that the county's former auditor-controller didn't do much auditing and controlling during his 22 years at the helm. That the county can't even widen a foothill road without getting the proper permits, earning a possible half-million- dollar fine. And that one Madera City Council member has no qualms about flying to Washington, D.C., on a Native American Indian tribe's dime to tell a Senate committee it sure would be swell to have another casino.

The good new is, it's not too late for Madera County leaders to smarten up, ask tough questions and ensure that growth serve everyone -- not just a handful of builders and their minions.

Or, they can just keep on mucking up the place and say, what the heck, we're not growing any differently or any worse than Fresno did for decades.

For that point, I have no defense.