Gaaak! I see everything twice, again!

Yes, it’s déjà vu time. Again the questions: Why wouldn’t the Regional Water Quality Control Boards want to get stuff done right the first time instead of jamming artificial, arbitrary deadlines onto municipalities then threatening FINES!FINES!FINES! which buffalos communities into what could well be the wrong technology which creates MORE water problems further down the line when everyone then stands around wringing their hands saying, “Oh, Dang, we cudda hadda V-8, but Oh, nooooo, YOU hadda make us drink this stuff?”

Or as my sister once observed of the phone company she worked for (the biggest) “Why is it they never have enough money to do it right the first time but always have enough money to do it over again at twice the cost?”

Hold onto you seat, it’s Rerun Time:


New Santa Paula sewage plant in limbo
City faces $25,000 per day in fines if deadline is missed
By Tony Biasotti, tbiasotti@VenturaCountyStar.comJanuary 7, 2007
The city of Santa Paula isn't getting any closer to building a new sewage treatment plant, despite the $25,000 a day in fines that hang over its head if it misses its 2009 deadline.
More than a year ago, the City Council hired a designer, and last year it zoned land for the new plant, but the price tag — about $75 million, the biggest public project in city history — has the council stepping carefully. It's pausing for as long as six weeks while it considers scrapping the design and moving to a different technology that's potentially cheaper.
However, the clock is ticking. The water that the current treatment plant dumps into the Santa Clara River doesn't meet Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board standards. The board has agreed to suspend the fines normally associated with such violations, but if Santa Paula doesn't have its new plant up and running by October 2009, a $25,000 daily maximum fine is back on the table.
If construction work began immediately, the new plant would be finished in late 2009 or early 2010, said Cliff Finley, Santa Paula's public works director. If the city starts over with a new design, it would set the project back 12 to 14 months, he said.
"If we proceed down the road we're currently on, we're barely going to make it, or we're not going to make it, but at least we're going to be close," Finley said.
The current road now leads toward a new plant with a technology known as a membrane bio-reactor. Waste water is filtered through tanks and treated until it is clean enough to use in landscaping.
The new option the City Council might consider is Vertreat, a proprietary system owned by a Canadian firm called Noram Engineering and Constructors Ltd. It filters the water through deep wells instead of aboveground tanks. It requires one additional step to produce reusable water, Finley said.
Vertreat was ruled out when the city first studied it because it hadn't been used yet in a city sewage plant in California. However, there's some hope it might be cheaper than a membrane bio-reactor system. Finley said the city's initial study showed about the same price for the two, but it was based on rough estimates because Noram didn't participate in the study.
Now the city has invited the company to make a pitch to the City Council before Feb. 15. Noram's president wants to appear, but he hasn't committed to a date yet, City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz told the council Tuesday.
Bob Gonzales and Ralph Fernandez, the two new members of the council, were the most vocal advocates of giving Noram a chance at the project. A small delay is worth it if it saves money, Gonzales said.
"I don't like to be put into a corner when it comes to spending the public's money," he said.
If the new plant comes in at the current estimate of $75 million, Santa Paula residents will see their sewage bills go from $42 a month to more than $60 a month by 2009.

CLARIFICATION of the January 5, 07 Tribune Viewpoint, (previous post)


PZLDF Clarification:
Prohibition Zone Legal Defense Fund (PZLDF) was organized to support those faced with enforcement in Los Osos. Membership cuts across the “political factions” and represents ALL 5000 faced with eventual enforcement actions. The issue IS property rights and regulatory abuse, and has NOTHING to do with which version of a project is favored, or how one votes. NO, the abuse of civil rights is not appropriate even if you think Los Osos, or the individual deserves it. Supporting civil rights is NOT about agreeing with the particular issue, but not allowing anyones rights to be violated.

PZLDF supported those faced with hearings and also worked to broker a settlement for others. PZLDF did NOT take a stand against enforcement in general, but the misapplied and misrepresented enforcement orders that are designed for industry and government agencies. The use of the water boards own progressive enforcement guidelines indicates a community-wide work plan is a better tool. The greatest concern is the trampling of citizens rights, and unintended consequences the enforcement puts in motion. The enforcement undermines the Blakeslee Bill, and the County’s ability to succeed in delivering a new project, and the mission of the water board. It further divides the community, and that should be a huge concern to everyone who favors a project in the foreseeable future, and an end to the madness in Los Osos.

Gail McPherson
Prohibition Zone Legal Defense Fund
534-1913

Letter to the Editor from PZLDF

The following ran in the 1/5/07 Tribune as a Viewpoint.


Two weeks before Christmas the Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) began issuing Cease and Desist Orders (CDO’s) to randomly-selected LO residents. The individual enforcement came after nearly a year of RWQCB foibles and delays, including the exit of key prosecutor and witness, Roger Briggs. Enforcement proposed long before the Blakeslee Bill and the County assuming the sewer project makes these belated actions both obsolete and counter productive. The Prohibition Zone Legal Defense Fund (PZLDF) mission is to assist and support individuals targeted for enforcement. PZLDF developed a "Settlement Work Plan" based on RWQCB guidelines for progressive enforcement. Cooperative compliance was demonstrated and the negotiations with RWQCB were hopeful. While the RWQCB Settlement failed to protect individuals and their properties, PZLDF continues to support enforcement being focused only on individuals who refuse to comply with interim measures or to cease discharges when a sewer system is available.

Several polls have shown the vast majority of LO residents want a community sewer system and will vote for a new project assessment under the County and Blakeslee plan. The conditions in the enforcement orders (RWQCB settlement “order” and CDO) are identical. Residents have also testified and demonstrated that they will voluntarily comply with the RWQCB’s interim measures (have pumped and inspection of septic tanks and will hook up to a sewer). Further, the cost/benefit (based on the RWQCB funding derived from fines) makes this a poor investment since the RWQCB stated the likelihood of fines resulting from these prosecutions is remote (unless the AB 2701 process fails). Thus, the costs of the actions and resulting hearings and court costs wasteful to taxpayers as well. (The estimated cost for just 4 days of hearings in April alone, and related work for 45 residents was $100,000 to 200,000. -And the RWQCB has 4,700 more prosecutions to go.)

There at least three reasons for the RWQCB to adopt progressive enforcement measures besides the exceptionally high cost of punitive "enforcement orders" in both time and taxpayers monies.

First, enforcement for the RWQCB’s decision to tie the enforcement actions directly to the Proposition 218 assessment vote provides the perfect opportunity for anyone not happy with the Blakeslee process to sabotage it. What better justification for protesting an assessment than to claim it was coerced?

Second, the Water Board’s hard-nosed actions destroy the trust and cooperation between residents and controlling agencies that the Blakeslee Bill seeks to restore. The actions will cause all participants, including the County and LOCSD, to suspect that the RWQCB intends to control the process and its outcome. The actions are divisive and rekindle the equity issues the Bill sought to overcome. The enforcement provides risk to some while sharing decision making with the community outside the Prohibition Zone. People in the Prohibition Zone will fund the highest per capita sewer project in national history for a system that benefits the Morro Bay National Estuary, and the clean water supply for entire community. And if the Blakeslee plan fails, their homes are the payment for any enforcement fines (up to $5000/day).

Third, the RWQCB is throwing away the political capital it needs to protect all citizens. Anyone attending the December hearings couldn't help but sympathize with the residents who could not afford the cost for legal assistance (upward of $20,000) as they stood up to the Water Board members, staff, and several attorneys, alone. The lopsided spectacle left no doubt that the considerable powers and resources vested in the RWQCB are not meant to subjugate individual citizens with functioning septic tanks. Very likely, individual taxpayers will eventually prevail in this David and Goliath struggle in the press and Legislature, harming the credibility and status of the State Water Boards, possibly permanently.

Unless it has better reasons to use the powers granted it by the State and People of California, the RWQCB should avoid abusing such power in an effort to demonstrate "we have teeth" against a few defenseless individuals. A settlement for a community-wide work plan containing all the protections the RWQCB wanted , and more was offered by citizens and supported by PZLDF. Assemblyman Blakeslee provided a means to end the Los Osos sewer war through a peace process known as the Blakeslee Bill. Instead of the RWQCB setting land mines that will defeat its objective, look at folding in progressive enforcement work plans, that will improve water quality -and deliver a project unabated.

Alan Martyn, Gail McPherson, Keith Wimer
Prohibition Zone Legal Defense Fund
P.O. Box 6507 Los Osos Ca. 93412

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons, The Bay News, Morro Bay, CA , for Jan 3, 07

Verdict First! Evidence Never!

It was an Alice in Wonderland Moment. I refer to the recent Torquemada’s Mad Hatter CDO Tea Party, Public Beheading & Auto-de-fe held by the Regional Water Quality Control Board for The Los Osos 45. You remember those folks? Your friends and neighbors who have been put through hell for a whole year by the same Board that first cooked up the scientifically unsound and totally unworkable Mad Pumping Scheme, only to have that go ker-blooey. So they started all over again, targeting the same 45 people in an endlessly changing, goal-post-moving process that wasted even more gazillions, while claiming that they were too poor to hire a mediator to come up with a much better win/win interim alternative.

Instead, we had a two day spectacle of truly bizarre proportions. Consider: One of the reasons given for issuing CDOs was to “ensure that pollutant loading [to the groundwater] within the prohibition area is minimized to the extent possible.” So the Board wanted everyone to pump, inspect and repair their septic systems. Yet Tim Cleath of Cleath & Associates (The Water Experts) testified that pumping, inspecting and repairing septics until the new sewer can be built will have no appreciable benefit to the groundwater. Which means that this proposed short-term regimen will look good (Hey’ we’re working hard over here, see?), but it won’t do diddly to the groundwater.

Next we heard Mr. Cleath testifying that trying to link well data to specific properties is not advised, expert information which, of course, was totally ignored. When staff was repeatedly asked, Do you have any evidence specifically linking Property X with nitrate pollution? the answer – under oath – was always, “No.” But the owner of Property X was declared “guilty” and beheaded anyway.

So much for “science.” So much for “evidence.” So much for due process.

But there were two, highly telling moments: First, there was the spectacle of CDO Recipient X, with his wife weeping at his side, finally recanting. He was given two minutes to decide whether to sign the settlement agreement (Actually, a Clean Up & Abatement Order that in many ways could end up offering fewer protections than an actual CDO would have, something I am positive Mr. X was unaware of at the time.) Mr. X declared that he would sign, but would be doing so “under duress.”

This blindingly clear and truthful description of exactly what Mr. X was laboring under – duress – caused the Board members to recoil in faux horror. Duress? DURESS? Why, we are shocked – SHOCKED – by such a notion! Wereupon they tried to help their victim find different words to use, suggesting that, perhaps, he could use the word, “disgust,” or that the agreement “stinks,” but duress? Oh, perish the thought.

It was THE Grand Inquisitor Moment in this auto-de-fe, the public ritual kissing of the sacred relics, the confession tearfully but “freely” made before the body is consigned to the flames.

But the final creeping horror of watching the incompetent bumbling and unnecessary cruelty and waste that has gone on for a whole year, was when Board members claimed that THEY were the helpless victims in all this. Said Board member Press, “ . . . [for years] . . .the [RWQCB] has patiently waited for something to happen . . , ,” utterly ignoring the fact that the Board was the ONLY player in the room that had all the power to MAKE “something happen.”

Yet even now, with a variety of regulatory smart options and alternatives in their toolbox, the Board repeatedly CHOSE to proceed down one of the worst possible paths, wringing their hands in faux victimhood all the way.

Well, they’ll have plenty of time to wring. Despite the verdicts all being done deals, with no-shows being tried and hanged in absentia, it still took 8 hours to “process” about 6 citizens.

There are 4,955 left to go, including you, Dear and Gentle Reader. Which means, you can do nothing, or you can get more information by calling some of The Los Osos 45 who have joined together to form the Prohibition Zone Legal Defense Fund, at 534-1913, and join with them and their attorney’s efforts to stay legally informed, protect their due process rights, and to try once again to work jointly with the RWQCB’s staff to craft a far smarter alternative than this appallingly sadistic and ultimately pointless spectacle.

More Tea! More Tea for Torquemada! Move Down! Move Down!

Mistah Kurtz --he dead. A penny for the Old Guy.

Saddam Hussein is hanged. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Happily, with his death, we can now easily forget that he was our boy, helped into office by the CIA, kept in power by Reagan and Rummy and the American Arms Merchants, our cat’s paw in the Iran-Iraq war, a war that saw hundreds of thousands of young men slaughtered, each calling upon Allah to smite the other. It was smiles and handshakes with a mass murderer so long as he kept the oil coming. No ethical qualms on our part with supporting a brutal dictator. No, indeed.

Now he’s dead, nearly 3,000 American soldiers are also dead. Countless Iraqis are Shocked & Awed into their graves, more will follow in the murderous sectarian chaos Bush and his incompetent airheaded NeoCons unleashed. Saddam’s death will not bring back a single one of the dead for another moment to feel the sun on their faces, or feel joy at being with their loved ones. All dust now, collateral damage in the ego-drive for power, and to make the world a safer place for corporate greed and, most important, to secure the God given, absolute right of Americans to drive their Hummers, and the arms dealers to make a profit. It’s the American way.

Which means there will be more Saddams being put into place, and then later hanged, and more deals cut, more murderers and their victims awaiting us in this brave Happy New Year to come.

Mistah Kurtz is never dead for long. And he always costs far more than a penny.