In Memorium

A moment this Memorial Day Weekend, to remember all the warriors and innocents who have fallen and continue to fall to the God of War.

Uh-oh, Better Get More Candles

If you want to experience a sickening sense of deja vu, get a copy of New Times ( http://www.newtimesslo.com/ )for Colin Rigley's excellent story, "Consulting Waste."  Morro Bay and Cayucos are joined at the hip via the Joint Powers Authority to upgrade their shared wastewater treatment plant which is located in Morro Bay. Naturally, this being a sewage project, the Usual Suspects showed up:  Corrollo Engineers, Wallace Group, followed by Montgomery Watson Harza.  And, as Rigley notes, "It's been five years since the two communities contracted the first consultant to begin planning for a plant upgrade project.  Morro Bay and Cayucos have, as it stands, a project proposal that could be in need of a complete overhaul.  Consultant fees have so far cost about $1 million in what could ultimately be a $34.3-million project -- unless it gets more expensive."

Continues Rigley, "'You hire a consultant, and they have no responsibility for the outcome,' said one local official intimate with the project. 

"The consultant gig can be a cut-and-run game in which the consultant submits a proposal, then skedaddles before that proposal is put to the test.

"'This means they can do anything they want, charge anything they want, and if it doesn't work out, then you have to pay more," said Gail McPherson, a wastewater division manager from Riverside -- now acting director for Citizens for Clean Water."

Adding to the expensive pile-on, are the lobbyists whose job is to try to finesse (or "spoon feed") a project past the Coastal Commission, a tough job if the project is shaky, which this project was from day one.  I mean, almost before the ink was dry on the copy of the plan, the CC was firing dangerous warning shots across the JPA's bow. The problem? Thinking they could just build a new treatment plant on the old site without looking seriously at alternative sites that would take the plant off a 100-year flood zone.  Plus taking a serious look at treated wastewater reuse, a costly re-do but one that's simply going to be the prefered plan for any upgrades from now on in a water-strapped state.

And so it went, consults begetting consultants.  Here's Rigley again.  "If some of the names and companies working on Morro Bay's and Cayucos' project seem familiar, it's because they are.  In the Los Osos project, members of the Wallace Group and Carollo -- specifically Lou Carella, who worked briefly for MWH -- sat on the panel that recently selected MWH as one of the top three firms to design and build the most recent incarnation of the Los Osos sewer project.

"In fact, [Project manager Dennis] Delzeit's contract with Mrro Bay is a joint venture with him as the project manager along with the Wallace Group.  On paper, Delzeit and the Wallace Group are virtually synonymous.  Every page of his contract pitch for the project management gig is labeled 'R. Dennis Delzeit & Wallace Group.'

"Delzeit was also part of a seven-member review committee that selected MWH to design the Morro Bay/Cayucos project.

"Morro Bay Capital Projects Manager, Dylan Wade, who worked for MWH until April 2007, also sat on the selection committee (wade, however, recused himself from the final state of the selection process, he said in a previous interview.)

"'It seems pretty clear that we just keep on reverting to the same firms,' said one local official.

Indeed, some of the same MWH people who designed the Los Osos project are part of the MWH team in Morro Bay and Cayucos.

"And the price tag is rising."

I'll say. Which is why Rigley concludes his article with this: "What no one wants, though, is a replay of Los Osos -- a project that has skyrocketed in cost over three decades and coutless revisions.  But as it moves forward -- manned by many of the same people and companies for a project that may need to relocate -- it seems the Morro Bay/Cayucos project could be facing the same fate."

Which is why I say, get out the candles, folks, and start saying your prayers for the good folks in Morro Bay.  

And What About This Was NOT Predictable?

So, Republican pols and their spineless Democratic bretheren started in on a sure fire political issue: WAR ON CRIME! No flaccid softness here. Lock ‘em up! Build more prisons! Three Strikes and you’re out! Smoke a joint, go to prison! Hang ‘em all! So they started building prisons all over the state and when that wasn’t enough, started privatizing the prisons – big money to be made, more prisoners, more per diem profit!

But, being Republicans, the pols also signed onto the Grover Norquistian Blood Oath – NO NEW TAXES!

So, mo’ prisons, mo’ prisoners, mo’ guards and no additional taxes to pay for it all.

So the Supreme Court has ruled that the overcrowded prisons constitute cruel and unusual punishment and in order t get the proper occupancy numbers down, the State, which is broke, now has to either build more prisons or re-shuffle them from state back to counties, which are also broke. Or release prisoners, many of whom will return to prey on their communities.

So, please tell me, just what about this mess was not predicable? Right. None of it.

Dr. Phil Rules

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed Congress yesterday. I have long since stopped reading about the Israel/Palestine issue. It’s such a tangled pile of intractable pick-up-sticks that even fifteen minutes worth of contemplating which stick to carefully lift first without toppling the whole pile makes my head explode.

But here’s what I do know: Both side in this bitter battle are faced with TV’s Dr. Phil’s Great Basic Question: Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?


Or, in the case of Israel/Palestine, Do you want to be right or do you want to be . . . dead, or permanently dispossessed and displaced, or under constant threat of random violence or . . . . or . . . .?

That ultimate question that can only be answered by both parties. I can only hope and pray they both have the courage to chose life.

On The Other Hand


Or maybe peace in the middle east will be overtaken by larger events: Another volcano has erupted in Iceland, an astonishing number of tornadoes has and continues to devastate the center of the country, and Preacher Harold Camping has re-figured his Judgement Day. It will come Oct 21, which is a relief since I won’t have to buy Halloween candy again this year.

Meantime, God Bless Chicago. They’re starting to greenscape the place since by mid century they predict that global warming will result in a Chicago environment more akin to Alabama than Canada. So, out with the doomed beech trees, bring on the Magnolias and put start repaving the streets to deal with the massive deluge of warm southern rains they’ll be getting.

Well, finally, a civic government actually leaning forward, looking into a future that can’t be ignored or wished away, carefully considering the unavoidable consequences of present day events, then actually doing something about it now.

Chi-caaaago, Chi-caaago, that toddling town!

SewerWatch's Dots

For SewerPhiles who are in need of their fix, Ron Crawford's been busy assembling some historical dots.  "Exposed: The Karner Confession," at http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/ .  Read at your own peril. 

Your Sunday Poem

Last month ago in the L.A. Times, there was a story by Oliver Gettell about a poetry reading done at Royce Hall (UCLA) by poets Kay Ryan and Billy Collins. Gettel begins by noting, “After reading a truly good poem, one finds it hard to look at the world in quite the same way again.” Both Collins and Ryan write poems that are often “witty,” but always with a knife’s sharp edge hiding in amongst the words. Said Ryan of Collins’ work, “In a way, I enjoy what so very many people enjoy, and that is the easy, inviting tone and pace of his work, where he walks you down a path and the path gets much more interesting and funnier than you knew.”

Here’s an excellent example of what Ryan and Gettell are talking about, from Collin’s new book, Horoscopes for the Dead.

Roses

In those weeks of midsummer
when the roses in gardens begin to give up,
the big red, white, and pink ones –
the inner, enfolded petals growing cankerous,
the ones at the edges turning brown
or fallen already, down on their girlish backs
in the rough beds of turned-over soil,

then how terrible the expressions on their faces,
a kind of was it all really worth it? look,
to die here slowly in front of everyone
in the garden of a bed-and-breakfast
in a provincial English market town,
to expire by degrees of corruption
in plain sight of all the neighbors passing by,

the thin mail carrier, the stocky butcher
(thank God the children pay no attention),
the swiveling faces in the windows of the busses,
and now this stranger staring over the wall,
his hair disheveled, a scarf loose around his neck,
writing in a notebook, writing about us no doubt,
about how terrible we look under the punishing sun.