Calhouns Can(n)ons

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons ,The Bay News, Los Osos, CA For Dec 7,2005

Shut Up And Eat Your Gruel, Los Osos! What do you mean, Nuh-UNH?

I have long believed that the world can be divided into two nearly equal basic groups: Adults & Children, or, if you prefer, Wolves & Sheep, or Good Children, who obey & Wicked Children, who disobey and make rude noises with their tongues.

Society runs smoothly because, for the most part, we humans mind our P’s and Q’s, and do as we’re told. There usually is no need for dire threats and our rules and laws and enforcement mechanisms range from polite frowns to bullets in the brain.

Indeed, you can see how perfectly the typical enforcement mechanisms work by watching a Border Collie run a band of sheep. There is no need to nip at a hock. All the dog needs is The Look, and the sheep will panic and run. It’s simple.

I was thinking of this while reading the “Central Coast Water Board Prosecution Staff Rebuttal” to the CSD’s request for a continuance of the Regional Water Quality Control Board’s Dec. 1st hearing to determine whether Los Osos will be FINED!FINED!FINED!WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE INNA STREETS LIKE DAWGS!

Amidst the legaleze, there on page 10 & 12, was the curiously human heart of this regulatory dance: Los Osos must be decimated as an example for others who might challenge the power of the RWQCB, question the premise that without enforcement you won’t have compliance, and because the citizens of Los Osos, instead of behaving like repentant sinners, are behaving like Wicked Children and are making rude noises with their tongues, so an example must be set, no matter how self defeating or pointless.

In short, the RWQCB’s “Look” had not spooked these particular sheep. Indeed, these wretched ingrates, instead of coming cap in hand (“Oh, Mummy, pleeeeeze, don’t spank, we’re sorry, we won’t do it again.”), these rotten little children from The Dogpatch, disheveled denizens from my Beloved Bangladesh By The Bay, a town with millions and millions of gallons of raw sewage pouring daily down the middle of its unpaved streets, all gushing into Morro Bay where it is killing small children who dare set foot in the deadly water, these unwashed wretched snots had the temerity to affront the dignity of the Regional Board and Staff by coming out with all guns blazing, questioning our authority, questioning our staff’s behavior, questioning our out-of-date facts, challenging our previous decisions, and threatening our majesty and power? Why, the absolute gall!

In a Tribune “Viewpoint,” Andrew Christie, chapter coordinator for the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club, notes something that may have gone missing in all the chest-thumping noise: “The citizens of Los Osos perceived a potentially better solution than the one they had been told they had to accept, and they voted for it.” He then goes on to ask some question of the Board members: “How is a ballot measure that’s voted into law an avoidable delay, how would a fine guaranteeing bankruptcy clean up the estuary, and how would an administrative agency justify attempting to cancel and reverse the results of an election.?”

What the RWQCB may not understand is that sometimes the only way forward is a step back. From day one, the effort to solve Los Osos WATER and wasteWATER problems has zigged and zagged in fits and starts and stops, hit dead-ends, backed up, met unavoidable delays and then more re-starts, but always it has moved forward towards a resolution with the help and hindrance of the RWQCB—hindrance at its refusal to understand how its threats forced a project to be designed and sited before critical studies could be done, and helped because it repeatedly gave both the County and then the various CSD Boards enormous leeway for years for a variety of reasons. Until now, until this Board, this election, this time.

Yet this time, nothing has changed except a missing component has finally been added, a component that should have been in place years ago – a Proposition 218-like assessment vote and/or a Measure B-type vote on a completed plan – either of which will allow this community to choose the final act they want to close this long-running drama.