Calhouns Can(n)ons

The Regional NON-Water Quality Control Board Rides Again


Hi-Yo, Silver. The R(N)WQCB is off on another mindless toot! They’re getting to be an embarrassment.

I mean, look at today’s Tribune story. The R(N)WQCB wants to crack down on wastewater discharges by RANDOMLY selecting 50 homes and requiring them to start pumping their tanks every other month. RANDOMLY? Executive Officer Roger Briggs said that “pumping six times a year will decrease the amount of suspected nitrate pollution from each tank by 22 percent.” (The data behind that statement was not given.)

Never mind that constantly pumping tanks unnecessarily upsets their natural functioning and will end up creating more pollution because the tank won’t be able to recover and get up to optimum operating speed before it’s pumped again, but why 50 RANDOM tanks? If Briggs is so concerned with water pollution, wouldn’t requiring the CSD to locate failed and failing systems and require them to be brought up to code or replaced or pumped FIRST make more scientific sense?

And why require each home to pump 6 times a year, despite whether 6 people live in the home or 1 person lives there, no matter if the tank’s big or small, in great working condition, or falling apart, whether its 20 feet above the aquifer or located smack dab down on the bay, and whether the home has low-flow toilets and showerheads or not, and so forth.

And while we’re looking at the handy-dandy little map provided at the Regional Board’s website --www.swrcb.ca.vog/rwqcb3/ --do you find it odd that not a single home sitting smack on the bay has a little flag stuck in it? Not even ones the Board knows have leach fields sitting in standing water?

So much for “science,” so much for being serious about water pollution. Cookie cutter regulations hang both sheep and goats and since they have no scientific rationale, rarely get the job done and just continue to damage the reputation of an organization whose methods are already highly suspect .

And if people want to get answers about all this, well, the web site says to ask Matt Thompson. Ask Matt Thompson?? Well, good luck to them. In December, I wrote to Matt to get some question answered – simple questions – about “onsite” systems, one of which had been written about in the Bay News. One of the simple questions I asked is, Who evaluates and signs off on any “onsite systems?” The RWQC? The County? Who? To date, I’m still waiting for an answer. So, if hundreds of Los Ososians think they’re going to get questions answered in a timely manner, well, I can only wish them luck.

Of course, this latest assault on Los Osos may not be about water quality at all, but may be about terrorizing people into thinking that dissolving the CSD will “save” them and so send them rushing to sign dissolution petitions. At one of the signing tables at Monday’s Farmer’s Market, was a handout that was headed “NEWS FLASH and discussed the recent Cease & Desist Orders (CDO) and concluded with big capital letters that said, “Join the petition campaign to dissolve the CSD, get the sewer project back on track and rid the community of this assault on our pocketbooks.”

What went missing, of course, is just how dissolving the CSD would stop the Cease & Desist Orders. Since the rationale for issuing the CDO was “water quality concerns” whether the CSD or the County is in charge, changes nothing. (Unless, of course, the CDO has nothing to do with “water quality" at all, hmmmmm?)

As for an “assault on your pocketbook.” at $150 – 200 month, pumping will be cheaper than the monthly Tri-W sewer bill would have been. Waaaaay cheaper, when you add on the various deferred costs and constantly rising O&M costs of that project. And if folks were happy with $205 a month sewer bills, this cost will be seen as a good idea, not an assault on their pocketbooks.

Plus, if Briggs is right (wouldn't it have been nice if he had backed his claim with some test data?) and it does reduce pollution 22%, that should make us all happy, after all we’re ALL concerned about “polluting our groundwater,” aren’t we?

Of course, I don’t think “science” and “pollution” has anything to do with what Briggs is up to. What you’re seeing is another carefully orchestrated “shock & awe” campaign to stampede people into putting a sewer plant in the middle of their town. Briggs and the Dreamers very much want that plant there, despite what the community voted on, and they’ll do anything to make that happen. (Rememeber the wonderful email to Briggs from Chief Dreamer, Pandora Nash-Karner, on the eve of the election, even before the numbers were certified, asking Roger to “fine the CSD out of existence?”) Shock and awe and fines and fear and bully-boy tactics trump “science” and good planning every time. Plus, they work very well. Scaring people’s easy. Stampeding them into doing what you want them to do is very, very easy.

What remains to be seen is if Los Ososians are bears who will start asking the right questions or sheep in a panic, soooo easy to herd off a cliff. The old recalled board majority (some of whom are behind the “dissolve the CSD” movement) tried that with their Let’s Pound Money Into The Ground assault before the election in order to cow and bully people into either not voting or giving up and following the party line. (You know, the party line that said that having a centrally located sewer plant in order to get some parks around it was a “strongly held community value” that trumped all else, including common sense, science, environment, good planning and price?)

So we wait to see if growls will arise from our Bangladesh By The Bay. Or baaaaahhhs” Meantime, about the “science” behind the R(N)WQCB’s latest move, I can only say –you’re embarrassing yourselves, Guys. If water pollution IS what you’re serious about, and you intend to issue CDO’s to the entire community, any fool with a clip board will tell you, you don’t randomly hit your targets. That smacks of incompetence OR the possibility that you have a hidden agenda that has nothing to do with “science.” If you’re interested in “science,” you start with the worst cases first then work forward. That will get you more “water quality” bang for your buck.

Of course, that action depends on whether or not the RWQCB is actually “serious” about “Water Quality.”