Calhouns Can(n)ons

What’s in a Word?

The following “Viewpoint” ran in the SLO Tribune, August 30, 2006

Words, Words, Words. To most people living in or out of Los Osos, the word “sewer” means a system of large, gravity-fed pipes under the ground carrying raw sewage away to a large treatment plant somewhere. The word “STEP” probably draws a blank, yet it’s a “sewer” system as well, one that starts primary treatment of sewage in the septic tank where 90% of the solids can be digested while only the liquid is transported in pressurized pipes to a treatment plant. Both systems are “sewers,” yet in Los Osos, people who wanted a “sewer” but did not want the raw-sewage treatment plant to be put in the middle of their town and/or people who think a STEP system may be a better overall plan for the community are now both called “anti-sewer.”

In an informal discussion, Dr. Wickham, owner of Pirana ABG Inc, an onsite wastewater treatment system, made an interesting but often overlooked observation: Don’t confuse “clean water” with “sewers.” They’re not necessarily one and the same. “Sewers” are installed so a town can grow in size and density. By collecting all the waste you can vastly increase density. “Clean water,” on the other hand, is a separate issue. Morro Bay has “sewers,” but nobody would argue that their sewer outfall pipe is discharging “clean water.”

With little valid science but a lot of political expediency, years ago the Regional Water Quality Control Board drew a line around certain parts of Los Osos and designated it a “prohibition zone” with “zero discharges” allowed. Within those lines, “Resolution No. 83-13 states that all discharges of wastewater from individual and community sewage disposal systems within the Los Osos/Baywood Park area are prohibited. Therefore, a discharge of any concentration of nitrate violates the ‘Basin Plan Prohibition.’”

So, if a homeowner within the PZ installed an onsite system that “discharged” nitrates in the range of 2.5 mg/l that would be prohibited. Yet the RWQCB issued a “discharge permit” that allowed the “community sewage disposal system” known as TRI-W to “discharge” treated wastewater with 7mg/l nitrates in it. Are we then supposed to believe that 7 mg/l by a “community disposal system” is NOT a “discharge,” while 2.5 mg/l by an “individual” is? Clearly, we are now in Alice in Wonderland land.

Most people inside and outside of Los Osos think that “sewers” will “cure” the nitrate problem. It won’t. Since neither the County, the CSD nor the RWQCB ever conducted comprehensive isotope studies, nobody has a scientifically defensible picture of just how many nitrates are naturally present in the soil and so will end up in the upper aquifer no matter how many “sewers” are built. As Dr. Wickham has also testified before the RWQCB, Los Osos could build a $200 million sewer and still end up with high nitrates in the upper aquifer. So what, exactly, is getting “fixed” here? An accurate answer to that question will point to far different “solutions.”

Worse yet, lack of good science too often creates “weasle words,” words that can be used to conflate and confuse and cover up, thereby allowing bad decisions based on false or incomplete assumptions. In a June 10, 2006 letter to Paul Hood of LAFCo (Local Area Formation Commission, the board that will be considering the Dissolution of the LOCSD), RWQCB Executive Officer Roger Briggs states that nitrate contamination can be demonstrated by “a statistically significant correlation . . .” . . . “only plausible explanation” or “a strong correlation. . .” Those are “weasle words” and weasle words always allow for too much “unscientific monkey-wrenching,” all of which could have been avoided by properly conducted scientific studies and an updated Basin Plan.

And so it goes. Words can illuminate, words can obfuscate. They can be used as weapons to bludgeon your “enemies” and terrorize a community. Or they can be used to clarify and understand. Improperly used, words can blind the user to realities on the ground and can conceal any number of hidden agendas and sly thumbs-on-the-scale, all of which can drive a frightened community into making the wrong decisions for all the wrong reasons, decisions that can result in civic train wrecks. Or, properly used, clearly defined, honestly applied, words can also allow for the best decisions to result in the best possible solutions.

So, what’s in a word? Here in Los Osos, plenty.