Calhouns Can(n)ons

And Now, A Word From Those Good Folks Who Are Being Waterboarded For YOUR Sake, Without Your Help, Knowledge Or Even Interest.

A awful lot of people in Los Osos will be sitting down to their Turkey Din-Din, happy and at peace, having absolutely NO CLUE that 45 of their friends and neighbors are still being tortured and jerked around and “experimented on” with a series of weirdly morphing CDO “agreements,” screwed-up postings, missed deadlines, completely impossible demands – legally impossible – and goal-post moving by the New Grand Inquisitor for the Regional Water Quality Control Board who’s running the CDO Kangaroo Court that may or may not reconvene in December unless things get screwed up again and the Los Osos 45 have to get jerked around some more because of some other loony demand or morphed technicality or muddlement.

No, most of my fellow Los Ososians are blissfully unaware of this sickening drama happening to their neighbors and soon to be brought to their doorstep. Here’s an update from one such Waterboarded Victim. And while you are having a nice Thanksgiving, think about one thing: Some of these people are working hard on your behalf. They need help to pay the lawyer they have hired in order to work on your behalf. The possible settlement they’re looking at could benefit the whole community, could offer the possibility of being a true win/win, could start having a mitigating impact on the ground water immediately, not seventeen years down the road after a gazillion kangaroo court “trials,” all of which is something that will benefit YOU. I would ask you to think seriously about that and their (and your) defense fund at the Coast Bank. Then put down that drumstick and go make a donation. You’ll be doing YOURSELF a favor.



Thank you for asking for information about the Proposed CDO status. If you want to find out what CDO recipients have been doing for the past couple of months – or for the past 9+ months, for that matter – you can find what you need on line at www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralcoast. There you will find links, one of them being to the Los Osos Enforcement Actions. Clicking on that link will bring you to a page bearing all the communications from the water board and all the responses by defendants. The most recent responses to the November 15 deadline have been posted. Since we are asked to submit electronically whenever possible, it is pretty easy for them to pop in the responses, scanning anything else that is hand-written. Anyone who doesn't have a computer is free to go to the water board during working hours to ask to peruse the documents. You might even try asking for a meeting with the prosecution team, as future Proposed CDO recipients.

Our group continues to meet at least weekly, and smaller groups meet more often, to work on an agreement that we hope will be acceptable to us, and beneficial to all residents of the PZ, and that the water board can live with, so that this hearing/postponement cycle can stop. A large number of us have agreed to legal representation; four defendants are on record as having already signed the proposed agreement that appears on the water board web site at the top of the enforcement actions page. The references to their CDO numbers appear at the bottom of the pages. Bill and I refuse to sign that agreement with its drop-dead date of 2010 and scant assurance of a revision, which also involves our waiving our right to a hearing in the context of the impossible date.

Anything else you wish to know about current events of the CDO sort, please feel free to call Bill Moylan. We are in the book. Bill can also advise you about donating to the legal defense fund. I know that other CDO recipients would be able to provide you information, as well, and if you know a CDO recipient, please ask.

If the rest of the Prohibition Zone wishes to avoid this road that we’ve been on, they can donate any amount they are able to the PZLDF. Legal representation has been enormously helpful, but it is expensive. The majority of our fund’s resources came from two donors. The rest has come from CDO recipients and a few Interested Parties. Given the amount of the major donations and the total size of the fund, other donations have been few and far between.

Our original intent was to save our legal defense fund for the litigation to come years from now when our cases finally got heard by the water board and appealed to the SWRCB, and then on to the courts, where we planned to utilize legal counsel. But this interim agreement has come up, and we need counsel to assist with the negotiations and other legal recourse.

You can walk into Coast National Bank to donate or send your donation to PZLDF P.O. Box 6095 Los Osos, CA 93412. Please remember that by making a donation you are helping yourself.

I have been referred to on this blog as being “jaded,” which is so funny to me, because as I understand that word, it means cynical and bored. I can’t wait to have the time for that. When I think of “jaded” I think of a friend of ours, a PZ resident, who asked my husband, Bill, how he was doing and received an answer of how tired Bill felt. This friend asked him why he felt so bad. When Bill mentioned that we’ve been in this CDO process for over nine months, the friend’s response was, “Has it been that long…?” As this friend commiserated, Bill told him that he could really help by donating to the PZLDF. Our friend who owns two houses in the Prohibition Zone responded, “I’ll think about it.” To me, that’s jaded. But that’s just me.

There is a true disconnect between Proposed CDO recipients and the rest of the PZ. I think it's partly biology - the tendency to isolate and separate from the weak or threatened members of the herd - and partly ignorance. It must be so comforting to be able to say, "I feel so sorry for them." But really, the best way for PZ dwellers to assist themselves is to stay connected to the first 45 by acknowledging that this fight is everyone's fight. And the best way to do that is to donate to PZLDF P.O. Box 6095 Los Osos, CA 93412.
Thanks,Bev.