Calhouns Can(n)ons

An Interesting Wrinkle or Two

Went to the June 20, Town Hall Meeting at the Los Osos Middle School last night to hear the update on The Hideous Sewer Sardoodledom. Let’s see, there’s about 5,000 homes in the PZ that will be directly affected by this project and about, oh, maybe 100 residents showed up for the meeting. My, my, such interest! Especially, when people had a one-on-one chance to talk directly with the various project personnel and TAC members and the assessment engineer & etc. so as to ask questions and get answers.

The Process plods forward. There were a couple of interesting wrinkles for me. First of all, I’ve heard some folks complain that they’d never vote for a STEP system because they didn’t want their back yard all torn up to put a new tank in. Turns out that most of the tanks in town are now located in front yards, which, for some reason, surprised me as I just assumed they’d be in back. That makes replacement and monitoring easy since a new tank can be dropped in where the old one was and/or simply put the new tank under the driveway, for example, with riser and maintenance access near the street. (Even with gravity, the old tanks would have to be filled and new pipes dug out to the street to hook up to the sewer lines. Same thing would happen for STEP. Old tanks in the back yards (i.e. inaccessble) would be shut down and new lines run to the new tank under the driveway or in part of the front yard. (The Ripley report mentioned the possibility of using rights of way ajacent to the front of lots & etc. Additionally, the engineers have added in the cost of hook up which wasn't included in the original cost of Tri-W, so now STEP and gravity instalation costs are on a level field.)

That would eliminate the fear of whole back yards being torn up and/or maintenance people having to gain access to the yard to service the unit.

The next interesting thing is that the State Revolving Fund demands all sorts of expensive, redundant electrical stuff for STEP units that isn’t in the state engineering codes and not even recommended by STEP builders. The County is now preparing data to have ready to challenge that SRF requirement. If successful, (and if an SRF Loan is in play) that would also save additional money.

Another interesting chart that was shown had the cost breakdowns as follows:

65% collection systems
17 % disposal, water reuse
15% treatment plant
2% land size, cost and siting
1% biosolids/sludge disposal

This prompted Paavo Ogren to note that it could be possible to nail down the last four items, then look into setting up a competitive industry bidding opportunity between gravity and step systems, since the collection system is the biggest cost. That is, a treatment plant and site and a disposal plan is flexible enough to accommodate either gravity or STEP, so, in a way, it doesn’t really matter which type is picked. But it does matter which collections system is picked since that’s where the real cost savings can appear.

Right now, the state laws aren’t really clear on allowing the county to go straight to design build, but, according to Paavo, there may be ways to break up the process so as to invite seriously committed competitive bids that would give the community a more realistic idea of cost on both collections systems, a better idea than just vague “guestimates.”

As for "affordability," all that was mentioned is the continuing search for federal grants. The political climate in Washington is shifting now, so perhaps there will be a greater interest in domestic spending for infrastructure (long neglected, much to the woe of most of the country). That might result in grant monies that would pay for the treatment plant, for example. The County's also looking into some funding mechanism for low-income folks, a sort of "revolving" loan that could be available that would be paid back when the home is sold to help another low income family & etc.

Clearly, "affordability" is the 800 pound gorilla in the room and the simplest answer right now is, Cost is no barrier. It's gonna cost. Period. Nothing we can do about it except to try to get the cost down as low as possible, but there are no promises. Practically speaking, it will be interesting to see if the cost can be held to near what Tri W was (really) going to cost, only this time the treatment plant will be out of town, and will result in the water basin being balanced (i.e. no imported water) . If that happens and the price is still in the Tri-W's "real, actual" cost, then will that make the majority of the community happy? I suppose the assessment vote will give an answer.

The remaining tricky part is the part about water. And getting this project to both allow build out AND balance the basin will require participation by the water purveyors and that means payment for their fair share of the clean water for folks living outside the PZ. Breaking out just what that “fair share” will be will be tricky, but vital.

One thing is clear, water for Los Ososians, will cost more. Just like water rates are going up in SLOTown and everywhere else. And since everyone in the West knows, Whiskey’s fer drinking, Water’s fer fighting, maybe it’s past time to get down to the nursery to lay in a goodly supply of drought-tolerant native plants for the yard. Then, let the games begin.