FRONT PAGE!

Ah, my beloved Bangladesh By the Bay made the front page of the Tribune today, March 7. Big time front page headlines, “Osos CSD to pay for flood repair.” Woooo!

As is so often true with most Tribune stories, this one started out on its constantly mutating peregrination by appearing to be about (1) the CSD will pay the homeowners up front for damage to some homes caused “after contractors struck a water line while working on the agency’s now-defunct sewer project.,” (2) then get reimbursed from the insurance agency later, while (3) CSD General manager Blesky told the reporter that the insurance carrier told him they only received the claims report last week while (4) none of the insurance company reps could be reached for comment, which means the question of whether the insurance company was acting in a timely manner or the CSD reports were sent in late remains unanswered, which is O.K. because clearly this story is of such urgency and importance that it has to run before all the information is in.

Even though this “news” (authorize the CSD to pay the flooded out folks, then wrangle with the insurance companies later) was announced, if memory serves, several weeks ago at a CSD meeting.

But then, by the jump page – typical Trib – the story shifted focus and noted that even though the district received “most of the residents’ claims by the first week of January, it did not supply them to The Tribune until Monday, despite numerous requests.”

And there it was, the story within the story, the first real story, the story that should have made the front page headlines: TRIBUNE SNUBBED ON INFO REQUESTS, AGAIN! (Remember the RWQCB stonewalling the Trib’s request for info on the Los Osos Forty-Five targeted CDO citizens? Got ignored, got foot-dragged, finally got only a partial redacted list, waaaaay late, boo-hoo, in total Violation of the public Records Act & etc.!)

And, then, this: CSD lawyer Julie Hayward Biggs explaining that the delay “was because the district’s records were disorganized and they were ‘still looking for claim documents.’”

And, there, of course, is the second REAL story – records in a muddle, an internal audit, another request by citizens for the DA to investigate the CSD Boardmembers, a dissolution campaign going on, the CDO hearings coming up (the CSD signed on as a designated party), ongoing regular CSD business, unavoidable delays, avoidable delays, staffing problems, in short, a CSD staff under fire from so many guns – THAT story, the REAL story goes missing.

And once again, the reader is left to ramble into misleading headlines, then down the rabbit hole of text confusion and jump-page switcheroos – another typical Tribune moment!

Get me rewrite! Or at least an editor?

Read it Again and Weep. Hello, all you folks at the Coastal Commission, the State Water Board, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the Tribune, the citizens of Los Osos. Please go over to Ron Crawfords www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com for a little refresher course in understanding how many fingers in this Hideous Sewer pie helped create the train wreck you're looking at today. And recall how many times former General Manager Bruce Buel said, under oath at the ACL hearing, that the Time Schedule Orders they were laboring under were "unreasonable." (Answer: Four times) And how many irresponsible little fingers are STILL screwing things up today. Failure to understand history usually results in Mo' Mess, Mo'Mess, Mo' Mess. So, read it and ponder.

Tree Man, Part Duh

The following email arrived from Joey Racano. The quasi-end game of his Tree Sitting Caper. Seems the tree he was sitting in wasn’t even on CSD property so he, uh, wasn’t trespassing . Oops. Arrest that tree for harboring an anti-Tri-W-sewer activist! Oh, wait, we can't. It was cut down in its prime! Call CSI!

~S.L.O. LAW!~ maps vindicate activist!


Before a packed San Luis Obispo courtroom, Judge Charles S. Crandel accepted a D.A. motion to have trespassing charges dismissed against activist Joey Racano for a July 7th, 2005 tree 'sit' in Los Osos, California.

"Your honor, due to new information, we move to dismiss the charges", said Deputy D.A. Nancy Fede.

"So moved", said Judge Crandel, "Mr. Racano, you're free to go".

"Thank you your honor", said I.

"And may I add that I am aware of your career accomplishments and it has been an honor to come before your bench" I said.

Judge Crandel, arguably the numero uno Clean Water Act lawyer in the world before being seated on the bench, was the lead lawyer for alaskan fisherman against Exxon, represented Earthcorps against San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, and represented Ballona Wetlands Action Network against Playa Vista!

"Thank you" he modestly replied.

Also in attendance was world-famous activist Mandy Davis, fresh from war in Antarctica against the Japanese Whaling Fleet on board the Sea Shepherd Society's ship 'Farley Mowat', now back to rejoin the battle for Morro Bay Estuary!

Public Defender L. Anthony Lucero simplified the entire case by demanding official maps of the 'Tri-W' area, which showed -to the surprise of many- the tree in which I perched was not on Los Osos Community Services District property after all.

Last July, the former LOCSD held a phony 'groundbreaking' for a sewer plant that would have brought financial and environmental disaster upon the community of Los Osos. My tree-sit helped garner much-needed media attention to the issue.

The majority of that CSD were recalled in disgrace on Sept. 27th in a razor-thin election! Big fun!

The new CSD has now re-populated committees left intentionally vacant by the former CSD (so they could 'accept' a 135 Million Dollar bid for a 46 Million Dollar project by contractor friends) and, in spite of being attacked by a corrupt Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, are now putting sewer plans through a proper 'vetting' process.

In interviews today with THE BAY NEWS and NEW TIMES, I made clear my responsibility to activists, who must be allowed to exercise constitutional rights of free-speech without fear of incarceration.

Next: ~Litigate, SEWERGATE!~love, your pal Joey xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxooxoxo

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons, for March 1, 06, The Bay News, Morro Bay, CA

Medea in Sewerville

Ah, Euripedes knew a great story when he saw one: Medea marries Jason, he of the Golden Fleece, and does unspeakable things in order to further their ambitions. When Jason dumps her for another woman, in an act so fierce and appalling that it has come down to us through the ages as the epitome of savage, blind revenge, she murders their children. That’ll show him!

This tale came to mind when I read that Taxpayers’ Watch is now attempting to have the CSD dissolved. In a world of ironies, here is a supreme one: The group that wants the CSD dissolved includes many of the “Save The Dreamers” who wanted a sewer plant in the middle of their town, and they in turn are made up of many of the very people who were responsible for giving birth to the CSD in the first place in order to get the Faster! Better! Cheaper! Solutions Group’s $35 million sewer ponds in the middle of their town.

O.K., so it turned out the Solutions Group (but not the voters) knew before the CSD formation election the price wouldn’t be $35 million, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board had already indicated they wouldn’t approve the project, a birth is a birth. And now that the birth mothers have determined it’s time for a death, we have Medea in Sewerville!

And not just the Greeks are at work here. In this attempt at dissolution, do I smell the whiff of a tale of two cities? The Ancien Regime versus the Denizen of Dogpatch?

All communities are run by a cadre of Dauphins, dedicated citizens who care enough to volunteer on all the various advisory committees that actively decide the shape and fate of the community. These worthy, civic-minded people constitute an informal “shadow government,” a sort of Fifth Estate within our official democratic institutions. Their influence is enormous, but human nature being what it is, they often end up viewing themselves as the rightful heirs of governance, and the notion that governmental power derives from the people is often a profoundly annoying notion to them. Especially when the unwashed, unhorsed and unbooted vote to choose a different path from the one they have selected.

In the case of Sewerville, the Denizens of Dogpatch selected a new path and a new CSD Board majority. Instead of working within the official institution to counter that choice – put up a slate of Pro-Tri-W Sewer candidates for election in November, start a new Anti-Measure B initiative or start recall petitions of their own, and etc., the first choice made by the Dauphins was to privately email to beg the RWQCB to “fine the CSD out of existence” (that means you, dear and gentle reader), and then they moved to dissolve the entire system altogether.

Euripides, Dickens, and now the little kid who brings the football to a pick-up game and when his side loses takes the ball, the goalposts and everything else home, thus shutting down the entire game for everyone.

And ironies of ironies, the dissolution flyers falsely conflate dissolving the CSD with “safety” from the recent RWQCB’s Cease & Desist Orders, and with the County magically taking over and building a sewer at Tri-W. In fact, the RWQCB’s prosecution staff made it official: Dissolution will have NO effect on the CDO’s, and they have NO knowledge of ANY county plans anywhere for anything.

Meanwhile, the CSD has been granted Designated Status in the upcoming CDO hearings, which means they will be legally entering the hearings as an active participant – a mother hen able to spread her governmental wings to act both as point man and sheltering cover for her community of targeted chicks. If the CSD is dissolved, so is Mother Hen. And individual citizens will be on their own, left to the tender mercies of a county that views us all as unwanted “red-haired stepchildren.”

Faithless husbands, unhorsed, unbooted voters, the only guardian in town dissolved by conflation and lies, retribution engineered by Dauphins and sorceresses and little kids with their footballs who feel betrayed and set aside by too much democracy of the wrong sort.

So, it’s Off With Our Heads! Children and their smashed toys, Medea and her dead children, Dauphins and sans culottes, it’s an old, old story. The only question left is this: Should it be written this time as a tragedy, or comic farce?

A Short Breather

The Regional Water Quality Control Board has moved the Cease & Desist Order hearings from March 23-24 to the end of April, thereby giving another month to their victims – The Los Osos Forty-Six – to prepare for what may turn out to be a HUMONGOUS legal battle.

The extra time will be helpful because what few people may realize is that unless things are entered into the “record” during this RWQCB’s “administrative” proceedings, they likely can’t be brought into any subsequent legal proceeding. So, it’s critical to have time to prepare each individual case.

This becomes especially true since the sledge hammer the RWQCB has chosen to use (the CDOs) ultimately can involve people losing their homes and life savings. Serious stuff, indeed.

Which is why I suspect the RWQCB will run into a buzz-saw’s worth of serious, serious legal problems and challenges as this process moves forward. The seriousness of the CDO process is also why everyone in Los Osos had better pay attention and why any of the Los Osos Forty-Six who have not contacted the CSD to link up with their fellow victims had better do so immediately. There’s a lot of legal expertise out there, and procedural expertise that they can avail themselves of before the April hearing date.

If they think they can just wander into the hearing room and fling themselves on the “mercy” of the Board, they’ll be the perfect illustration that the man who represents himself before a court has a fool for a client. And they will pay dearly for such folly.

The irony to be found in what the RWQCB is attempting to do here – for the first time, I might add – is the fact that RWQCB has a great deal to lose, the most important item of which is their credibility. Right now, the way they’re proceeding does not give me confidence in their “science” or in their competency. And once that goes, everything else will come crashing down.

By way of one small example: At the Feb. “informational meeting” I asked the Technical Mr. Science Guys on the staff, since the CDO’s discuss “alternatives,” what are the discharge target numbers that some “alternative” system must hit in order to be in the ball park. I was told that that was a very good question, they didn’t have any target numbers, but that was certainly something they needed to think about and perhaps they could come up with those numbers.

One month away from a major administrative hearing involving serious, serious legal outcomes and they didn’t have target discharge numbers that some “alternative” system must meet. Didn’t have the numbers.

This indicates to me that these boys are winging this whole thing and will be making stuff up as they go along. Not good, when the taking of private property, savings and lives are at stake. Once credibility goes, it’s impossible to get it back. And lack of credibility carries an awful price when you’re under tough cross-examination in a court of law.

Meantime, if you’re one of the Los Osos Forty-Six and have not linked up with your fellow POWs, I would urge you to do so. The RWQCB has started a war with the citizens of this fair burg, a totally unnecessary war, so it will be up to each of us and the CSD to limit the “collateral damage” they intend to do to our friends and neighbors.