Pooh!

A kindred soul in sewer blog writing from Stinson Beach, California has thoughtful, brilliantly written monthly columns, far different than these frequent Sewer Saga slap dashes to keep my two or three readers up to date. Please visit http://californiacoastdweller.com or Pooh! as the title proclaims, and rummage around for some good sewer reads! One of my favorites is this one: http://californiacoastdweller.com/2015/03/30/1596/

It is comforting to know in some strange alternate universe sort of way that Los Osos is not alone in its 35-year denial of sewage contamination if still alone in the belief from back in the bad old days that we had "magic sand," thereby eliminating the need to treat waste differently than septic tanks, cramed eight to twelve per acre as they are. That I think is still unique.

Well, we now face millions in payments, not just for our spiffy new sewer plant which will be online next year, but for all the water infrastructure changes that we will also have to pay for due to wrecking our water supply that is pooled beneath our town. I'm sure some day I will stop being dazed by this amazing lack of connecting the dots between leach fields and the water supply beneath them. These changes must be made, cost what they may as there is no alternate water supply.

The average income in Stinson Beach is $100,000, considerably less* than that in Los Osos. Once SB is sewered, there will not be a mass exodus from those unable to afford their homes. The exodus from Los Osos, long predicted by the sewer deniers when it was $29 million cheaper than now and earlier, costing far less than that, will likely come to pass. People with rentals are raising rents right now and homes that are big time fixer uppers are selling for quite generous prices. Well, at least those forced out will have a lucrative goodbye, I guess that is the rather sad upside. I just doubt that all of these people are the ones responsible for causing this economic disaster. The ones that are will never admit it and they will continue to live here.

*Correction! Oops - meant to say MORE there! Thanks for the catch gentle reader!