Sewer Politics Redux

Sewer politics has been with this town ever since the idea of a sewer was floated back in the 1970s. Battles were fought for and against. Our sewer is now built thanks to the County, and we are hooking up, but a whiff of sulphur still lingers locally, this time in the candidacy of someone for the Los Osos Community Services District board. This time the political football is not the sewer, but the very existence of the LOCSD. The LOCSD was created to have local control of the sewer; we lost that, but now its existence is challenged, which means having any control over our water supply is now challenged..

An opponent to any sewer at all, later revised to "just not THAT sewer," whose latest bid for destruction is the dissolution of the LOCSD under the ruse of "just letting the people decide" is a bad choice for Los Osos. Giving that person a platform for disseminating her message, beyond the three minute limit at public comment, is toxic. I believe her position on the board before, gave her a platform to lead the community into accepting the illegal Measure B. Her name is Julie Tacker.

More recently, Facebook has been her present tool in the current election. Not only are her opinions going out in pixel-world, but paid ads for her have been appearing on timelines. One crossed mine this afternoon that was paid for at CalCoastNews. It was "liked" by someone I am friends with, so it then appeared in my feed. I was now able to comment on said post and lo-and-behold, it appeared on the "Julie Tacker for Los Osos Community Services District" Facebook page! We shall see how long it lasts there before it is blocked. Ms. Tacker has blocked me from viewing her personal page, but I'm sure she will block me from this one too after this.

My comment:

Thank you Mr. X for "liking" this article so it wound up in my feed. I am banned from posting on CalCoastNews because I have opposing ideas from Ms. Tacker and they don't allow free speech over there, even if politely written. So now I have a chance to say something.

Sorry, but have an entirely different opinion from you on her. She wanted to move the sewer out of town, but did so in such a boneheaded way, poking a stick in the eye of the Water Board, that the LOCSD board she was on LOST the low interest loan, lost the sewer project, plunged the town into bankruptcy - which we have FINALLY climbed out of - and now wants to be back on the board - to dissolve it! Yes, DISSOLVE it. No thanks.

Our sewer is now $29 million more out of town, the only local control we have now over our water basin, the big important thing we have left—is by having a seat on the board that controls the water basin— the Basin Management Committee. Dissolve, and all control goes to the County and the two remaining water purveyors one of which, Golden State, would probably jump on owning it. Bad idea.

Please DO NOT vote for Julie Tacker. I do NOT trust her to have anything but her own interests at heart. Electing her to the Board would give her a powerful platform to push her idea of dissolution, which is a bad idea for this town. She has promoted many ideas to help her developer boyfriend in the past, you have to ask - what is her motive to push away our local control?

BOS July 7, 2015! Civility on Agenda!

Off the Tuesday, July 7 Supes agenda—

(after the lunch recess and the report out of closed session, which does have the ARB lawsuit and the ISJ as topics for Closed Session. Dollars to doldrums we will hear nothing; we never do. Don't get me started on why the ISJ has dragged on so long, could be the delay in getting a sewer had something to do with that you know.......the recall, losing the $134 million SRF loan, the bankruptcy, etc.....meanwhile our water supply dwindles and dwindles, the county being our only savior with the water conservation measures in its sewer project—the LOCSD tries, but hampered with NO money, gets not very far—poor Golden State stymied by needing to get permission from the PUC to even sneeze, ALL of that.....) 

—OK, back to why I started this.........

Presentations

34. Submittal of a resolution supporting the Civility and Civil Discourse Accord resolution. All Districts. 

I can't wait to see what the support documents say for this item. Maybe the Los Osos CSD needs to check this out for their meetings as there is an echo in the room, albeit a tiny one, from the past uncivil insanity that has recently re-sprouted.

UPDATE: Read the relevant documents off of this link:

http://agenda.slocounty.ca.gov/agenda/sanluisobispo/Proposal.html?select=4779

Below is a particularly pointed quote from the resolution:

"WHEREAS, we commit ourselves to building a civil political community in which each person is respected and spirited public and political debate is aimed at the betterment of San Luis Obispo County and its people and not the disparagement of those with whom we disagree."

I guess that means shouting down a person at the podium from the back of the room is not to be condoned. Yes, some of the audience members at the LOCSD should take note. What they are doing is not aimed at any betterment of the community, but rather the betterment of their personal status among other like-mouthed louts.

Twisted Sister

A long time ago I worked at a place that put people into business for themselves. You'd buy a membership and then got access to a bunch of business plans and a ton of products to sell at below wholesale costs.

Said "Sister" of the heavy metal band in the title above, ran the Coaching and Sales Department for the company where I worked, but in another state. I guess the band thing didn't work out (there were a lot of ex's from that group for some reason).

I know you are thinking, why do I bring up this non-sewer story, THIS is a sewer blog! Well, there is a strange parallel going on in this county right now of a former "band" member going on to another job, only strangely looking just like how they did on the original stage, doing the same stuff but with a twist. And it is very, very sewer related. Please be patient, the twist will unfold.

I guess I should add that this ex-band member of Twisted Sister still looked the heavy metal dude when he'd bop over to California to check in with the mothership where I worked. He still looked like the guy on stage, just older and doing a slightly different job. When you are on stage, you are promoting yourself, in his case it was heavy metal music, and concert and CD sales for Twisted Sister. In Coaching and Sales, he was brandishing his heavy metal chops to rev up the troops to sell, sell, sell, both the business that we all worked for, and of course, more products.

In this parallel and far more gripping sewer story is an ex-Director of the LOCSD, and the spate of her performances in other towns to rev up the troops to sell, sell, sell you on HER ideas of "the facts." Another "twisted sister" as it were, and the facts are screwy. 

You might know to whom I refer. She's be hard to miss as visible at meetings around the County as she is, etc.. She is also a regular contributor at a SLO County online "news" venue.

The latest "twist" she promotes is the alleged removal of records from the offices of the South San Luis Obispo County Sanitation District (SSLOCSD). And she wants an audit of the Sanitation District's reserves, they have gone missing! Could there have been wrong doing, she asks?! She is upset that District files were kept at a contractor's office, they are property of the District and should have been stored there! Engineers and staff charged $42 to $108 an hour for basically filing! The invoices totaled $15,000!

Unbelievable, especially if you know what happened when she was a director at the LOCSD during its "sewer days." How can these amounts from another District, not her own, matter so much when money evaporated from the LOCSD on her watch? If she lived elsewhere and was looking in at Los Osos would she have noticed it then? Twisty!

Let's start with the idea that $15,000 is an outrageous amount of money. According to the Sun Bulletin in an article dated  I-18-06 by Abraham Hyatt titled, OSOS CSD BILLS PILE UP, WITH MORE TO COME: 

The most expensive invoice came from the law firm Van Blarcom, Leibold, McClendon, and Mann.  

It shows the district owes more than $57,000 for work mostly done by John McClendon, the district's interim legal counsel, from Sept. 30 through Oct. 31. 

Another law firm, Burke, Williams, and Sorensen -- which the district hired Nov. 23 -- charged more than $22,000 for one week's worth of work at the end of that month. 

The district's own financial records show that a third law firm, Shipsey and Seitz, which the district had used before the election, had been paid nearly $37,000 between November and December as well. 

District interim general manager Dan Bleskey and his company Willdan have also submitted a bill for about $58,000 worth of work for an unknown period of time. 

The district's general manager, Bruce Buel, is on paid administrative leave and continues to collect a $94,000-a-year paycheck.

Below is an excerpt from the Tribune published 3-10-06 from an article by Abraham Hyatt titled, LOS OSOS EXPECTS TO SPEND MOST OF STATE LOAN:

For instance, Bleskey testified that the district's three legal firms have billed $110,000, $97,000, and $50,000 respectively for a recent one-month period. It's unclear what month the bills encompassed, or which firms filed which amounts.

Read more here: http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=1104AC754F7DCA30&p_docnum=4&s_orderid=NB0114121709421801597&s_dlid=DL0114121709435002785&s_ecproduct=DOC&s_ecprodtype=NORENEW&s_trackval=&s_siteloc=SO&s_referrer=&s_username=sewercrazed&s_accountid=AC0109090823263613430&s_upgradeable=no#storylink=cpy

And on the topic of missing reserves, well, the bankruptcy of the LOCSD proved that there was noting left, but here is a jpg of page 10 out of the 2005-2006 audit (click for larger image). Look at the expenditures vs. the revenues:

Where was her concern when the monies she and her board had control over vanished? Were these numbers just too large to contemplate, so they didn't register?

As for boxes disappearing, boxes of LOCSD documents disappeared into the trunks of cars on or about October 4, 2005 according to eye witnesses (landing in Gail Mc Pherson's living room it was later revealed). How's that for keeping watch over your own District's files?

Because you have done the things that you accuse others of doing, do you feel that lends credibility to your claims? If so, that is really, really twisted.

Toilet to Tap for Now, Sort Of

Los Osos has been in the past, and will be again, in the who-knows-when distant future, dependent on virtually untreated, pristine groundwater that is neither over pumped nor contaminated, courtesy of our future sewer system: That is, the once-clean water we now send our nitrate-laden pee and a tincture of poop into, our Upper Aquifer water. Those constituents, and every other chemical that we put into that water by way of our septic tanks, be it of shampoo, residues of birth control pills or caffeine,* have contaminated the water, which, up until the 1970s, we used to be able to drink straight. We can’t just blow off this water source, we need to clean out the nitrates and dilute the lesser-volumed gunk, and use it again. The way this will happen is with our soon-to-be sewer plant stopping the inflow of said contaminants. Once our septic tanks are stopped, the water will slowly clear.

There are two ways that being able to use this Upper Aquifer water will occur:

Right now, the LOCSD Water Company is final testing a system that is denitrifying a portion of this upper aquifer water water and blending it with the pristine but diminishing-in-quantity of Lower Aquifer water, so that it meets all drinking water standards. I believe Golden State Water Company is either going to, or is already blending, upper aquifer water with Lower Aquifer water to stretch out the supply of the Lower Aquifer, just as the LOCSD is doing, the aquifer experiencing seawater intrusion. 

Many years from now, the lack of septic effluent going into that Upper Aquifer and the rainfall that penetrates to that level, will clean out the pollutants and that water can be used untreated, once again, for drinking.

Meanwhile, there are five key wells that are being used to test the Upper Aquifer water for its nitrate contamination factor. It is very important to test over time what is happening to the nitrate levels, in fact it is mandated in the current sewer project. 

The first testing was done in conjunctions with the Tri-W sewer project in 2002. That testing ended in 2006 when that sewer project was stopped and the CSD went bankrupt, and then the project was taken away from the CSD in 2007. So there is a gap in the record from 2007-2011 after which the County's wastewater project started up the testing again as ordered by the Regional Water Quality Control Board's Monitoring and Reporting Program, Order No. R3-2011-0001. They test more wells than the 5 used for this purpose. These five wells were chosen because they have the highest degree of sensitivity for nitrates. Any changes, up or down, will be most obvious here. A new 5-year drop of data will be available to show the nitrate trends by 2016, but they might be apparent even before then.

So for now, until we have a reliably clean water supply that will support our current population and the one at buildout if it should occur, we are going, in a somewhat circuitous way, the toilet to tap routine. Cheers!

*If in a mood to geek out, you might enjoy this report from 2006. If not, read page 20 (if opened in Acrobat) to cut to the chase:
http://www.losososcsd.org/Library/Document%20Library/UPPER%20AQUIFER%20CHARACTERIZATION.pdf

Sewage Politics

I won't pretend to not be concerned about the future of the LOCSD, my husband is a candidate this election cycle and I was one myself back in 2006. I have been blogging about things sewer and the LOCSD since 2006. But a FALSE narrative has been circulating in the community about a certain candidate's forum which was held October 10 at the South Bay Community Center. It was organized by Keith Swanson. 

I can't speak for any candidate, attendees or not, but I can speak on the topic of why the program has not aired on Channel 20. There are a lot of garbage-y reasons floating around regarding this this, slamming incumbent candidate directors and the LOCSD's General Manager. Pure political BUNK. There is a legal reason preventing airing the forum. You probably already know that the office of Director for LOCSD is non-partisan.

Last night at the Emergency Services Advisory Committee, Director Michael Wright gave the background on why it was not aired.

The gist was this: The proposal to air the show came into the LOCSD office to the General Manager Kathy Kivley. She has not been in the District long enough to go through an election cycle, but knew when you don't know something, you look up what the rules are. She found a rule on the District's books that the LOCSD itself can't be involved in sponsoring something that involves a political party. The Grass Roots Dems supplied a moderator, and they are registered as an actual political pac. Other forums have used the non-political League of Women Voters to moderate. Of course this decision was not made without consulting LOCSD legal counsel Mike Seitz.

The Board can agendize this issue, discuss it and even modify the rule, but as it stands now, it is up to the Directors to do something, NOT staff, and it needs to go onto a LOCSD meeting agenda. So, established legal principles and binding agreements were honored. As they should be.

Footnote: What inspired me in part to write this entry was an inaccurate and purely speculative letter in the Bay News, "Dirty Politics in Los Osos," by Keith Swanson's Campaign Treasurer, Jerri Walsh. 

Upon further digging on this topic, and remembering event organizer Mr. Swanson's E-mail early on to the candidates mentioning co-sponsorship by the Grass Roots Dems (and that was mentioned again at the Emergency Services Committee meeting on Wednesday night), it would seem that the FPPC deems that when a partisan group sponsors (co-sponsors, in this case) an event, unless the candidates themselves pay for this event (which they DID NOT), this constitutes a contribution to a candidate. The CSD is not a partisan entity and can't make contributions to partisan groups, which airing the event would be. Sorry Mr. Swanson, but those are the rules.

I wonder why the League of Women Voters was not contacted, or the Latino Outreach Council? Oh wait, Mr. Swanson mentioned it himself, those groups DON'T sponsor events like this—they only MODERATE them!

I guess getting this done was very important to Mr. Swanson and he should be glad anyone with a computer can access the event on YouTube, which actually reaches more households than cable TV service's Channel 20. But in getting so nasty as he did at the ESAC meeting and on his recent appearance on Dave Congalton's radio show, he erased any goodwill he may have garnered from his participation in the forum and by the ESAC meeting participants. He has unfortunately also pointed out how little he knows on FPPC rules which all candidates must abide by. If his unprofessional and rude treatment of staff now, in this case Ms. Kivley, who must thread the needle between rules and the instructions from the Board, is anything like his manner toward staff if elected, good luck to all in our CSD office.

Regional Board's Response to LOCSD Letter

I heard about this letter Wednesday and here it is—the response from the Regional Board to the LOCSD's letter on de-watering. Looks like they are fine with what the contractors are doing and if they are not concerned, so neither should we be. To the hair-on-fire commenters on other online places, the fire is officially out.

Staff Report - Nitrate Testing - Conclusions!

Check out this staff report for the LOCSD meeting on Thursday, July 19. Nitrate testing in a nutshell. The County will do it. The costs to the LOCSD by either Cleath-Harris or LOCSD crew are now outlined in detail.

http://www.losososcsd.org/Library/2012%20Agenda%20Packet/120719/AgendaItem5E_RequestDistrictConductNitrateTesting.pdf