Thanksgiving And The Newberry Wastewater Treatment Plant!

This is/was Thanksgiving Day 2018, and I am thankful for so many things! Camera card recovery software is one of them. Yes, it has been a while since my last post. I apologize! My anxiety over a trip next month without camera cards finally got me to bring this epic Michigan sewer episode to you faithful readers (I think I am up to five of you now, and I thank each of you for reading!). I have been wanting to write this since July. But I had accidentally erased all my photos of the Newberry Wastewater Plant.

I was in Michigan in July—family stuff—visit my 98-year old aunt and (younger) cousins, and Lou's family reunion. We started in Grand Rapids and drove to a cabin in the mountains outside Traverse City (which has only very slightly larger population [15,515] than Los Osos, but seems vast due to old buildings like an opera house and an art museum). I should call not those things outside the city mountains, they are not that tall. But they seemed like mountains due to the pine trees from my Big Bear-SoCal perspective. And it wasn't a cabin either, but a six bedroom house with a two bedroom guest house, too, and right on a lake. But who wants to stay in a house in the hills? Not quite vacationy enough.

The Traverse City area is the largest producer of tart cherries in the United States. Michael Moore founded the Traverse City Film Festival. An X-Files episode in season four was filmed there. And so, so, very relatable to us in SLO County, USA Today named it as one of the top ten cities for local wine. 

(So we were in a "house" on High Lake, but really, "high" compared to what? Or maybe it is one of those other highs, there was a lot of wine, which led to this long delay in posting.)

We also did some traveling to the Upper Peninsula. Munising. Big Foot and pasties, oh, delicious pasties! 

(You can click on the images to make them larger.)

Then we went some other places. We wound up going through Newberry, Michigan population 1,519 in 2010. We stopped at a realty office to get addresses, in a pipe dream sort of way, to look at properties for sale. We stopped at Rahilly's IGA market to get some sodas. And I found, sitting casually on an upper shelf - Trenary Toast!!! 

I had only found this mail order, and there it was IN PERSON, like it was a common box of Hostess Zingers or something! (The reason that this is sewer related, is that Paavo Ogren, our sewer guru, our Obi-Wan Kenobi, told me about this stuff.) I bought a bunch of bags. My favorite flavor is cardamom, but it was the one least liked by the fam. Oh well, more for me!

So we wound up traveling further east, and on the way out of town there was a sign:

I think I shrieked, and the photo is blurry, we were going pretty fast. Lou's son driving was kind enough to encourage me to go back and have a look! So I did while the rest of our party went over to the river to enjoy the natural beauty; of an actual flowing thing, and, it is very leafy and green in Michigan. I casually walked up to the sewer plant gate to view this other flowing thing. How could I photograph in this place? Well, I just walked in.

No one noticed me. So I am bringing you what this place looked like on July 20, 2018.

Yes, it smelled.....

When this truck pulled in, I figured I was cooked if I was caught, so below is the one parting shot - just to prove that I was actually there. I am waving. I hope I am not discovered and prosecuted because I posted this. (Can they extradite me back to Michigan?)

So here is where the wine came in. We were back at the cabin. Everyone was playing Pinochle or something (I am not a card player). I was downloading all of my camera cards onto my laptop and somehow, as one card must have had two folders of photos, and I had a glass or two of wine, I downloaded photos from only one of the folders. 

Next, I was going to write this Newberry sewer post, but alas, photos missing.........

Which card had the poop? Overwriting my sewer photos?—NO! I took no more photos. 

I figured I'd get some photo place to recover the images, but thought, that is going to be verrrry expensive; so many cards! Then I thought, I'll just buy new camera cards and figure how to retrieve the lost pix later. July became November.........(insert 1940s vintage image of calendar with pages flipping). Then I found THAT was going to be verrrry expensive if I could even find more than two cards (I usually use seven.)

$39.99 to download recovery software was the cheapest way to go (the free ones were not that great). I need those cards for the trip in December. Well, with recovery, I found some other old images on those cards too:

Ernest Hemingway's bathroom in his house in San Francisco de Paula, 

outside Havana, Cuba!

 A photo I took of Richard Otto's Baywood newspaper from the 1950s!

I also stumbled on this fun stuff in researching Newberry's WWTF - sewer geeks might find this interesting!

https://www.cmdgroup.com/building-types/water-treatment/michigan/projects/

https://www.cmdgroup.com/building-types/water-treatment/michigan/projects/1000604847/

Newberry Waste Water Treatment Plant was founded in 1965, and is located at 307 E Mcmillan Ave in Newberry. Additional information is available at or by contacting William Glime at (906) 293-5681. (I love that name Glime!)

Newberry Michigan - http://www.villageofnewberry.com/

But check out this last one - look familiar? But it needs a bit of updating!
https://www.cmdgroup.com/building-types/water-treatment/california/projects/1000213240/

Notice Of Completion!

Off of the Consent Calendar for the Board of Supes today,  December 6, 2016!

Consent Agenda - Public Works Items:

20. Submittal of a resolution authorizing execution of notice of completion and acceptancefor the construction of the Water Recycling Facility for the Los Osos Wastewater Project,Los Osos. District 2. 

The project has been completed $2,776,491 UNDER BUDGET and ON TIME!!! 

Bravo County of SLO - our District 2 Supervisor Bruce Gibson, former Director of Public Works Paavo Ogren for starting the job, and Project Manager John Waddell for finishing it - and the cast of dozens in SLO County offices who made this giant project a reality! Thanks to all of the many, many people who worked on the many individual parts to this giant project. 

This is a landmark moment for the County of SLO and a giant step forward toward finally addressing our polluted water problem. And especially toward reestablishing comity, once the cornerstone of Los Osos citizen's relationships. The dark, pre-sewer civil war is sunsetting into a lovely indigo underground pool of recycled water.

Dignitary Stuffed Ribbon Cutting Ceremony!!

It is now official. Our swanky new sewer has been officially dedicated, complete with an unexpectedly large boatload of people in govenment who got this plant planned, green-lighted, and funded. It appears that our sewer, for all its grief, or maybe because of it, is quite the public works star. And I will say, it is actually rather gorgeous!

So the ceremony got a bit of a late start, it was to have started at 11:00 a.m., but people kept arriving on the cool red bus rented to schlep us from the cemetery parking place (thanks Los Osos Valley Mortuary!) to the event building—sort of tall carport, the name of which I forgot to get.

Anyway, the official Town Criers were there and I wish I had recorded what they said; it was hilarious, detailed, well written and just plain sentimentally sweet. Thanks to whomever thought to have them at this ceremony - and thanks to Bev and Jerry Praver, you guys were great!!

Bruce Gibson was the Master of Ceremonies. Speakers included Congresswoman Lois Capps, UDSA Deputy Under Secretary Lillian Salerno from Washington D.C., former Public Works Director Paavo Ogren, Project Manager John Waddell.

Present but not speaking, former District 2 Supervisor Shirley Bianchi, District 4 Supervisor Lynn Compton, former State Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee, and representatives from various other state elected officials, sorry, I didn't get the complete list.

Thanks went out to a long list of people, including the members of the TAC - Technical Advisory Committee that met about a zillion times reporting out the facts that they found on the sewer issues - financial, environmental, and engineering.

Note: our USDA loan was the largest single amount ever expended by that department.

The cake was very tasty, btw—there were four of them. Here is what I saw (click on any image to see a larger size). AND, the drone hovered capturing the scene!!! Those of us who noticed, waved (I hope we don't get edited out)!!:

The Venue

Town Criers Bev and Jerry Praver

Bruce Gibson

Lois Capps

 Paavo Ogren

 John Waddell

 Fake Scissors

 Real Scissors

The Bus

 Shot  from the bus window - there is water in there now!

They are planting still, although most of it was completed.

 The sign in a ultra cool, hip and retro design!