Nextdoor Sewer Fatigue

Some people around town that write on the Nextdoor website want to discuss the sewer issue and others do not. I believe it has only come up because of the upcoming election where someone who was a director before and after the Great Sewer Crash is running again to be on the LOCSD board, namely, Ms. Julie Tacker.

There is so much mis-information out there in support of this candidate that it is painful. It is impossible to know where to start to correct the misconceptions, or if anyone with their mind made up wants to learn anything different anyway. One thing is for certain, we are almost done getting our sewer and it is $29 million more than the one started in 2005.

There are some documents that need to see the light of day once again. I will insert some of them in the timeline in 2005 between the sewer work being stopped and the Water Board's reactions:

September 27, 2005 the recall election and Measure B took place and THAT caught the Water Board's attention. October 6, 2005 this letter arrived in the LOCSD offices:
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralcoast/board_info/agendas/2005/dec/item3/item3_attachment3.pdf

Within the document in the link above is this excerpt:

(Click image to see larger size.)

How did then-director Julie Tacker say publically that the old project's money could be used for the new project that she and the other four directors of the board wanted to build?

Then Ms. Tacker thought that the District could sell its assets to build a sewer! Really? How do you replace that much money, even if you thought you could build a cheaper sewer? Will you sell the fire truck (new, it was not more than $500,000; better hope no one is careless with a cigarette, with no fire truck), or the water company (Golden State Water Company in San Dimas was given an estimated value of $55 million for 11,000 customers - the CSD has 2750 customers, do the math)? Not enough money to even buy every house a Reclamator!

The State Revolving Fund money, necessary to build a sewer, any sewer, was at last permanently cut off. See pages 4-5:
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/board_info/minutes/2005/min111605.pdf

(The press release: http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/press_room/press_releases/2005/05_025.pdf)

Then December 9, 2005 the agenda for the State Water Board had this item for their consideration:
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/board_info/agendas/2005/december/1209-01.pdf

Read off the link below page 254, lines 8-14 - Interim General Manager Dan Bleskey's testimony on stopping the project:
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralcoast/board_info/minutes/2005/12_05_los_osos_hearing_transcript_1_of_2.pdf

8 MS. OKUN: Well, that wasn't my 

9 question. My question was did anybody at the  

10 State Board ever say that it wasn't a violation of  

11 the loan agreement to stop the construction  

12 progress for a timeout?  

13 MR. BLESKEY: To say that it was a  

14 violation of the contract?  

15 MS. OKUN: Did they say that it was not  

16 a violation of the State Board --  

17 MR. BLESKEY: No, they said that it was.  

18 But it is a contractual remedy plain as day, in  

19 language written by them. 

We know how well that rationale of Mr. Bleskey's turned out.

That's all I can stand of this stuff. I supect that not everyone reading here has made it to the bottom of this page as noxious as these facts are. And I don't know if I would have written this at all if there wasn't an alarming candidate running for Los Osos CSD in November.

Sewage Settlement 4 Years In The Making

Tolosa Press gives an excellent rundown on the settlement between the South San Luis Obispo Sanitation District and our Regional Water Quality Control Board. Money involved! Read about it here: http://tolosapressnews.com/sanitation-district-settlement-reached/

CDOs on Regional Water Board Agenda!

Find relevant links here for the September 25, 2014 meeting:

Agenda link—see Item 13, "Enforcement"
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/centralcoast/board_info/agendas/2014/Sepember/agenda_files/agenda_sep2014%20a.htm

Relevant documents page, off which are numerous links.
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/centralcoast/board_info/agendas/2014/Sepember/item13/index.shtml

To cut to the chase, the Enforcement Staff's recommendations are thus:

1. The County has not yet completed the community system, and while we are confident that it will, this outcome is not guaranteed.
   
2. The main requirement of the orders, hooking up to the sewer when it becomes available, cannot yet be complied with. This requirement should stay in place until the system is available.
   
3. Even when the system is available, there may be dischargers in the prohibition zone who are reluctant or refuse to hook up. Leaving these orders in place maintains a disincentive for order recipients to continue violating the prohibition after construction of the sewer system. 

We ALL should have gotten CDOs OR NOVs to begin with. In other words, we all should have been treated equally. While I disagreed many times with the frantic fight against these orders, as in real life, they didn't amount to much unless one chose to react that way about them (think of all of those who simply signed that paper and moved on), the unfairness to not be treated equally, I think, we can all agree on.

There are just as many NOV holders, probably more actually, who may not comply with hooking up to the sewer when it is available, so point 3 just seems to be a way to cut costs or something on a CDO holder who does not comply. In other words, maybe the Board would have to start from scratch with a non-compliant NOV holder, but it wouldn't with a CDO holder? Again, it just looks like playing unfavorites. 

So, IMHO, I believe the Board should adopt the resolution offered which TERMINATES these orders!
http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/centralcoast/board_info/agendas/2014/Sepember/item13/item13_att2.pdf

Water Board Meeting Notes

I attended the Regional Water Quality Control Board's meeting today in SLO. Staffer David LaCaro was giving an update to the Board on the status of the wastewater project. John Waddell, Project Manager from the County, was there to answer questions from the Board. The Los Osos regulars were there too of course.

The first and only public comment at Public Forum (comments for items not on the agenda) mentioned CDOs (Cease and Desist orders). You might recall those orders were issued because the LOCSD Board stopped the sewer project in 2005 after a recall election. These orders were "the stick" to get a sewer project going again as the Water Board was NOT pleased, to say the least. This technique was objected to by a group called PZLDF and they went to court to try to overturn these orders. They kept losing in court after higher court—up the food chain—but until they stopped suing the Water Board, the Water Board was not going to drop the CDOs. It finally ended, and you can read about it here, but since the sewer IS being built, the CDOs are meaningless and the desire to drop them was forgotten until now. The request was noted for investigation by the Water Board's legal counsel.

There was a report on a field trip to the sewer project by Water Board Vice Chair Dr. Wolff. It had been attended by two locals, LOCSD District Engineer Rob Miller, the Water Board's Executive Officer Kenneth Harris and board members including  Dr. Wolff. How this trip came into being is a bit of a mystery, as only a large community activist and a local developer represented the public of Los Osos on this trip. I looked back on Water Board minutes and my notes from a meeting on February 1, 2013 and found that Chairperson Young had directed board members Wolff and Hunter to a sub-committee meeting with the County at the that Water Board meeting to study the wastewater plans. I'm not sure what the nexus to this trip might be or why this trip happened. In any case, the report was glowing, that the project was coming along in an organized and clean fashion. Not what some Los Osos members of the audience wanted to hear.

Anyway, not to write a book, but the main points were these:

• On the water to dewater from the trenches, there was only 10% of the expected amount predicted;
• Some areas expected to have high groundwater had none;
• It was clear that both discharge to land and bay were permitted;
• The Water Board has an unclear, or not much of an, ability to influence the ISJ;
• There were 12 citizen comments and 3 agency comments on the Draft Basin Plan;
• The Draft Basin Plan has no timeline to meet the goals;
• The Basin Plan should hopefully be released in early 2014;
• Anything Los Osos water purveyors wish to do regarding water improvements requires coastal review;
• Dr. Hunter had multiple questions on everything and was asked by Dr. Wolff to give other Board members a chance to get their questions out;
• Private well metering was discussed in the context of getting accurate data for modeling the basin—the Board of Supes can issue ordinances forcing well owners to meter, but politically it is a burning-burning-burning hot potato;
• Walker Ditch (used for three weeks only) and the Solano pump station property are no longer needed for dewatering;
• The contractors are rapidly wrapping up dewatering, the flows average 50,000 gallons per day now;
• Dewatering water is going into a blackberry thicket and a eucalyptus grove where plant uptake helps to remove nitrates;
• The salts in the dewater water are significantly less than has the seawater in the bay;
• The dollar per acre foot cost on the recycled water being sold to the farmers is comparable to their pumping costs to give them incentive to use it;
• Once the resistant farmers see how well the farmers taking the treated water are doing, they will be encouraged to sign up;
• The Board was VERY unhappy getting Keith Wimer's hugely long Draft Basin Plan comments submitted 5 minutes before the meeting started; several Board members commented on that. The staff will read the document and make comments in May;
• Some of the public's comments on the wastewater project do not fall into the Water Board's preview;
• The Water Board cannot assist Los Osos citizens if they do not like their Supervisors, as they are elected;
• The Regional Water Board has no latitude to change the nitrate limit requirements (none at this time) in the discharge permit, those comments should go to the State Board;
• Mr. Young and Mr. Harris spoke to the public commenter's and Dr. Hunter's hoopla over the amount of nitrate in the dewatering water going into the bay—

 —the reason we are here today is because of the environmental impacts of the septic flows into the bay....any pumping into the bay is minor compared to what is going in there now. Any nitrate impacts to the bay (if there even are some) are transitory and will self correct (example; the Elkhorn Slough);

• Mr. Young would rather staff take up issues on saltwater intrusion than those around dewatering water's nitrates.

Great staff report by Mr. LaCaro and very helpful background information from Mr. Waddell, thank you both!

And that was pretty much it. (Meeting time: two and one half hours.)

Our new CSD General Manager was in attendance which was a good thing. Her professional, positive, friendly attitude is vital to the success in the relations between the CSD and the County on the subject of the wastewater treatment plant.