Where Is It Going? (Your Recycled Washes & Flushes!)

I got a notice for the next Basin Management Committee meeting today (next Wednesday, March 20). In it was the latest scoop as to where our recycled was going. Here is a quote:

"Contracts are in place with the two primary water purveyors which allow the delivery of recycled water to schools within their service areas subject to the billing rate rates established by each purveyor. An agreement was executed with S&T Mutual Water Company to allow the County to directly deliver water to Sea Pines golf course which is inside their service area. Sea Pines will be connected to the system by the end of March 2019. Los Osos Middle School will be the first school to be connected to the recycled water system with anticipated connect date of August 2019. Additional schools will be connected to the system as resources are available, with the goal of connecting one school per year." (Look for exhibit A toward the bottom in this lengthy tome.)

At long last....... 

Latest News From Our Sewer Laterals!

I attended the Basin Management Committee meeting on Wednesday, September 20. Mark Hutchinson, Deputy Director of the Resources Group in the county's Public Work's Department, filled in for Bruce Gibson on the committee, and gave a report on how our sewer lateral connections are going. Very well, as it turns out! 282 are all that are left to connect, and of that, about 85 are on a low income program that has not yet worked its way all the way through the federal agency that is funding them. So less than 200 are left to hook up! How to address this issue of the mystery non-hook-ups will be before the Board of Supes in the second week of November. That will be a meeting worth watching. I plan to tune in!

Not Sewer, But Water!

I am breaking with tradition to post a non-sewer item, but it is about our water basin, which of course, our septic discharges have damaged greatly. Now, with our almost brand new plant returning water down to the aquifers from Broderson, they will, eventually, become less contaminated from the nitrates and salt water due to the dilution and push back from clean water. Which brings me in a roundabout way to the Basin Management Committee.

What is that you ask? Well, it is a state mandated entity which will manage our water basin. The basins in the entire state must comply. Our committee is comprised of a representative of each of our three water purveyors in town, the CSD Water Department, Golden State Water (which was once Cal Cities) and S&T Mutual, plus a representative of the County: they have one well in our community park, so qualify to serve, and in fact they have become suddenly, HUGELY important in the basin's management.

It came as a big surprise that our basin, that has been studied and talked about endlessly for years, did not quality in its boundary delineations to the state's satisfaction. They denied the science that was presented. So in order to be an approved entity to qualify for loans or grants, the "basin" will have to be expanded to include a lot of area never studied much, nor do many of the residents know that they have suddenly been included.

You have seen the sign on the right side of the road driving back from San Luis Obispo into Los Osos: "Morro Bay Watershed Keep Clean." That is approximately where the state thinks the basin starts, and it is based on old reports from 30 or more years ago. So all the land then, between this sign and our basin must be brought under the umbrella of the Basin Management Committee—something our water purveyors alone are not in any way equipped to do—but the County is. So below is a notice posted and presumably sent to all of these unsuspecting new basin folks. Yes, we do know that there is water out there, we see farm irrigation and houses, but are we really the same basin? The issue will be vetted again during the next round of basin boundary changes. But in the mean time......

Please click image for larger size. If I get the color original, I will replace this black & white version. 

I am bummed to miss this, but it is my Pilates night and I am turning into jello I have missed so many sessions.

Basin Management Committee

This is not too sewerish of a post, but it is about water, and as we know, what is sewage when our spiffy new sewage plant is online next year, that liquid will be water to drink in 30 years from now or even sooner ,once the Broderson leach field is up and running.

So, since our returned-from-the-sewer-plant-water is part of the water plan for Los Osos, it seems only fitting to put out the word that the very first meeting of the brand new Basin Management Committee will be meeting Monday, December 14, 2015,1:30 p.m. at the South Bay Community Center. Here is a link to the agenda:

http://www.losososcsd.org/Library/LOS%20OSOS_%20Agenda%20for%20Initial%20BMC%20mtg%20(rev%2012%209%2015%20clean)%20(14154882-1).pdf

See you there!