Yes, I would do that for you.

Governor Schwarzenegger signed the Blakeslee bill stripping sewer authority from the Los Osos CSD. That burden rests on the County of San Luis Obispo now. (Good luck, guys. I’m rooting for you.) It looks like the county is ready to take it on; they’re going to present a number of options, including a septic tank management plan, to the voters in an advisory election. Although Blakeslee bill addressed much of the controversy, it apparently didn’t address how sewer-related assets will be transferred from the CSD to the County. When asked how that would be resolved, CSD director Tracker suggested a lawsuit, "It’s Los Osos. That’s how things get interpreted here, through the courts."

The County must be breathing a sigh of relief. The San Luis Obispo Local Agency Formation Commission declined to dissolve the Los Osos CSD, on the grounds that its $40 million debt would revert to the county. Seventy people went to that LAFCO meeting. Seventy! Sadly, citizen participation was not a model of measured debate; the SLO Tribune described it as “scathing and often emotional”. We are not surprised. The former CSD Board of Directors asked questions about how the CSD is going to continue to supply water and pick up trash while paying off, you know, $40M in debt. The current CSD Board of Directors said they have a plan, and by the way! They have a new sewer plan, too! Trust them! The CSD board president asked if they are doing such a bad job, why Los Osos hasn’t held a special election to recall them. Oh honey. I think you are a crazy lady, but if I lived in Los Osos, I would vote you into office every term for the rest of your life, just so you had to clean up the mess you made.

The county got to have their say too. County Supervisor Bianchi, whom you may recall was piqued that threats to her personal safety required her to get a sheriff’s escort to attend CSD meetings, accused the current district board of asking her to help them skirt state laws and described their "absolute and total inability to understand that this (water quality regulation) is the reality in our universe". She said that her initial reaction to the proposal to dissolve the CSD was “Hallelujah”, until she came to the conclusion that it would set a bad precedent for overriding local government. LAFCO agreed that they aren’t in the business of negating the voters’ will by dissolving local districts, but did agree to a full audit of the Los Osos CSD. I’m looking forward to the results of that.

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I’ve been thinking about this quietly, then mentioning it as an unimportant aside to some of my friends, then quickly qualifying my intentions and then bringing it up again a couple weeks later. But now I’m going to say it out loud, largely to make it more true. I want to write a book about the sewers of Los Osos. I am going to write a book about the sewers of Los Osos.

I don’t really know how one goes about that. I mean, I know how to write, even lots of words in a row. I know water people and they are happy to introduce me to water people in Los Osos. My freaking awesome boss said that if I can tie it to our program (which isn’t such a stretch), he’ll let me spend some work time on it. Thank you, taxpayers of California! I think I’m going to need a laptop.

It is such a cliché, that one writes a blog and then writes a book. But now I know how that happens. It would never have occurred to me that people would want to read about the sewers of Los Osos. But I think of all of you, with your huge eyes wide and impatient, waiting every day to hear what happens next in Los Osos. I want to be the one to tell you and to tell you what happened before, too. I would never have guessed at your insatiable demand for a book about the sewers of Los Osos. But there it is, your burning need to know about the infrastructure squabbles of a small town in California. I can’t let that go unmet.