They're not going down alone.

LOS OSOS:
For sewer funds, Osos looks to itself; Services district will borrow $630,000 from trash and water money to pay for research into a new wastewater project
San Luis Obispo Tribune – 5/8/06
By Abraham Hyatt, staff writer

Because a judge has blocked about $3 million of state money for a new Los Osos sewer, the town’s beleaguered services district will borrow $630,000 from its own water department and trash fees to finance research into the project.

District leaders say they don’t know yet how they’ll eventually repay the money.

Borrowing money from internal funds is something small agencies like Los Osos try to avoid but occasionally do, said Geoffrey Neill, a spokesman with the California Special Districts Association.

There’s a precedent for it at the Los Osos Community Services District.

The Los Osos CSD was $5M to the good before Los Osos recalled the pro-sewer Board of Directors. Now they're eating their young. You get what you elect, people. Or, sometimes, you get what your fellow citizens elect but nevertheless have to participate in horribly dogmatic, shortsighted decisions that will be tremendously expensive down the line. Thank god that only happens in Los Osos.

Why, why do I live so far away?

I was starting to despair of Los Osos. There has been news, but nothing worth telling you about. A board member of the Los Osos Community Services District had a guest editorial in the paper, but it didn’t sound like it was written by a raving nutcase. Some engineering firm was unfortunate enough to enter into a contract with them to evaluate potential sewer locations and designs; I look forward to reading that the senior partner who brought in that work is ‘no longer with the firm’. A judge threw out a local voter initiative forbidding sewers in downtown, on the grounds that it usurped authority that belongs to the CSD board. I was beginning to be afraid that reason had descended on Los Osos.

But it hasn’t! There is a public meeting of the Regional Water Quality Control Board this Friday. The RWQCB has been forced to reconsider their decision that all citizens of Los Osos pump their septic tanks every other month (enforcement orders will start with fifty randomly chosen people at a time) until a sewer is built. The anti-sewer people went to the Air Pollution Control Board, claiming that diesel emissions from the pump trucks would outweigh the benefits of septic tank pumping. The Air Pollution Control Board asked the RWQCB to include an analysis of diesel emissions in their decision Friday.

In today’s news, the Los Osos CSD president is “begging” the County Supervisor representing Los Osos to come to Friday’s meeting to show support. The Supervisor doesn’t want to. I guess she feels it was enough that she wrote to offer her help immediately after the new board was elected and was rebuffed. Or maybe she didn’t like the way anti-sewer activists have been coming to County Supervisor meetings for months to attack her personally. Could be her feelings were hurt when she had to request a sheriff’s escort to attend Los Osos CSD meetings, because anti-sewer activists would “follow her to her car, yelling”. People are so touchy.

It doesn’t look like any County Supervisors will be attending Friday’s meeting on behalf of the Los Osos CSD. They must not have been persuaded by the presentation showing that mandatory septic tank pumping will drive the people of Los Osos to homelessness*. Me, I would pay to attend that meeting. I would bring popcorn.


*I swear I don’t make this up.

(For your sake, dear reader, I am also keeping an eye on this situation. It shows some potential.)

Such a good week!

More Los Osos!

A new taxpayer group, led by the directors that were recalled for deciding to build a sewer, has asked the County to dissolve the Los Osos Community Services District and assume their public works functions. The county doesn't have much interest in using general fund money to cover "Los Osos' unknown financial liabilities, multiple lawsuits and its unfinished sewer project."

I wonder what it is like to live in Los Osos these days. Do you think the two sides glare at each other and eat in rival diners? For the county, this has to feel like being tied to the tracks and watching a train coming. Babysit these people? Clean up this mess? With our money?

For me, this is like watching car chases with space laser fights and helicopters crashing through plate glass windows. Only in yearlong slow motion, with no sound.

Better than a telenovela.

It’s been all boys and sex and pottymouth around here the past few days, but how long can that hold people’s attention? It can’t even keep my attention, not compared to the new intrigue swirling around the Los Osos sewer project. Every few months there is a headline in the water news about Los Osos, like a surprise, beautiful, gift-wrapped present for me!

This story didn’t focus on how the Regional Water Quality Control Board is forcing homeowners to pump their septic tanks. This story was about a Superior Court decision that the Los Osos Community Services District can’t use money from a state sewer construction loan until it settles the claim against it from the contractors from their last attempt at a sewer system. Los Osos CSD had received the first $6.4M of a $135M low-interest loan and is using that to keep their legal department afloat.

They really need their legal department right now, because they are in the middle of fifteen separate lawsuits. Now, I have no idea how many lawsuits occupy a community services district during normal operations. While I imagine that lawsuits do come up for most districts, I bet they don’t include a suit against the state to keep the $135M low interest loan that was revoked when Los Osos announced they will not be building a sewer, a suit protesting $6.6M fines for water quality violations, and a suit against them by the two contractors they jilted last time.

I can’t help but think that at least one more suit is coming their way. They fired the woman who handles their finances for “behavior problems”. It is possible that in addition to everything else that is going wrong for the Los Osos CSD, they also have a nutjob bookkeeper who runs around the office doing crazy things. But it seems at least equally likely that they fired her for testifying that they still have $3M left of the original $6.4M dispersement which they could return to the state or use to start paying back contractors.

I told my boss how I’ve been following the Los Osos sewer project and he told me that Los Osos has been fighting these sewers for thirty years! This controversy will outlast his career. It could keep me company and entertain me for decades. I love it.

Sewers Are Fucking Excellent

I know you don't care about the sewer situation in Los Osos. I'm sorry I keep bringing it up. It is such a trainwreck, though - I can't look away.

Right now the Regional Water Quality Control Board is refusing to publicly release the names of the 50 people who will be forced to spend $2,400 this year pumping their septic tanks. The new Los Osos Sanitation Board, the people voted in to replace the old board who agreed to a new sewer, are reluctantly coming to the conclusion that they will have to have a sewer; the people of Los Osos are howling at them for selling out. The new board wants to re-apply for the grant money they mis-handled last time. The City of Los Osos is being sued by the contractors who started work on the sewers that were called off.

In the middle of all this, a crazy activist named Gail is spearheading a new citizens' group called Solidarity Against Fines and Enforcement. Fabulous! That's so great! What Los Osos needs now is another player in this debacle! I would have LOVED to be at that meeting; the righteous indignation must have been sky high. There is only one way this story is going to end, but I bet this group can add MONTHS of turbulence and expense. For some reason Gail herself isn't even in the proposed sewer hook-up. She's just opposed to the principle of it! Go, crazy activist lady! I'm with you, sister.

The thing I love most about SAFE is that it gives me such a clear look at my destiny. There is no doubt in my mind that I will be a crazy activist lady one day. When my husband dies of too much good cooking, the kids can't be bothered to call their own mother anymore, and I don't want to be home with all the cats, I'm going straight down to City Hall. I will have causes and form organizations; I will write strongly-worded letters to the editor. I will be at every City Council meeting. The councilmembers will wince as I approach the podium, but you better believe I'm gonna use my full three minutes. It is not just foreseeable, it is my inexorable fate. Use your tactics, crazy activist lady! I watch and learn.

Smackdown

Somewhat dorky:

Last year I read Lisa Belkin’s Show Me a Hero, which was a great book about the city of Yonker’s battle against integrating low-income housing into middle-income neighborhoods. I loved the entire book, but my favorite part was when the judge started to enforce his court order. The city of Yonkers had gone to amazing lengths to avoid the integrated low-income housing, fighting the legal battle as long as possible, recalling the city counselors who advocated obeying the court order, swearing to unceasing civil disobedience, holding protests. Finally they said (all of the next quotes are my paraphrase):

“The good citizens of Yonkers will never submit to this cruel and unreasonable edict by an activist judge in New York City who doesn’t understand that his integration order will unravel the very fabric of our close knit community. Never will we allow those people to live on the same blocks as our friends, family, grandmothers! Not because we are racist, no no! But because, well, you know. Anyway, if you, cruel activist judge, lived here, you would understand that our noble spirits are unquenchable, and our commitment to resisting integrated low income housing is indefatigable. You will never force us to comply.”

The judge said: “Watch me.”

He ordered a thousand dollar fine for the first day they didn’t agree to integrated low-income housing. And Yonkers said “We laugh at your thousand dollar fine!” The judge continued, “The fine will double every day until you obey the court order. On the day you agree, you will owe not just that day’s total but also the cumulative total of every previous day. Assholes.”

I think Yonkers caved at $256 or $512K. There were other really good parts of the book, but that was my favorite.

Really very dorky:

Show Me a Hero came to mind this morning because I think the same thing is going on in Los Osos (small town near the coast in Central California). The agency I work for compiles the water news for us every day, and I actually read it. It is kinda hard to tell through the formal tone of the newspaper reports, but it seems like the local Regional Water Quality Control Board has told the city of Los Osos that they must build a sewage treatment system. Something about how they have to stop shitting in their groundwater.

I guess Los Osos has been on septic tanks, and installing a sewer system and a wastewater treatment plant is going to be very expensive for them. I haven’t followed it closely, but from what I can tell, the whole thing has been a fiasco. I think Los Osos has taken grant money to build it, but not spent the grant money well. Multiple contractors haven’t done their work. I think the locals may have also recalled a Sanitation Board who decided that Los Osos should pony up and build it. The good citizens of Los Osos are determined to defy the cruel activist edict by a RWQCB who doesn’t understand that hooking up to a sewer system will destroy the rural character of their community.

So yesterday the RWQCB announced that if the people of Los Osos do not want to install a sewage treatment system to keep shit out of their groundwater, they can do it another way. Every year, they will randomly select 50 households that will have to pump their septic tanks every two months. It will cost about $2400 per household.

It isn’t quite doubling a fine everyday, but it is pretty good.