Step Back and Blur Your Eyes -- Memos Reveal What Really Happened at the Blakeslee Summit

Just a couple of quick thoughts on the internal memos that the Trib recently wrestled away from the State Water Board (nice job, Trib, 'bout friggin' time).

Although there are a lot of excellent individual quotes in the memos, what strikes me is the picture they paint when you step back and blur your eyes.

From that vantage point, the memos show a cocky State Water Board, assured they were simply going to roll into Blakeslee's office last October, slap some sense into the new CSD kids, and then head back to Sacramento, with the Tri-W project intact. But, it seems, something unexpected happened to Water Board representative, Darrin Polhemus, before he boarded his flight back to Sacramento. He got blind-sided.

I would have loved to have been in Blakeslee's office the moment Polhemus internalized, "Oh my God, they're right."

At that meeting, Polhemus, apparently, learned:

• Relocating the facility out of town will save multi-millions of dollars.
  
• Relocating the facility out of town will be "environmentally preferable."
  
• And, relocating the facility out of town will, according to a CSD study, only add "2-3 years" to the completion date.

As the memos reveal, Polhemus, his fellow staffers, and State Water Board members never saw any of that coming. They never saw it coming because they were relying on faulty information from the outset. The Water Board was sure their case was a slam dunk, but what they didn't take into consideration was that their case relied on information supplied by the pre-recall Los Osos CSD.

Bad move.

As we all know now, much of that information was either spun, fudged, missing and/or, quite frankly, false.

So, think about it... here's Polhemus, armed with arguments that you could run 14-inch pipe through, confidently strutting into Blakeslee's San Luis Obispo office, ready to bring the CSD "closer to reality," and then proceeds to get blown out of the water with tight and accurate arguments that previous CSD Boards -- surprise, surprise -- never tossed out on to the table for folks like Polhemus to see.

"It appears that moving the site out of town may indeed be cheaper."

That quote, found in the internal memos, is from the State Water Board's Chief of Financial Assistance, Barbara Evoy. She wrote it on October 24, 2005, after being briefed by Polhemus.

"The (out of town) Andre site was the environmentally preferred site in the project EIR."

That quote is from California Coastal Commission staff member, Steve Monowitz, from a May 27, 2004, letter to the CSD.

I have a question. If a site out of town "may indeed be cheaper," according to Evoy, and if a site out of town is "environmentally preferred," according to the project's Environmental Impact Report, and if sites out of town are not only viable, but relatively plentiful, according to everyone not associated with the recalled Board, then why wasn't a "cheaper," "environmentally preferred," viable site out of town selected in the first place?

Shockingly, that question has never been officially answered.

Monowitz specifically asked that question once, when he wrote to the CSD in 2004:

• "... the Commission requested the (CSD) to provide a more detailed analysis of the feasibility of locating the treatment plant at the Andre site. In this context, we noted that the Andre site was the environmentally preferred site in the project EIR and asked for more information why it was not selected." Monowitz added, "Additionally, please evaluate whether parcels adjacent to the Andre site provide a feasible opportunity to reduce potential project impacts."
  

The Coastal Commission never got their excellent question answered.

They asked why a site out of town wasn't selected in the first place, and the CSD, through a wildly inaccurate Montgomery, Watson, Harza study, concluded, "There does not appear to be any economic incentive to relocate the (wastewater treatment facility)."

That did not answer the Coastal Commission's question.

The Commission also never got their "parcels adjacent to the Andre site" evaluation that they so wisely requested. That one hurts.

In their haste, the Coastal Commission, in 2004, accepted the CSD's terrible (and I mean terrible) responses to the Commission's excellent questions. That one really hurts.

Why wasn't a "cheaper," "environmentally preferred," viable site out of town selected in the first place?

The Los Osos CSD never answered that question... but SewerWatch has.

As this blog has exposed over and over and over again, the State Water Board was about to fund, with taxpayer money, a $150-million park project in Los Osos, and that project included a sewer system, and Polhemus discovered that critical twist, for the first time, about a month ago.

I'm not sure why the Blakeslee Summit lasted a week. All the Los Osos CSD had to do was e-mail Water Board staff a link to SewerWatch, and they would have come to the exact same conclusion in about two hours, without making the trip to SLO: Take the multi-million dollar park out of the project, along with all the expensive logistics and material needed to accommodate its downtown location, thus removing the ridiculous and baseless "project objective of centrally located community amenities," and leaving no rationale whatsoever to site the facility at Tri-W, then multi-millions of dollars could be saved, the facility relocated off "centrally located" ESHA, and result in a "2-3" year delay.

Now that's a slam dunk, and all SewerWatch exclusives. Tasty.

As the internal memos reveal, when the Water Board finally realized they were actually lobbying for a $150 million park project in Los Osos that included a sewer system, they quickly began back-pedaling away from one critical word they carelessly used just before the Blakeslee Summit: "Negotiations."

The moment Water Board staff wrapped their minds around the real story, they immediately launched into panic/damage control mode, and couldn't distance themselves from the word "negotiations" fast enough.

"Let's make it clear that Darrin was not part of a negotiating team," wrote Celeste Cantu, Executive Director of the State Water Resources Control Board, shortly after the "negotiations."

Too late, Cantu.

Water Board staff, on October 21, 2005, sent a letter to the Los Osos CSD with a screaming headline that read, "AGREEMENT FOR STRUCTURED NEGOTIATIONS," as CSD General Manager, Dan Bleskey, accurately points out. [Correction, 1/06/08: I just re-read that letter, and it was addressed to Assemblyman Blakeslee, and not the Los Osos Community Services District, as I first reported. The LOCSD received a copy of the letter. However. my point is that the letter contained the screaming headline: "AGREEMENT FOR STRUCTURED NEGOTIATIONS"]

Step back from those memos and blur your eyes... the picture comes into view.

The Water Board staff was cocky and confident going in to those "NEGOTIATIONS," because they were sure their arguments were dead-on. They didn't care what the "NEGOTIATIONS" were termed. "Negotiations, Shmegotiations." Whatever. To them, it didn't matter. "Let's just wrap this up." They were resolute that they were just going to roll in to SLO, bring the CSD back to "reality," Tri-W project full-steam ahead, pat the dust off the hands, and call it a day.

But, unbeknownst to Water Board staff, their arguments were not dead-on... not even close. They were flimsy, Swiss cheese arguments, because they were based on the notoriously awful information supplied by the pre-recall CSD.

Understandably (and embarrassingly), Polhemus got stuck with nowhere to go, jaw, I'm sure, firmly on table.

Panic. Retreat. Back-pedal from the word "NEGOTIATIONS." Disrespect Assemblyman Blakeslee. Waste a week of everyone's time. Stomp out the agreed-upon proposal before a Water Board member even gets a sniff of it. Then demand Tri-W or nothing.

Ann smells rats. I smell fish. Lots and lots of big, stinky fish.

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Checks to:
Ron Crawford
P.O. Box 120
Santa Margarita, CA
93453

Sweet Lid

Yea, I know. It's been a while since I posted anything on this blog, but I saw something at the recent Regional Water Quality Control Board meeting that compelled me back to my keyboard.

And, no, it has nothing to do with the fact that newcomer RWQCB staff member, Matt Thompson said, under oath, "Through a lengthy multi-year process of alternatives evaluation and public meetings, the Los Osos CSD developed a technically, environmentally and financially sound community wastewater project," even though his fellow staff members seated to his immediate right, not-so-newcomers Roger Briggs and Sorrel Marks, both know that isn't accurate, yet continue to put that inaccurate language in their official documents, and then have fresh meat recite it in very public situations, under oath!

And no, my motivation for this post has nothing to do with the fact that the Chairperson of the Board, Jeff Young, said there was "a balancing" in the benefits of an out of town sewer plant site with the Tri-W site, even though there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support that claim. In short, there is no balance.

And no, this post has nothing to do with the disgust I feel when I watch decent people like current CSD Directors Lisa Schicker and Chuck Cesena valiantly scramble to save their community from massive fines while the people that brewed up the hell-broth that led to the fines, like former CSD Directors Stan Gustafson, Gordon Hensley and Pandora Nash-Karner, calmly and without pressure linger in the background, exhibiting a maddening lack of accountability.

And no, I'm not writing about the excellent piece of footage that Schicker had locked and loaded for her presentation of a September 7, 2000, CSD meeting that shows an agitated Bruce Buel telling an understandably nervous CSD Board to pick a site by "next week," even though that same board got elected, and the CSD formed, on the basis that they had already told the community that they had picked a project -- the "better, cheaper, faster" Community Plan at Tri-W -- nearly two years earlier (I have a question: What in the hell were Roger Briggs and the RWQCB doing during those two years? Twiddling their thumbs? Talk about "inconsistency in enforcement.").

And, finally, no, my motivation for this post has nothing to do with the fact that CSD attorney John Seitz, at Thursday's meeting, never got an answer to his excellent, bottom-line question: "How does fining the Los Osos CSD into bankruptcy lead to cleaner water faster?"

The answer, of course, is, "it doesn't."

No, no, no. This post has nothing to do with any of that trivial stuff. This is an important matter.

I want a hat, damn it.

You should've seen this thing. It was sweet.

The guy seated in front of me at the Water Board meeting was wearing it. I'm guessing he was an employee of Barnard Construction, one of the three reckless contractors that signed onto this mess despite the fact that they all knew a recall election was coming down the pipe, because embroidered -- that's right, embroidered -- on the back of the hat in plush, colorful lettering were the words:

Barnard Construction
Los Osos Wastewater Project, 2005
Los Osos, California

Too cool.

The baseball-style cap was white with a sharp blue trim, and on the front was a nice logo. Quality merchandise.

I've already placed a call to Barnard Construction inquiring if a member of the public could purchase one of those hats, but the befuddled individual on the other end of the line said they were only available to employees. However, after lots of awkward moments, he did finally concede that I could "call back." So, apparently, there's still a shred of hope that I could land one of those sweet lids.

Which gets me to my point... Since you cheap bastards rarely donate to my independent journalism experiment (by the way, it's easy, the button's on the right), the least you could do for your old pal, SewerWatch, in this season of giving, is to swing by the Barnard Construction office, pick me up one of those hats, and mail it to:

SewerWatch
P.O. Box 120
Santa Margarita, CA
93453

Please keep in mind that I have a huge head (and I mean gigantic), so make sure there's at least one "X" before the "L" on the part of the label that says, "size."

'preciate it.

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