Back in the Crosshairs -- Trib Bashing! Oh Boy!

First, in case you haven't already seen it, stop by Ann Calhoun's great blog and read this amazing and gut wrenching letter from Los Osos resident, Beverley A. De Witt-Moylan. She takes the Tribune out behind the ol' woodshed for a good, old-fashioned beat-down, and just absolutely destroys them.

And, as readers of this blog know, demolishing the Trib's coverage of Los Osos over the last seven years is a favorite past-time here in SewerWatch.

Sadly, and inexplicably, the Trib just doesn't get it, as De Witt-Moylan's letter clearly shows. They have no idea what makes the Los Osos story so very interesting, and, yes, tragic -- the human toll, the colossal mistakes by state agencies, the mind boggling amount of aggregate people hours consumed by the despicable actions of the Solution Group and the early CSD Boards, since 1997. It's easily, easily the best, most important story in the county (if not top-5 in the State!), and the Trib, for whatever reason, just can't grasp it.

Now, it appears, the Trib is at a stage where they can't report on how Los Osos got to where it is today, because, if they did, everyone -- throughout the county, throughout the State, and all the way to the halls of Congress -- would be screaming in unison, "Where in the hell were you on all of this?!"

Think about this for a second -- the "better, cheaper, faster" sewer project that got Los Osos voters to bite on establishing a CSD in the first place, in 1998, failed miserably in August, 2000, and the Trib didn't write a single story on it. That just blows my mind, but what makes it splatter all over the place is that, as I've mentioned many times, I wrote a New Times cover story in July, 2000, that showed the "better, cheaper, faster" plan that got the the LOCSD established in the first place, and three Solution Group members elected -- including number one vote-getter and Solution Group marketing director, Pandora Nash-Karner -- was on the verge of failing, dramatically.

I couldn't have made the red flags any redder in that story. For God's sake, the cover image for that issue -- created by the long-time, and talented lead graphic designer at New Times, Alex Zuniga -- showed the words "better, cheaper, faster" going down a toilet! Brilliant, clever and perfect.

The caption on the cover read: "Delays and Increased Costs Plaque Los Osos' Sewer Plan"

About a month after that story was published, I learned at a CSD meeting (you had to strain to hear it, and if you blinked you missed it), that the plan that got them elected and the CSD formed, was officially gone-zo.

You should have seen my end zone celebration when I heard that. What an awesome scoop. I was fake-River Dancing in the aisles, pulling a Sharpee out of my sock, then signing my notebook and handing it to someone in the crowd. I was pumped, because I knew I had scooped the Trib, badly, on a great and important and extremely newsworthy story, and now they were going to have to follow-up on my scoop, and the inevitable, massive scandal that was sure to ensue was going to rock Los Osos to the core.

The Trib did not write one word of follow-up, ever, to this day. Zero.

Unfortunately for Los Osos, that did two huge things. 1) It didn't expose the Solution Group's plan as the pure campaign material that it was (and if it had, they would have been run out of office in 2000, the Tri-W fiasco would have never happened, Los Osos would've had an out-of-town sewer plant years ago, and this blog would not exist today), and 2) It gave the impression that everything was fine at the Los Osos Community Services District, so the community -- along with the Trib -- just kind of went to sleep. Why not? "Hey, 'better, cheaper, faster,' baby. Right on. Make it happen." However, in reality, the CSD was in complete disarray in August, 2000, as they scrambled to figure out how they could quickly and quietly produce a viable second sewer project, at the same location, after wasting almost two years chasing their unviable-from-the-start first project.

In my last post, I said that I had a phrase to describe the Trib's coverage of Los Osos over the last seven years: "Worse than nothing." And I mean that... it would have been far better for Los Osos if the Trib had not written a single word on this subject from 2000 - 2005. Their uninformed reporting was terrible.

Real quick... I want to confess something. To tell you the truth -- I really don't have much of a problem with the Solution Group using their "better, cheaper, faster" project solely as campaign material to get themselves elected and the CSD formed in 1998. (C'mon, let's face it, the road to successful elections in America is littered with less than scrupulous marketing tactics, just ask John McCain. So, I'll give them a tiny bit of room on that one... throw together some nice graphics, toss in some attractive, made-up numbers, package it all professionally, mix in a lot of "behavior-based marketing," and, presto, you have some very effective campaign material, obviously. If the goal was to wrangle local control away from the county, no matter how unscrupulously, then, fine, mission accomplished.) But, for the love of god, as the newly elected CSD, feign a chase of your non-plan for two or three months, and then simply say something like, "Hey, we've come across some new data that shows our plan isn't going to work in Los Osos. What should we do now?"

What f-d everything up, is that they chased it for almost two years, and the local Water Quality Board staff, led by Roger Briggs at the time, allowed them to chase it, even though Briggs and Co. were fully aware, from day one (January 1, 1999), that that so-called "project" wasn't going to work in Los Osos. Amazing. That blows me away.

I don't know about you, but when I'm in a nice restaurant, and there's a screaming four-year-old sitting behind me, I don't get mad at the kid, I get mad at the parents for allowing the kid to scream. (Dude, take the kid outside until he calms down, please!) However, the problem today, as I see it, is that the parents that allowed the kid to scream in the restaurant for two years, are now telling 45 fellow diners, all of whom have a massive headache because of that screaming, to pick up their dinner tab.

The RWQCB never paid a penny of consequences for that disastrous two year delay, that they allowed. Nope, instead Briggs and Co. gave that check to 45 devastated Los Ososans. That is utterly wrong, and very newsworthy, which means, of course, the Trib will not cover any of it, for whatever reason. I don't know.

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