Shandon, Templeton, Santa Margarita, Arroyo Grande, Nipomo... WELCOME TO LOS OSOS!

"After watching this particular RWQCB and staff for 24 years and especially watching their performance for the past two years, I no longer have any confidence in their competence, trusworthiness and/or ethical reliability as a Regulatory Agency in a regulatory structure that is devoid of properly functioning checks and balances."
-- Ann Calhoun, Los Osos writer referring to the Central Coast Water Quality Control Board, March 27, 2008

Ah, the Central Coast Water Quality Control Board -- bless their tiny, little, incompetent hearts. They just increased my contribution base threefold, at least.

You see, this blog, since its inception, has focused on the Los Osos sewer issue, and the problem with that (for me, of course) is that there are only a few hundred people in that town that actually care about the sewer issue, and just a small percentage of them actually care enough about the issue to donate to SewerWatch (and I just can't thank those kind, handsome, intelligent, well-rounded people enough), but now that the CCWQCB is about to turn nearly every non-sewered community in SLO County into Los Ososes, I'm predicting many more contributions from places like Shandon, Templeton, Santa Margarita, rural Arroyo Grande, and Nipomo.

Sweet. (Just click on the PayPal button on the right, guys... 'preciate it.)

On May 9, the local water board will be meeting to discuss, among other things, a "Proposed Amendment to the Water Quality Control Plan, Central Coast Basin," where they are expected to revise the criteria for onsite wastewater systems throughout San Luis Obispo County.

And tucked away (of course), in the little-known (of course) staff report for that soon-to-be-law, is this language:

"The Basin Plan recommends wastewater management plans for the following areas: Shandon, Templeton, Santa Margarita, Los Osos, Arroyo Grande, Nipomo... ."

Sounds harmless enough, right?

However, shortly after that, the staff report reads:

"At a small percentage of undeveloped properties where site conditions are very poor for an onsite system, the property may no longer be suitable for an onsite system and a community sewer connection may be required."

Hey, Shandon, Templeton, Santa Margarita, rural Arroyo Grande, and Nipomo, guess who gets to define things like "very poor," and "small percentage," and, "undeveloped properties," and "no longer suitable for an onsite system?"

Yep -- the incompetent, untrustworthy, ethically unreliable CCWQCB... just ask Los Osos.

Let's take Garden Farms, for example, the idyllic, little, septic-system-based community outside the idyllic, little, septic-system-based community of Santa Margarita.

Garden Farms is tucked right up to the Salinas River, which means there's probably not a whole lot of separation between their septic tanks and the groundwater, and when the residents of Garden Farms see how fast the staff of the CCWQCB can interpret their septic tank/groundwater separation as "very poor" "site conditions," and, therefore, deem the entire community "undeveloped properties" BECAUSE it's not hooked up to "a community sewer connection," and then be "required" to build an expensive sewer system, well, those Garden Farms residents are going to be in for a crash course in Los Ososology.

That's just a hypothetical, but if you've never witnessed the CCWQCB, and its staff, in operation, that's exactly how they operate. Exactly.

Santa Margarita? It's not looking so good for ya.

And, in true CCWQCB fashion, all you residents in the above mentioned communities have about a week to let the Water Board know how you feel about their sweeping plan, that will have a profound impact on your communities. The deadline for public comment on the Plan is April 7!

I can tell already, this isn't going to go well.

Los Osos is made up, largely, of passive hippy-types. But that's not the case up here in the beautiful, rugged North County. Nope. We're a different breed altogether -- fiercely independent (that's why we live out in the country). Gun powder, in some form, is commonplace at nearly every social gathering. The ranch down the road has a "Don't Tread on Me" flag flying out front. For God's sake, if North County voters had their way in the 1996 Presidential race, Bob Dole would have been President!

I guess what I'm saying is this:

MEMO TO THE CCWQCB: North SLO County is NOT Los Osos, hombres.

If there's one crucial piece of advice I, SewerWatch, can pass on to the property owners of Shandon, Templeton, Santa Margarita, Arroyo Grande, and Nipomo (and every other "undeveloped" region of the county, for that matter), it's this: When Roger Briggs, chief staff guy at the CCWQCB (don't worry, you'll soon become very familiar with that name), forces you to build a really expensive sewer system based on no scientific data whatsoever (other than the fact that he has suddenly deemed your "site conditions" to be "very poor"), don't allow an individual from your community to jam a public park in your sewer plant, and then have that park dictate a really expensive, downtown sewer plant location that nobody likes except said individual, on "environmentally sensitive" land... so that residents can easily get to the park... with a "picnic area"... in their downtown sewer plant. [I'm not making that up. That's exactly what the Los Osos CSD spent $20+ million developing, from 2000 - 2005, before they were finally recalled from office... for spending $20+ million developing a downtown "sewer-park." Uhhhhgggg...]

That piece of advice, alone, is worth about $100 million in contributions from each of those communities.

PayPal button's on the right.

Sweet!

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[Quick addition: There's something else that bugs me about the above referenced staff report. Not only is it little-known, but the pages in the pdf file are scanned in. That makes it impossible to copy and paste the text. Scanned pages also make it impossible to electronically search the document.

If that staff report had simply been converted into a pdf file straight from the application that it was created in, presumably, Microsoft Word, it would be 100-percent copy-and-pasteable, and searchable, and that makes it about a thousand times easier to report on. There's a ton of stuff in that document that needs to be reported on, but I don't feel like re-typing the entire thing.

Furthermore, if it was searchable, someone, after reading my story, could simply download the file (by the way, scanned pages also make the size of the pdf file much larger, translating into slower download times) and do a quick search for "very poor," and immediately find the section I refer to in my main piece. (It's on page 5, under the section, "Economic Effects of the Amendment," where it also says, "The proposed amendment will change existing recommendations to requirements, which will further constrain where onsite systems may be used." [I had to type that quote in.])

Now, THAT ought to be a law: Unless absolutely necessary, government agencies should be prohibited from scanning in public documents for their on-line pdf files. Instead, they must convert those documents into pdf files that are copy-and-pasteable, and searchable.

Brilliant.]