Cha-Friggin'-Ching! for Los Osos Project "Consultants"Nice work, if you can manufacture it... for over a decade

While I'm still waiting for an excus... errrr.... answer from the county counsel's office on why they never cashed that 2005 bond that would have paid for the Tri-W site restoration...

... this is great!

Next Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors will be hearing an update on the Los Osos wastewater project.

On page 10, of the 10-page staff report, is the "Budget Status Report," where it lists all the "consultants" that have cashed checks off of the $7.5 million that the county has spent on their sewer development process, over the past 3-plus years.

Consultants like:

"Crawford, Multari and Clark" ($145,455)

and;

"Wallace Group" (nearly $400,00)

and;

"Cleath & Associates" (Almost $100,000)

Now watch this SewerWatch-ism... this is great!

Those three "consultants" also show up in a 10-year-old Los Osos CSD document -- the "Oswald Report," at this link:

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb3/water_issues/programs/los_osos/docs/master_docs/2000_01_31_ww_facilities_project.pdf

... and, as I first reported in my 2000 New Times cover story, Problems With the Solution, the Oswald Report outlines the Los Osos CSD's first proposed sewer project -- the so-called "better, cheaper, faster" ponding project that never worked, as predicted.

And, as I've been reporting forever, not only did the Oswald project (that ALL of those above-mentioned "consultants" were responsible for developing) not work (as predicted), but it was solely responsible for forming the Los Osos CSD in the first place, in 1998, AND solely responsible for killing the County's then-"ready to go" project.

In the January, 2000, Oswald Report, early LOCSD officials "thank," "Chris Clark of Multari, Clark, Crawford & Mohr for their advice on the environmental aspects of the project... Tim Cleath and Spenser Harris of Cleath and Associates for their hydrogeological expertise... We also wish to thank John Wallace, Assessment District Engineer..."

So, think about this -- it's great.

All of those "consultants" were responsible for tanking the county's "ready to go" project in 1999, with their dead-on-arrival "project," and, ever since then, have been cashing check after check after check DUE solely to the fact that they were able to kill the county's project in 1999, and there they all are... in next Tuesday's staff report.

According to official documents, all of those "consultants" (and others in the staff report, by the way) were around for the District's first project in 1999 -- the failed Oswald project -- the District's second "project," from 2000 - 2005 -- the failed Tri-W disaster -- and, now, due to State legislation that handed the project to the county (and to all of its connections to the two previous LOCSD projects) in 2007, those same "consultants" are still pulling FAT checks off of the Los Osos wastewater project after more than a decade -- checks that they wouldn't be pulling had they not had a role in tanking the county's "ready to go" project in 1999, to begin with.

Incidentally, the Los Osos CSD, from 1999 - 2005, threw over $24 million at "consultants" for their two failed projects.

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[29 weeks down... 23 to go.]