“What will all of you do with the extra time, once the Annie situation is resolved?”

TO: Bob Cuddy, Reporter, The Tribune
DATE: 8/31/10

Hello Bob,

Just a quick note to say that I enjoyed your piece in today's Tribune, "To all involved in this mess, take a good look inside yourselves."

In it, you write, "we might also ask ourselves why we are giving so much energy to a dog when there is so much human suffering in the world: Haiti, Pakistan, the poor and homeless in our own country and county.
In other words, who are we?"

That gets right to the point of this e-mail.

I recently exposed on my blog, SewerWatch, at this link:

http://sewerwatch.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-water-quality-control-board.html

... how four years and $7 million worth of careful County analysis concluded, just this year, that the former "Tri-W" sewer project that the 1999 - 2005 Los Osos CSD spent $25 million developing, was a complete disaster, just like I first exposed in my 2004 New Times cover story, Three Blocks Upwind of Downtown, at this link:

http://archive.newtimesslo.com/archive/2004-09-22/cover/index.html

... and, therefore, the fact that Los Osos voters elected to stop that disaster in 2005 was a VERY good thing.

In that same blog post, I also showed how the current Chair of the Regional Water Quality Control Board, Jeff Young, during the January 2006 RWQCB meeting where his Board issued enforcement actions (Cease and Desist orders) against 45 randomly selected property owners in Los Osos, said:

"I can tell you one thing, that had the community not put the blocks on the current project (the Tri-W project) that we would not be here with an ACL hearing."

Then I showed how the stress associated with those enforcement actions -- because the recipients of those CDOs now live under the threat that they could have their homes "condemned" by the State of California -- have sent (and continue to send) the recipients of those enforcement actions (many, elderly) to the hospital.

Then I showed how the RWQCB (what I term) "Sherroded" those 45 property owners in early 2006, by making "determinations and judgments without a full set of facts."

Those baseless enforcement actions are, currently, still active, and the people that have suffered with them for the past five years STILL have to adhere to all kinds of stressful RWQCB demands.

I conclude my piece by saying that, considering that four years and $7 million worth of SLO County analysis showed that stopping the Tri-W disaster was the exact right thing to do, that the RWQCB should now vacate those enforcement actions, and apologize to those 45 property owners.

Here's where you come in.

I published my blog piece (and made County Supervisors aware of it) just days before the "Annie the dog" story blew up.

I then contacted all County Supervisors and asked them if they could give the same kind of attention (media appearances, top level staff meetings, etc.) to the completely innocent CDOers in Los Osos, as they have for Annie the dog.

Not one of them replied.

I then asked, radio talk show host, Dave Congalton -- that heavily publicized the Annie the dog story -- if HE could give the same amount of publicity to the completely innocent property owners in Los Osos, that he gave to the Annie the dog story.

At least Congalton, unlike (all) County Supervisors, replied.

He wrote, "Have a good life, Ron," and then, just like County Supervisors, did absolutely nothing for those completely innocent people.

In today's piece, you also write, "all of us who were involved in this (Annie the dog story), starting with yours truly, should re-examine our behavior."

Bob, here's your chance -- here's your chance to "re-examine (y)our behavior" by covering this very important story, with the same vigor that the Trib used to cover the Annie the dog story.

Finally, in your piece, you write, "There’s an old editor’s line, 'If your mother says she loves you, check it out.' I didn’t do that with the Annie story."

For this story, I can greatly assist with that, because I've already completed all of the research.

I originally dug this quote, "I can tell you one thing, that had the community not put the blocks on the current project (the Tri-W project) that we would not be here with an ACL hearing."

... out of the official transcript (page 433) [Clarification: page 433 of the pdf file, not the actual transcript], linked here:

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb3/board_info/minutes/2006/01_06_los_osos_hearing_transcript.pdf

(Incidentally, a badly confused Roger Briggs, executive director for the RWQCB, wrote in a 2004 document, "The LOCSD has developed a technically, environmentally, and economically sound project [with the Tri-W project].")

And, one-of-the-many documents that the County produced over the past four years that shows the Tri-W "project" to be the exact same disaster I first reported it to be in 2004, is at this link:

http://www.slocounty.ca.gov/Assets/PW/LOWWP/TAC/TAC+Final+Pro-Con+Component+Analysis+8-6-07.pdf

Finally(er ;-), I'd like to finish with a quote from your piece.

It comes from the decent (yet, strangely, vilified) person that adopted Annie, "What will all of you do with the extra time, once the Annie situation is resolved?”

I recommend helping the innocent people in Los Osos, that are being sent (present tense) to the hospital due to the completely baseless enforcement actions of the badly confused, and horribly misinformed, RWQCB.

Apparently, SLO County Supervisors, and Dave Congalton do not agree with me.

Does the Trib?

Thank you for your time,
Ron

P.S. Just a quick reminder: The Trib, in the days just before the 2005 LOCSD recall election, published three editorials, all in support of the "infeasible" Tri-W disaster. In other words, it appears that the RWQCB wasn't the only agency that was making "determinations and judgments without a full set of facts."

P.P.S. I've published this e-mail on my blog:

sewerwatch.blogspot.com

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[35 weeks down... 17 to go.]