Regional Water Board Meets to Outlaw ‘Smart’ and Affordable Onsite Systems

With smart onsite technologies threatening the need for big public works projects and, ultimately, the agency’s very existence, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is on a mission to prove that it is far more interested in “water control” than “water quality.”
    
Rewriting existing onsite regulations as if its survival depended on it, the CCRWQCB is moving in its May 9 hearing in San Luis Obispo to control the widening field of alternative systems, aiming to regulate them through revisions to the Central Coast Basin Plan. Strengthening their weakened grip on their authority has become the central focus of recent Regional Water Board legal activities, and onsite systems that meet compliance, improve water quality, even reclaim “new water” from sewage, have become the target.
    
The Water Board’s expanded authority will give them the power to use the same collective enforcement tactics in other communities in the region and throughout the County to eliminate superior point-source onsite solutions that pose an immediate threat to large, unnecessary, fee-lined public works projects such as big sewers, storm runoff, and man-made non-source-point projects.
    
Locally, having coerced the Proposition 218 funding vote, the CCRWQCB’s twin resolutions to control onsite system criteria and waivers of waste discharge requirements are but another brazen attempt to force the most expensive sewer system on Los Osos, whether it’s legal or not, necessary or not, and force every homeowner living today in the gerry-mandered “Prohibition Zone” to pay the costs of government failure that continues unabated up to the minute.
    
It is no coincidence that this power grab is timed to the emergence of the Reclamator home water-reclamation system in Los Osos. The timing of the update to supersede 83-12 appears to be nothing more than thin cover for illegal enforcement actions past, present and future, because without the ability to regulate emerging onsite technologies, the water board would eventually run out of pollution to prosecute and fine—and become the Maytag repairmen of the new millennium. That is why the CCRWQCB is shifting its sphere of influence to controlling the water itself, with or without pollution, light years apart from monitoring water quality of the state’s waters.
    
Since only certain types of technology—which include collection systems—will meet with Water Board and County approval, the CCRQWCB must exceed its authority and ignore the legal requirements that define its role as a government agency. “They seek to take control of the water, no matter the cost or environmental and human impact, something which is not in the best interest of the public they serve,” said Mark Low, a partner in AES DES, parent company of the Reclamator.
   
The CCRWQCB has consistently failed to comply with due process throughout the recent Los Osos “hearings,” and despite Chairman Young’s own demand for a higher standard of equal and consistent enforcement, i.e. a level playing field, by its own staff, the board once again has defaulted to resetting its sights on further abuse of its regulatory powers, by dictating when, where and what solution is implemented in Los Osos to comply.
    
Property owners with existing, legally permitted septics—those most affected by proposed regulations—were not been notified by mail or public notice of the CCRWQB’s May 9 meeting, and the Tribune continues its blackout of news and information vital to Los Osos and other County communities. Therefore, only the most informed knew that deadline for public comment for the May 9 meeting was April 7 in writing, and even those who knew the deadline had practically no time to prepare a full comment.
    
Perhaps “no comment” was all the board left room for. The draft resolutions offer no supporting cost/benefit analysis, no science or economics, according to the board, because all that has been done before and impacts will be minimal.
    
Wrote Los Osos resident Keith Wimer to the CCRWQB on April 1: “The proposed revisions to the Basin Plan should not be approved. As recommended, the revisions are vague and confusing, impose unknown and unfunded costs on individuals and agencies, and they’re inconsistent with applicable standards, policies, laws, and ordinances, including the draft state-wide AB 885 ordinance.
    
“The changes, if approved, will discourage onsite system use, water recycling, decentralized (cluster) systems, and possibly STEP/STEG systems in the Region, at a time when local, state, and federal agencies are looking to these options to help communities protect water quality and deal with looming water and energy shortages in cost-effective ways. In other words, the changes may do more harm than good to the Region’s waters, people, and economy.”
    
Wimer called on the board to “postpone implementation of any new regulations relative to onsite systems and discharge until you have thoroughly reviewed related laws and policies, industry standards, current research on new onsite technology, additional stakeholder input from the Region, and the progress achieved at the state level on AB 885.”
     
While Basin Plan revisions are long overdue and should have been implemented prior to the Proposition 218 vote to support the 218’s legitimacy, the update is again politically motivated to support only the County’s plan for the most expensive gravity collection system Los Osos’ money can buy, rather than supporting even more effective, lower-cost alternatives that would eliminate the discharge of pollutants at the source, along with any credible legal reason for issuing CDOs or CAOs to homeowners—or to hook up to a $300-a-month County sewer bill for that matter.
    
The Water Board simply cannot allow onsite systems a toehold in Los Osos, and they believe homeowners should pay the cost of their latest unfunded mandate to expand their powers. Their version of the Basin Plan “update” gives them—and Executive Director Roger Briggs—sole authority to permit or waive, and change their mind virtually overnight on a dime—or much more. Such absolute power in the hands of non-elected appointees—without independent oversight—is an open invitation to corruption. The CCRWQCB only wants to revise the Basin Plan to anoint itself with the final authority to dictate systems for every home in the County—to permit and waive certain septics, and later create “prohibition zones” if they so decide. Homeowners can be legal one day and a major polluter the next, and liable for the difference in the board’s decision.
    
By reneging and regressing on its pledge to offer Los Osos homeowners a compliant alternative technology, instead of fining them out of their homes for failure to connect to an community-wide wastewater collection system, the CCWQCB is determined to deny homeowners any legal alternative to hooking up to the megasewer.
    
To the CCRWQCB onsite is not an option for Los Osos because already-available onsite solutions make a $250 million sewer system instantly obsolete—there would be no government/industry gravy train, no payoffs, and the people most impacted get to keep their homes. Without onsite systems, the price of compliance to most homeowners is, in a word, unaffordable, and that’s just fine with the Water Board and County.