How to Defuse the Gravity Bomb

The Morro Bay/Cayucos joint sewer system and the gravity system pegged for Los Osos incubate immune pathogens with a high mortality rate and no certain cure to date. Civil engineer/environmental scientist Dr. John Alexander offers to defuse Morro Bay and warns Los Osos.

Currently unrelated plans to upgrade the Morro Bay/Cayucos Wastewater Treatment Facility and to build a conventional wastewater facility out of town in Los Osos both share at least one characteristic in common, according to Dr. John Alexander of Alexander Research in Cayucos: They are both dangerous.
    
“The $25 million ‘upgrade’ to the (Morro Bay/Cayucos) sewer system is far too costly and will not solve the contamination problem,” Dr. Alexander said. “The consultants have not kept abreast of the changes with immunity of pathogens, and the mutation which takes place in the so-called secondary treatment of a standard treatment plant.
    
“The proposed (Morro Bay/Cayucos) program will have exactly the opposite effect of the intention,” he told The Rock. “It will be a breeding place for pathogens. Those pathogens are already creating pandemics resulting in 60%-70% mortality. Chlorine is just no longer adequate. For about $4 million, a physical chemical treatment could be added to the present plant. This would add at least 30% to the plant’s capacity and overcome the contamination problem.”
    
Dr. Alexander is glad to share information or data with consultants, and offers his help without charge.

Troubling Research
     
The Morro Bay/Cayucos plant, built in 1954 and upgraded in 1984, is one of only three in the entire state that doesn’t meet all required clean water standards. Under a waiver, it is permitted to dump partially treated sewage into the ocean north of Morro Rock. Environmental groups want state water regulators to cut in half the time projected (2015) to bring the plant up to federal standards for secondary treatment, yet Dr. Alexander warns that rushing to meet secondary treatment standards is “exactly the wrong thing.”
     
“Secondary treatment is the most deadly part of the whole situation, because when they mix the sewage we’re beginning to get [pathogens] that are not curable anymore, and secondary treatment is actually growing this bacteria. Not only is it incubating the bacteria that is already what you might call poisonous, but (that bacteria) is mutating over to the other bacteria. One family could contaminate thousands.”
    
For decades it was widely accepted that active offshore currents quickly diluted effluents, and that was the basis of the discharge waiver. That isn’t as true anymore. Now, also surviving release into the ocean are pathogens, including bacteria resistant to antibiotic drugs, that pass through the plant’s incomplete treatment process. According to a recently released report by John Alexander Research on “Drug Resistant Bacteria in Conventional Water Treatment Systems,” “Studies reported in the scientific and medial literature dating back to at least the 1970s show failure of treatment to kill or remove all pathogenic bacteria. Thus, this is hardly new knowledge.”
    
What is less known by the public is the extent of the problem, the increased threat to public health, its historical context, and the real potential for an outbreak. “Multiple drug-resistant bacteria are particularly problematic due to the decreasing number of therapeutic options,” the report warns, options that include the latest and most commonly effective “wonder drugs.” These cornerstone drugs of modern medical treatments, the report acknowledges, “seem to be in trouble.”
    
“A less understood and even more troubling mechanism for the transfer of multi-drug-resistant bacteria is also found at the local sewer treatment plant,” the report also states. “As bacteria wind their way through these treatment processes, the selective pressures against them increase. In consequence, there is a greater effort by bacteria to pass on survival-enhancing genetic information. Additionally, as the environmental stresses increase, the bacteria up-regulate numerous other survival mechanisms to assure that they and their genetic material survive. These survived mechanisms can include increased chlorine resistance.”
    
“The fact is,” said Dr. Alexander, “all the contaminated sewerage goes to one place, and then they do secondary treatment, which is doing nothing but incubating the bacteria so there are enough of them to grow the pathogens. This was a fairly reasonable (procedure) for many years, but unfortunately, bacteria and viruses have become immune to treatment. Our ‘wonder drugs’ just aren’t cutting it at all.
    
“At one time they had a natural life cycle, but these pathogens have developed an immunity because of our misuse of ‘wonder drugs.’ We now have bacteria and virus that can take a temperature of 450 degrees. The old 250 degree (standard) doesn’t mean anything anymore (in that particular set of species).”
    
Emphasizes the report: “The take-home message is that drug resistance and the transfer of multi-drug resistance among and between species occurs in wastewater treatment plants. This information is now over a decade old.”

The Gravity Menace
    
The expensive Tri-W gravity plant for Los Osos, approved by the RWQCB and other state regulatory agencies, but defeated by voters at the polls last September, is a potential menace in the making, in town or out, according to Dr. Alexander. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. The fact that they gather the waste from thousands of people and put it in one common ‘mixing ground.’ All you’ve got to do is have one family that has ‘the bug.’ They get mixed up with the rest of [the bacteria] between incubation and mutation, and one family could end up producing trillions of pathogens that are contaminated and without cure… Dilution doesn’t work anymore. These pathogens are surviving even in saltwater… And they can spread around the world.
    
“Either of the programs the RWQCB is demanding is more dangerous than the bomb,” Dr Alexander said. “In either case, (these systems) are breeding deadly pathogens that are already pandemic with high mortality.
    
“[The RWQCB] has absolutely no concern their one-track programs are totally obsolete in the modern world. It hinders the technology that will eliminate our water shortage and the energy shortage. They spend their time trying to kill a flea on an elephant… Now, the very system they’re developing is one of the biggest hazards in life.”
    
The RWQCB hadn’t taken much of an interest in pathogens until the revised, post-dated CDOs were received by selected Los Osos homeowners in early April, with pathogens added to nitrates and fill-in-the-blank “other” as pollutants for which individual home owners are now responsible for cleaning up—or face fine and liens and who knows what else.
    
But that hasn’t changed the RWQCB’s pursuit of a conventional sewer for Los Osos. Even though all that sewage into one big plant is a disaster waiting to happen, Dr. Alexander asserted, adding that there is no such thing as an earthquake-proof sewer treatment plant. An earthquake could rupture sewer lines and knock out power to the plant—and the public health impact could be devastating. “Additionally,” the report states, “if the sewer mains are leaking, this increases the potential risk for materials reaching the environment, aquifer, rivers, or beach and ocean.” And, in the post-9/11 world, it can’t be overlooked that with its capacity to disseminate pathogens near and far, a central sewer plant could be an easy target for terrorism, which is a tougher target with individual household units.
    
“The tendency now is to go back to individual systems, so we don’t have this massive problem to treat. The individual system certainly could have an overflow, but one little overflow is nothing compared to what you will have if you have millions of gallons of raw sewage floating around.
    
“Certainly, the system they are using now [in Morro Bay], even without the MRSAs [methicillin-resistant staphloccus aureus, a virulent strain of common staph bacteria] and ecoli 157, are making lots of people sick because they’re only half treating it, and the pathogens are not being killed by chlorine.”

Progress Made
    
John Alexander Research is working with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta to analyze various pathogens, discover their dissemination points and how they can be stopped. Alexander Research has developed a system called PH Pasturization, according to Dr. Alexander, which kills “identifiable” bacteria that have built up a resistance to even chlorine. They are also working on other promising approaches, including one that eliminates the water contained in the pathogens by “zapping the water and the water alone by using electro-magnetic energy.” He believes they are on the right track, but more conclusive proof is needed before scientists can claim success.
    
A broader, more frightening question lies in whether any of these pathogens can be found in our drinking water. Dr. Alexander doesn’t think so but can’t completely rule it out, since there is no conclusive proof today that as-yet-unidentified pathogens are not in the drinking water.
    
Dr. Alexander believes the public needs to pay closer attention to the pathogen problem and protest their concern to local and state officials who permit it. “It is despicable to let a handful of people, for personal gain, destroy the lives of thousands of people. It takes guts to fight city hall, but with so much at stake it is cowardly to give up,” he said. “Many Los Osos citizens think they have no choice and are willing to put up with the nonsense being pushed upon them. Thank goodness our forefathers had more intestinal fortitude.”

— Ed Ochs