‘Torn Fabric’

During ex parte comments by commissioners at the June 11 Coastal Commission hearing in Marina del Rey — which resulted in a Coastal Development Permit unanimously granted to the Los Osos Wastewater Project — Commissioner Mary Shallenberger disclosed that the day before the hearing she had met with San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Gibson, County Counsels Jensen and McNulty, and County Public Works Director Ogren. She said in part:

“We ended on a discussion about costs where they said that they had brought the project costs as low as they possibly could, including some very low-interest loans. Supervisor Gibson said he worried that the civil fabric, as he put it, has been pulled apart in the community and that he is committed to healing this as they go forward, and talking even perhaps (about) getting some crews together to actually dig sewer lines into houses with people who couldn’t afford to do it themselves.”

Do you honestly believe Supervisor Gibson loses sleep over the torn “civil fabric” in Los Osos? If he was really worried about it he would have given Los Osos a less expensive project, like he promised, but, no, he couldn’t do that. It had to be the most expensive or bust. Vacuum collection didn’t vacuum the town of homeowners like gravity will, and while STEP is cheaper it doesn’t displace enough homeowners. Only MWH gravity could do the big cleansing job the County wanted done.

As with George Bush and Iraq, Gibson can’t heal what he broke in Los Osos. Someone else will have to do that. After all, it was Gibson who pulled apart the “civil fabric” in Los Osos, and he clearly doesn’t know how to fix it. Remember the disrespect he heaped on Retired Judge Martha Goldin, seawater intrusion analyst Keith Wimer, and Los Osos public commenters, in general, who tried and failed to make their points with him? The doctor with no bedside manner is a former geophysicist who once worked for big oil. The scientist willing to sacrifice so many to build a sewer is clinically disconnected from true human values and can’t be trusted. He has proven this again and again.

So what makes him even think or imagine he can heal this open wound when on April 7, 2009, he broke his Prop 218 promise to voters and unilaterally dropped STEP collection and with it any alternative to far more expensive gravity collection — 70% of the cost of the project – simply because his favored technology couldn’t stand up to a very basic apples-to-apples cost-competition with cheaper STEP, or any other much-cheaper alternative technology? So it had to go, and with it the last and only chance for affordability. STEP was never in the picture, except for a cameo death scene near the end, and Gibson knows that better than anyone because he co-wrote the script.

How can Gibson, the sewer dealer, heal the 4,500 selected homeowners in the low-lying “Prohibition Zone” – but not in the wealthy highlands of Cabrillo Estates – to pay $300 to $400 a month for a $200 million sewer to fix a discredited “nitrate level” issue that will take 30 or 40 years to show any difference, if ever? As far as addressing the seawater intrusion crisis in the endangered Los Osos water basin, Wimer called the County’s project “worthless.”

So what exactly is one to make of Gibson’s heart-rending plan of “getting some crews together” to help poor homeowners in Los Osos, volunteers to dig laterals for hook-ups to his outrageously unaffordable sewer project? Step up to the mike and cut to the chase, Supervisor: Who saves and how much?

Until he offers real details it’s appears he is merely talking his way around the perimeter of yet another ill-conceived, ill-timed government pork project that will wipe out thousands at a low point in the collapsed economy. Apparently, a pipedigger’s dream is all he has to sell to a desperate community at this point, because he has no answers to the lethal trap he’s sprung, a trap built with no way out. To offer such a weak, shallow suggestion is worse than saying nothing at all. Of course, Gibson and Ogren were feeding the company line to willing Coastal Commissioner Shallenberger, and she was passing it along to us, the audience, as ex parte communications. There was a purpose to it all.

So what are you going to do now, Supervisor Gibson, continue to play politics with the lives of thousands, just like you’ve always done, or put a big chunk of those federal stimulus dollars directly into the bank accounts of PZ homeowners to help them pay what will be the biggest sewer bill in the U.S.? Everything else is just talk, and Los Ososans now know firsthand exactly how much your promises are worth.

From his fruited perch in the rolling hills of rural Cayucos, miles from the epicenter of human devastation in Los Osos, far from the pickup trucks and U-hauls, the bully behind the big sewer practically no one can afford now wants to play healer.

You’ve sure got a lot of nerve, Supervisor Gibson, I’ll grant you that.

— Ed Ochs


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