STEP vs. SLO County: The Case for Product Disparagement

Corporations have been sued for product disparagement before, but the San Luis Obispo County government may be the first governing body to be held liable for such an act if they’re proven to be wrong about their facts in dismissing the STEP collection system.

Since the California Coastal Commission unanimously approved the Coastal Development Permit for the long-debated Los Osos sewer, many vocal supporters of the SLO County government happily proclaimed that the STEP collection system was “dead” and “gone forever.” Some even went as far as to make specific claims about that technology, echoing County sentiments. Razor Online has determined that the majority of claims against STEP are unverified. Most, if not all of the disparaging claims made by the County, have been hotly contested and debunked by STEP vendor, Orenco Systems.

On April 7, 2009, San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors unhesitatingly removed STEP from the design-build process, shattering a promise — that was made to Prohibition Zone residents two years earlier — to allow all viable collection alternatives to be part of a total cost comparison of technologies. According to County Public Works and its director, Paavo Ogren, there were several reasons why STEP was removed, though Ogren was quick to assert that STEP collection is — and has always been — a viable alternative for wastewater collection. However, according to Ogren, the system was simply not right for Los Osos.

When a demand for bringing STEP back into consideration arose, the list of reasons why STEP was eliminated increased. Then it became an issue of overturning something that was decided many months earlier — and why stop a supposedly perfect, reasonable process just to rehash an abolished debate? Why discuss the specifics — and allow a public rebuttal by Ripley Pacific and Orenco Systems — when so much time has passed since the decision was made? Dana Ripley was allowed to speak for several minutes during the Planning Commission hearing, but the decision was already made. The majority of the Planning Commission simply wanted to move forward. STEP collection was just too controversial to make any sense. After two straw votes, the Planning Commission upheld the BOS’ decision to remove STEP from the design-build RFQ. The rest was history.

Without a judge or a jury, STEP collection was found guilty and sentenced to years worth of contempt and ridicule by local sewer politicos who held that the STEP technology was the definitive euphemism for “no sewer.” After all — the politicos say — with all the legal ramifications, extraneous homeowner costs, how can STEP collection exist as a viable alternative to gravity collection, which is the most popular technology of choice? However, the problem doesn’t lie within the opinions of a few self-anointed, presumptuous wastewater “engineers.” As Orenco’s Mike Saunders put it, the “core integrity” of the STEP collection business had been challenged by SLO County — and other local governments across the country would be taking notice of how STEP fared in San Luis Obispo County.

The County spent an unprecedented amount of time creating a wild, unpredictable strawman out of STEP collection. If another government were to conduct their own due diligence review of wastewater collection systems, they would come across the County’s scathing reviews of STEP. Their opinions on STEP are now readily available on popular search engines like Google and Bing. The County appears to be thorough in its critique, with thousands of pages worth of material from screening reports to the final Environmental Impact Report. The vendor’s correspondence and responses to County assertions have not be publicized (other than on The ROCK) — and with no appeal filed in response to the April 7, 2009 decision to remove STEP, everything stated by the County is presumed to be entirely factual, right?

Wrong.

With Mr. Ogren’s enthusiastic assistance, the County of San Luis Obispo performed a remarkable feat by making the leading alternative — previously approved by the National Water Research Institute in late 2006 — appear to be the worst possible technology to install in any environment that requires a wastewater system, let alone Los Osos.

It’s goes beyond that. Under the guise of serving the public’s interest, the County government has gone to a lot of trouble to utilize their official public communications — public proceedings, brochures and website –  to injure the reputation of a viable, successful technology and highly respected vendor. Without an objective medium to test the accuracy of the assertions made by the County, Ripley Pacific and Orenco Systems are left to defend themselves on a “he said, she said” basis while the County — as the sole, presiding authority of the wastewater project — refuses to retract or fully explain any of the assertions made in their public forums. If there is any proof that the County’s most damning assertions of STEP have no validity, one could conclude that the County abused their unrestricted, public communications by broadcasting their prejudices as irrefutable truth. One could also conclude that the County has been a willing participant in the product disparagement of STEP, WM Lyles and Orenco.

If in fact most of the damning claims about STEP made by the County are false, then there must be a clear motive for making those claims. Was it professional incompetence? Was it a plan to shut STEP out from the get-go? Was it a strategy to purposefully avoid the truth? Was it just too inconvenient: too much of a threat to their predetermined technology partners, to let the process play out to the promised end? Nobody knows for sure. However, the likelihood of harm to STEP contractors  statewide and nationwide is far greater now than a little over a year ago, when that collection system formally removed from consideration for the high-profile LOWWP. The County’s rabid dismissal of STEP has created a chilling effect for contractors that embrace the technology, as well as for homeowners who recognize that technology’s benefits.

Legal action against the County of San Luis Obispo for product disparagement would be the first case of its kind, since the government is not, by definition, a competitor to STEP collection — but it sounds a lot like they are. Both on record and off the record, 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson and Public Works staff publicly demonstrated their clear predisposition toward conventional gravity collection systems that dates back to mid-2007 when the County assured “Prohibition Zone” homeowners — in the form of several glossy brochures — that there would be a co-equal analysis of project alternatives.

But this is not about bringing STEP back to Los Osos, although that would allow PZ homeowners to save around $50 million. Not only is this about protecting the reputation of businesses that have installed hundreds of successfully operational systems across the country, but it’s about protecting homeowners from being shamed, ridiculed and dismissed by the County for engaging in the STEP vs. gravity debate that haunts Los Osos.

– Aaron Ochs

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