By ED OCHS
Sierra Club’s Andrew Christie is probably the single most influential voice speaking out on the environmental pitfalls and pratfalls of the County’s ill-conceived Los Osos sewer project. In “The Lessons of Los Osos,” Christie’s excellent summary of — as he sees it — the last major chapter in the 30-year Los Osos sewer saga, published in the July/August edition of the Santa Lucian newsletter, he chronicles the many achievements (and one notable failure) of the Sierra Club, SLO Green Build, Surfrider, Los Osos Sustainability Group and local activists in their combined efforts to substantially reshape the County’s predetermined project for Los Osos, which recently received a Coastal Development Permit from the California Coastal Commission.
While Christie eloquently captures the ebb and flow and flavor of the struggle against an intransigent County government, and explains how environmental groups significantly impacted the misguided project despite intense political pressure from the County, he appears to have lost sight of actions – and inactions – by the Sierra Club and allies that, coupled with County duplicity, enabled the County to rob Los Osos of the most important element in the mix – the chance for a lower-cost, alternative collection system. That battle, won by the County with their imposition of the hyper-expensive gravity collection system, will eventually cost between a third and half the community their homes and force them to move simply because they will not be able to afford to pay the monthly sewer bill of $300 or more.
However proud Christie is of achieving seven out of eight key environmental goals to improve the project, it’s the eighth goal that mattered most – and it’s the Big One that got away. Instead of being able to rhapsodize on the Sierra Club-inspired inclusion of a lower-priced alternative in the County’s design-build cost-competition, Christie is left only to cite the “recognition of the lower environmental impacts of a sealed, pressurized effluent (STEP) collection system over a gravity system.” This consolation-prize “recognition” is faint applause in an empty theater.
Most unbiased observers recognize as a given that STEP cost less and is environmentally superior to gravity collection, yet the Los Osos sewer is going to be a gravity system and cost at least $50 million more than STEP. So, while seven out of eight is a tremendous winning percentage, number eight was the key to the project and the key has been stolen. Partly because Christie and his groups couldn’t see the thieves through the forest, and despite all environmentalists’ best efforts at mitigating the existing project, the environment will ultimately be the worse off for what is conspicuously missing – any real competition to drive down costs and stimulate innovation.
When the Sierra Club could have done something early on to challenge error-riddled AB 2701 and blank-check Prop 218, they were busy lobbying for it, unable to see the clear, persistent pattern of County abuse and deceit while yielding total control to a thoroughly scurrilous and untrustworthy band of County Supervisors and their negligent, heavily biased Public Works department. It wasn’t long after the passage of the 218 that the County realized they had all the power and didn’t have to listen to anybody and, as Christie points out, they didn’t.
While constructively promoting a less expensive, more environmentally-friendly alternative system, Christie and the Sierra Club inadvertently played into the County’s carefully orchestrated campaign to ditch STEP and vacuum collection, any alternative systems, altogether.
Wrote Christie: “The Sierra Club has been engaged with this issue since 2005, when we fought for the deal brokered between the Los Osos CSD and the State Water Board that (almost) saved the project’s State Revolving Fund loan. When that fell through, Sierra Club lobbied hard in Sacramento for the passage of AB 2701, the bill that allowed transfer of the project from the bankrupt CSD to the County. We advocated for the approval of the Proposition 218 vote necessary to assess the funds for the project.
“That collaborative effort turned necessarily adversarial as the County’s project took shape within extremely narrow and environmentally unsound parameters…”
The State Fund Revolving loan payment for the ill-fated 2005 project was an illegal loan since the LOCSD failed to conduct a Prop 218 vote for the right to tax homeowners to repay the loan, as required by state law. The Los Osos Taxpayers Association’s 218 lawsuit was being heard in court at around the same time the Sierra Club was trying to save the loan, yet the Sierra Club ignored these critical turns. The state took notice, though. Realizing their exposure, the state stopped the loan and ordered a 218 for any more SRF loan money, essentially calling for a new loan for what would have to be a new project with new permits while basically killing off the highly unpopular Tri-W site as destination for the sewer.
In addition, the SRF loan was “site specific” to the Tri-W site and couldn’t be carried over to a new project. Christie should have known these facts, details and events before endorsing collusive County government. Instead of jumping on a bandwagon of fabrications, he should have paid more attention to the makeup of the Board of Supervisors, those with the authority to shape and implement AB 2701 and the Prop 218, because they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the environment. Their open-ended Prop 218 made the County-rigged, gravity-tilted Community Survey look like a minor burglary compared to the 218’s mass rape of Los Osos “Prohibition Zone” homeowners.
In Christie’s timeline, first came AB 2701, then the 218, and then things turned “necessarily adversarial” for the Sierra Club and allies. One lesson the environmentalists were slow to learn was that the government wasn’t their friend; and they didn’t negotiate, either. Both AB 2701 and the 218 were clearly political solutions aimed at imposing the will of the County — and the most expensive project — on Los Osos, and Christie should have known that up front. Yet the environmentalists and the shaky leadership of Los Osos lay down and rolled over en masse for both AB 2701 and Prop 218, misled by community moles and turncoats urging alarmed homeowners and residents to “trust the county,” assuring them “that the best project will float to the surface,” instead of sinking to the bottom like a weighted corpse.
What were Christie and the environmental groups thinking … if they were thinking at all? By backing AB 2701 and the blank-check 218 — as did “Prohibition Zone” homeowners threatened with huge fines by the Regional Water Board if the 218 didn’t pass – the environmental groups were too eager to demonstrate their collective naïveté and woeful lack of political smarts.
When Christie et al supported AB2701 and the 218, it was already too late for Los Osos. The damage had been done. Everything that came after the 218 passed was a lost cause. As right as he was about the numerous serious environmental concerns with the project, Christie still made the same fatal mistake the rest of the community made — stupidly, blindly putting their trust in corrupt public officials and associates whose sole aim was to screw Los Osos so badly that thousands would lose their homes … while their buddies and cronies profit from the misery of their neighbors.
“Initially, the County vehemently insisted that it should do virtually none of [our recommendations] and they would not be part of the project,” wrote Christie. “We held our ground through the multiple Planning Commission meetings from April through August of last year and our appeal to the Coastal Commission and the resulting Substantial Issue hearing last January. Result: of the eight conditions listed… seven are now part of the project’s permit… We achieved this despite heavy political pressure.”
Unfortunately, the ground he was holding was the only ground remaining that hadn’t already been surrendered. Don’t get me wrong, I support Andrew Christie and think he is by far the most articulate, intelligent and persuasive speaker on environment issues related to the Los Osos sewer, but at the same time he was less than politically astute in making snap decisions to back the County. It was and will be a costly miscalculation, one that will echo for decades. Christie and the community should have had more insight into the County’s truncated process and acted on it immediately, rather than supporting a county so corrupt that even the most unquestioning follower and part-time thinker should have seen the anguish that lie ahead.
“Due to the County’s insistence on a gravity sewer, a great deal more money will now be spent on construction, monitoring and maintenance (or, worse, as often happens in gravity-sewered communities, money promised to be spent on maintenance will be insufficient, or will be diverted to other local needs that, unlike sewer issues, aren’t out of sight/out of mind until they turn into crises),” wrote Christie.
Exactly right. This is not an attempt to diminish Christie’s brilliant work on reeling in the runaway Los Osos sewer project, but he should know now not to trust the County to do the right thing and not to trust the word(s) of Supervisor Gibson, Public Works Director Ogren and Public Works staff. Christie thought it was all about the water but it never was, as the County’s original Tonini project proved. Less costly STEP and alternatives simply could not provide the extra-thick padding of millions for kickbacks provided by top-dollar MWH gravity. It always was all about money, not water … but money that flows like water.
Now that the County has captured the Coastal Development Permit, Christie seems to suggest that the Los Osos sewer saga is all but over. Maybe it’s over for the technology, but it hasn’t begun to hit home yet for the town. The sewer bills will start coming next year and begin ramping up year after year on their relentless march to $300 and eventually $400 a month, the most expensive sewer project per capita in U.S. history. Thousands will be forced to sell their homes and leave, and there won’t real peace in Los Osos because of it, at least not until whoever’s going to have to go is gone and the new population of Los Osos covers up the driven-out by decade’s end.
— Ed Ochs
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