Point Reyes Light - May 29, 2003

Monte Rio should learn from Bolinas

By Lloyd Kahn

A few weeks ago I got two emails from some folks in Monte Rio, telling me that Armando Alegria, who works for Marin's Environmental Health Services, had come to a meeting on the proposed highly controversial sewer plan for the small town, and told people that it had been a big mistake for Bolinas to reject "The Questa Plan" in the early ‘90s. Stating that he was not speaking "in an official capacity," he said that not only was there raw sewage coming out of the cliffs in Bolinas, but people were sorry they voted it down. Opportunity missed, etc.

Well! I live in Bolinas, and was one of the organizers that shot down the dumb, ecologically insensitive, and bloatedly expensive Questa Plan a dozen years ago, and I don't know of any Bolinas folks, even those who advocated it back then, who don't count their lucky stars we didn’t allow ourselves to be saddled with this turkey.

Nor do I know of any place where raw sewage is coming out of cliffs. When I emailed this to the Monte Rio people, they asked if I'd come to a meeting on May 17, and so I did.

Railroading the locals

I walked into the Saturday afternoon meeting in the Monte Rio School Gym andódeja vu! Four people were conducting (railroading, it immediately became apparent) the meeting of concerned locals: Sonoma Supervisor Mike Reilly, two county bureaucrats, and Norm Hantsche of Questa Engineering.

It was so bizarre as to be surreal. The same exact modus operandi used in Bolinas a decade earlier, to wit: because a lot of taxpayer money is available for "clean water," a very large industry has emerged consisting of bureaucrats and engineers. They declare a false health hazard, based on bogus science and total lack of data. The usual ones are huge numbers of septic tanks are "failing" or, if you're near a beach, bay or river, "the e-coli are coming."

An engineer gets in touch with development interests and other pro-growth individuals in the town. They keep it low-profile. No "outreach" to tell the public what they're up to. The county, with the blessings of developers, contracts with an engineer to do a study. This alone is big bucks. (Questa collected more than $500,000 for just designing the Bolinas plan; this would have been enough to repair every questionable system in Bolinas as well as needed road drainage plus money left over). Sonoma county is spending $1,200,000 (!) on study funds and engineering plans for Monte Rio.

Can you believe it?

Questa’s point of view

So the engineer declares the small town polluted, and in need of, guess what, a high tech, expensive solution. Solution to be designed by same engineer. Neat, huh? When the Questa Plan was in development we learned the phrase "least cost-effective." It means choosing the most expensive solution to get maximum grant money. County health officials, whose salaries come from fees, favor the high-tech approach because it means fatter fees, more income for their agencies. Witness the engineer/health official cartel in action: a Marin county employee in Sonoma county selling Questa’s point of view.

I listened for about a half hour. Homeowners were confused and asking questions. Quite a few people seemed to be against the plan, some people were for it, and I'd say the majority just didn’t know. And too bad for them, because their questions were met with distortions, innuendos, and scare tactics. This was a sell job, not an honest discussion of the principles involved. Dissenting opinions were blocked or at best trivialized. People were being shepherded into a corral.

A couple of things about this plan:

· This is a Sewer. A high-tech, energy intensive inelegant design which features ever-after indebtedness.

· They're not even going to treat solids onsite, instead there will be 14 grinder stations grinding up raw sewage before sending it to a sewer plant. It's a city solution to what's not even a country problem. Someone asked Hantsche what would happen during a power outage with the 14 grinders needed to run the system. Portable generators would be used, he said. How would they get to the grinder stations? In pickup trucks, he answered, Yeah, right.

· They intend to seize 14 acres (a beautiful meadow) on the Sheridan Ranch, in the family since 1860, to process the sewage. On the riverside, in a flood plain! Sharon Fitzgerald Callahan, ranch owner, is fighting it vigorously. Think about having your land forcibly taken from you and then 600 households’ raw sewage dumped there. What kind of people would advocate this?

· In the vote going on, businesses are given multiple votes (10, for a restaurant) and Torr Realty, with 30 undeveloped lots, is given 30 votes. One homeowner equals one vote. Do you smell anything?

· Oh yeah, I forgot: there has been no study showing pollution coming from failing Monte Rio septic systems. None! $11 million based on a shaky assumption. Not to mention over half-a-million dollars in operating costs to be sucked out of Monte Rio's economy every year. I wonder if the sewer proponents have discussed that?

· Homeowner Trini Amador kept trying unsuccessfully to get an answer to his question: why not do accurate testing and fix failing systems one at a time? The anonymous handouts slammed on-site systems. I guess they never bothered to review the EPA's Municipal Treatment Technology Fact Sheets, which show approval for dozens of small on-site treatment plants that meet the community needs and provide direct discharge quality effluent, or Mendocino's experience with approved new on-site technologies. (Maybe Norm ought to drop an e-mail to the Municipal Technology Branch of the EPA, because they like to see fully sealed systems with full electrical standby for sewer systems in flood plains to avoid flooding towns with raw sewage.)

They don't seem to think the pickup truck and generator driving through the sewage and floodwater is the most appropriate backup technology. If Questa clears up this point beforehand maybe there won't be any embarrassing cost over-runs and they won't be forced to bill the county for all that expensive re-engineering.

And so it goes

Well, back to the meeting . . .

There was a table with stacks of pro-sewer fliers, all filled with distortions and scare tactics. These unsigned and undocumented handouts, in addition to slamming on-site treatment, told people if they rejected the sewer they wouldn't be able to sell their home, build, remodel, get loans, etc. Same as we were told in Bolinas (which turned out to be totally untrue). A phrase from one of them: "A new sewer is like a new car... it smells good, feels good and it’s more reliable. The community will start to shine." Yuck!

I stood up, introduced myself, and said: "You people are being sold a bill of goods. This is the exact same approach used in Bolinas over 12 years ago." You could have heard a pin drop. As soon as the county reps saw where I was going they tried to shut me off. There was an uproar in the audience. "Let him talk," etc. Things got lively, but the leaders of this charade just wouldn't let me speak to the homeowners. It was their bat and their ball.

Why should we care what goes on in Sonoma county? For one thing, the MR sewer is a microcosm of what is planned by engineers and bureaucrats for the entire Russian River, and more ominously, the entire state: forcing people to fix stuff that ain't broke. Each MR homeowner is going to get saddled with some $900 a year in increased property taxes and operating costs (at least $1,200 by the time it happens I'll bet), and US, state, and county taxpayers are going to end up paying $11 million to private property owners to "improve" their property. If you live in a small town in West Marin, watch out for the early warning signals.

The bigger picture in all this is AB 885 (which was being used to scare homeowners. . . "If we don't to something now, the state will make us do something far more expensive, an absolute inverse of the truth.) The AB 885 regs are currently being written: due out in 2004, but one thing is sure: if they're like the standards in Oregon and other states, it's bye-bye Marin County-sized engineering and permit fees.

Just look at who's lobbying for what on the 885 standards if you want to get the big picture. Call your state legislator. If these coming statewide septic regulations go along the lines of Marin County (regs partially written by Questa) and what Questa and his buddies are lobbying the state for, we could be looking at some $30 billion in costs. Say over the course of time (remodels, sale of property, failing leachfields) 1 million homeowners in Calif. have to upgrade to Marin standards. At $30,000 apiece, we are talking 30 billion dollars! (And there are more than 1 million systems in the state.)

History repeats

I left the MR meeting seething. Say what you will about Bolinas, but we functioned as a town back then. We fought it out tooth and nail amongst ourselves but in the end we didn't sell out, we stood up for what was right, and our lives have been better for it. We can only hope that the angels of justice and ethics can intervene in the Monte Rio travesty.

Supervisor Reilly's butt is on the block because he has gone along with diversion of a huge amount of county funds for the plan (without any land for disposal other than the anticipated hijacking of the Sheridan Ranch). He is trying to ram this through, no matter what homeowners think or want. He did everything at the meeting to stifle dissent. His famous line of a year ago concerning the project was, "The train has left the station." Unfortunately, that train is going the wrong way.

Every homeowner in West Marin and the entire State should be concerned with this, because sooner or later it could affect everyone. Before you remodel, rebuild, or sell your house, you could be shelling out $30,000-50,000 in personal funds, or having taxpayers do the same. And central sewer systems dramatically increase environmental costs and risks, not only from the power consumed, but with the potential for massive failures.

Its time for our legislators to take a hard look at what we're getting for our regulatory, consulting and waste treatment dollars. If they do so, not only will they better protect the environment, but they will protect the homeowners and small-business people of the small towns of rural California. And it will cost way, way less.

Editor’s note: The Light not only agrees with the guest columnist, it questions the propriety of a bureaucrat who regulates Questa Engineering’s work in this county acting as an advocate for it in Sonoma County. For him to say he spoke as a private citizen changed nothing.

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