Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 9, 2007
4. Water Quality
Supervisors stand up for Osos owner; Letter asks regional officials to back off because septic stop orders may compromise a vote on a tax to pay for the sewer, a project the county now leads
San Luis Obispo
By Bob Cuddy, staff writer
The county has asked regional water officials to hold off on ordering property owners in Los Osos to stop using their septic tanks by 2011 or face stiff fines.
Although some Los Osos residents did not agree with all of the wording in a letter the Board of Supervisors approved to give to the state Regional Water Quality Control Board, citizens praised supervisors Tuesday. Residents have often criticized the county’s handling of their town’s wastewater issue.
“This is the first time in 30 years that any Board of Supervisors has intervened with the (regional water board) on behalf of Los Osos,” Gewynn Taylor said. It was a sentiment echoed by most of the 16 people who spoke as the board considered whether to send the letter.
The correspondence, first publicized in a story in Sunday’s Tribune, asks the water board not to consider at its meeting this week whether to issue more than 4,000 stop orders to Los Osos property owners. The orders would tell owners they must hook up their homes or businesses to a sewer or stop using their septic systems by Jan. 1, 2011.
The water board has been pushing for decades to get Los Osos —an unincorporated town of about 14,000 people — to build a sewer. Residences and businesses use septic tanks for wastewater disposal, and the water board blames them for polluting groundwater and
As squabbling over the type of sewer and location of a treatment plant has scuttled repeated attempts to get a wastewater system built, the water board has threatened to force Los Osos property owners to stop using their septic tanks or face fines of up to $5,000 a day.
After the Los Osos Community Services District stopped construction on a sewer last year, the water board began issuing stop orders to a random group of 45 property owners. On Thursday and Friday, the board will consider a recommendation from its staff to issue orders to about 4,400 additional property owners — nearly the whole town.
Meanwhile, the county is working on a sewer project for the services district. And at some point, the county will ask property owners in Los Osos to approve a tax to pay for construction of that sewer.
The supervisors’ letter argues that the 45 orders issued already have imperiled that vote, and it asks the board not to proceed with any additional orders.
Supervisors said they planned to deliver the letter Tuesday afternoon, giving the water board time to review it before its meeting.
Harvey Packard, the water board’s enforcement coordinator, said members probably wouldn’t see the letter until today.
“We’ll try to get the letter to them before the meeting starts so that we can prepare them,” Packard said. “As for any response from the board, we’ll have to wait until Thursday’s meeting.”
Packard said last week that the water board wants to make it clear that responsibility for pollution in Los Osos rests with individual homeowners.
But Supervisor Bruce Gibson — whose 2nd District includes Los Osos — said the water board’s threat to send letters is “a significant distraction.”
Beyond that, the supervisors said little, preferring to let the letter “speak for itself,” as Gibson put it.
“The county has a big job to do working with the community,” Gibson said last week, and stop orders have frightened and angered some in town.
The supervisors’ meeting Tuesday was noteworthy for the near-unanimous support that Los Osos residents in attendance gave the board.
Their chief disagreement was over the board’s finding that the regional water board had not engaged in electioneering. Several Los Osos residents consider the threat of stop orders as coercion and electioneering.
Two people asked the board not to send the letter. One, Joyce Albright, said people in Los Osos want to “get on with it.”
“It is imperative to get a sewer right now,” Albright said. “A deadline must be set.”
Supervisors stressed that their letter is merely advisory. The regional water board has authority to do what it chooses. #
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/183/story/36725.html
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