An Irresponsible Family and San Diego’s Water

New X-Box games, new flat screen TV, another four-wheeler and a bigger
trailer to haul the stuff to “The River”. We all know this family who have
maxed out their credit cards, are teetering on the brink of not making their
mortgage payment, where the lady of the house has her nails done weekly and
he makes daily trips to Starbucks for $4.00 coffee mixtures. Meanwhile there
is not enough money to buy essentials like life insurance, or lay aside
enough money for retirement. “Next year we’ll take care of that”, they say.
Sound familiar?

Now scale that economic philosophy up several notches to the City of San
Diego who are seriously in debt due to overblown pensions and who spend
millions on “landscaped promenades along the downtown San Diego waterfront
and a restroom adorned with the words from the novel, “Jonathan Livingston
Seagull”.

Quoting the article in today’s San Diego UT (5/29/2014), “This 31.1 million
effort known as the first phase of the North Embarcadero Visionary
Plan..comes on the heels of the $48 million Waterfront Park that the county
government opened..on May 10.”

It is very nice to beautify our waterfront, but does it make sense to spend
millions doing that when we can’t (or won’t) fund the $3.5 billion to upgrade the Pt
Loma Wastewater Plant so San Diego can have a reliable water supply through
indirect Potable Recycling (IPR). Our credit cards are maxed out (pension
debt) and we are having our nails done (waterfront parks) so we are just
like the family that in the beginning of this blog you found to be an
irresponsible, unorganized, spendthrift family.

There is a big difference. The impact of the family’s imprudent spending may
affect a handful of people. Not so with San Diego, where the lives of
millions of citizens will likely be seriously harmed unless disastrous water
policies of the San Diego City Council do a one eighty and the council starts acting like
responsible adults.

For over thirty years those who have the responsibility to assure a safe and
reliable water supply have frittered away billions of dollars on politically
expedient projects. And avoid facing the reality we have an unsustainable
water supply coming from hundreds of miles away subject to natural disasters
and capricious courts. As this is being written the council has authorized a
million dollars to hire a consultant to tell us what we already know. That
recycling (IPR) needs to be sold to the public, when recent polls show
seventy-three percent of the citizens already know this is an imperative for long
term sustainability. Another three quarters of a million dollars will
literally be going down the drain this year as we continue to operate the
water purification pilot plant that served its usefulness.

This is primary election season, to be followed with the general election
season. All of the local office-seekers running can be quoted as saying they
are “fighting for us to ___________________ (fill in the blank), but not one
word in print or otherwise is being said about what can happen as the
drought wears on and our water supply is threatened. What they are “fight
for” is to get elected, that’s all. And once in place, to be re-elected.
What’s the solution?

It’s pretty easy. “Huh.”, you say. Yep! All that has to happen is for the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, who administer the 1972 Clean Water
Act, to refuse to issue another waiver on the Point Loma Wastewater Plant
that currently takes the chunks out of 175 million gallons per day of
collected sewage and dumps the rest into the ocean. We are the only city In
California that still doesn’t clean up our sewage to the standards of the
Clean Water Act.

That family in the opening paragraph of this blog will face a day of
reckoning when the decisions will be taken out of their hands. And so will
the City of San Diego. And when that happens someone or some entity takes
control of the family’s and in like manner, our destiny. Is that what we
want to have happen? I don’t think so, but it looks likely since the current
waiver expires in 2015.

A  letter was sent to our new mayor, Kevin Faulconer asking him what his
position is on seeking a new waiver. It is unlikely I will get a meaningful
response, but I will post it anyway. And if there is no response, waiting a reasonable amount of
time, I will post that also. Keep tuned. It may get

real interesting.
Milt Burgess