1. A more reasonable wastewater plan.

By Linda "Linde" Owen

Begin by moving the sewer plant to the outside of town and collect & treat effluent from our septic tanks, rather than raw sewage. Treat the water in a more efficient terciary treatment wastewater plant, to release into wetlands for storage & re-use. Septic maintenance can help create a safe way of processing our solids down to one pumping every 5-15 yrs (if we're efficient) & processing it at the sewer plant to a lower level density than sludge.

I think we all could agree that a less expensive design (above ground), energy demand (with solar & wind, etc power generation possible), and property cost (purchase cheaper/degraded grazing land for the plant and wetland/marsh collection and storage) are all worth considering. And if we changed our collection system to collecting effluent (leachfield liquids) in combination with a Septic Maintenance Program (keep the septic tanks actively doing a decent portion of the processing when operating correctly), we'd save 42 miles of roads, and a future of ever-rising costs and hazards (raw sewage leaks, spills, fines). The plant could process everyone's pumped septage (every two yrs, maybe less often) and end up with a fraction of the disposal costs of baked sewer sludge. The location has to move, there's no logical reason to put our sewer plant in the middle of Los Osos, next to the library, community center, red barn, tennis courts, and Sunnyside school. There's everything to gain by moving it east.