Water Board Tanks Los Osos Septic Plan
By Abraham Hyatt, The Tribune, San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Apr. 25–In a dramatic reversal of a months-old position, regional water quality regulators are backing down from their plan to force Los Osos residents to pump their septic tanks six times a year until a communitywide sewer is built.
Regional Water Quality Control Board staff said in a letter posted Monday on the Web that it was persuaded by concerns from local air pollution officials that bimonthly pumping of the approximately 4,300 targeted septic tanks could cause significant impact.
It was unclear to which specific impacts the letter referred. Officials with the water board and the Air Pollution Control District were unavailable for comment Monday.
At a hearing set for Friday, agency staff were expected to ask the water board to force 45 randomly selected Los Osos residents to pump their tanks every other month through 2010, when they would have to stop using a septic system altogether.
At the hearing, staff plans on recommending that the water board wait for more information before requiring pumping.
Officials blame septic systems for polluting Los Osos groundwater and the Morro Bay estuary, and planned to target the majority of home and business septic tanks by the end of the year.
Community activists cite different data, which they say proves pollution comes from other sources, such as decomposing plant matter and animal waste.
The septic tank pumping plan was proposed after Los Osos leaders stopped work last fall on a sewer that included a controversial treatment plant in the middle of town.
For “the families (the proposed pumping decree) affected the most, this takes a giant weight off them,” said Rob Shipe, vice president of the legal defense fund set up for owners targeted by the water board.
Los Osos residents forced to pump their tanks faced costs upward of $2,400 a year, depending on the size of the tank and the amount of digging it takes to access it.
That’s more than 5 percent of many residents’ annual income in a town where 50 percent of households earned less than $50,000 a year in 2000, according to U.S. census data.
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