LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

“Problem Solvers” Do It Again

We had it all: the beautiful ocean along our coast, the great weather, the clean land and the beautiful new and growing economy. We could walk to school, to the store by ourselves and never thought anything would go wrong. We had new shopping centers and movie theatres that sparkled. We had water and energy and land that would have new houses and new people. We were fine with anyone who wanted to be here. We never thought anyone had a negative agenda; we could all be happy here.

Somewhere along the way some decided we weren’t that good; we did not take enough care of the land, the water, and the natural environment, the tiny fish, the birds, the forests.

So in came the agencies to regulate, to manage us in what they decided we had abused. The EPA would tell us how to do it and take over.

We could not clear the forests of dead wood or the streams of debris that clogged them. We “might” harm the fish, even though there has never been a clear understanding of the total impact of what would happen if we did clear the streams.

So in Montecito we had a massive flood after the fires and we saw the devastation of mud and debris flow. We also had 16 million gallons of water from storage tanks come down the mountains as the electricity keeping the gates closed went off and there came the water on top of the rains…

Finally we have now taken action, after people died and property was destroyed. We have found many more streams than anyone knew as they were buried for years by neglect. Neglect to take care, clear debris, make barriers to the boulders so they could never again fall so fast and destroy lives.

But the regulators are not done yet, as they now decide to turn off our electricity before any problem. This is PG & E’s absurd and destructive action to avoid responsibility for any new problem.

So being afraid now to help is to turn everything off. People will die as their life saving power is cut off; their oxygen tanks, their food, their necessities all stop.

Government’s answer is to hire more regulators, make more rules, more laws to keep us in check. This is the Dimms answer to fix this state. Our governor never came to our disaster, never came to see or understand. He is too busy fighting with the Federal government to come here.

He fixes nothing and regulates everything.

This first thing is he must be recalled and we must find a governor who has the comprehension to deal with the whole state of California.

We cannot bring in more illegals, with more homeless, with more tents on many roads to harm life and businesses. We cannot tax and give everything away on some socialist agenda experiment.

We have lived here a long time and know this can be fixed with new ideas and new government. Here we are in fire season again and we still don’t have answers. Again, people are in danger from the lack of ways to solve the problems of this beautiful State of California.

Chris Frisina
Montecito

(Editor’s note: Things have changed and mostly not for the better. When we moved here (some 33 years ago), our children could still bicycle to school freely (the SUV had yet to become the vehicle of choice and people really did drive slower), salamanders were plentiful in the small pools left behind by the trickle of water in our creeks that flowed even into late July; Dads cooked barbecues on MUS school grounds where Halloween and Christmas parades were holiday staples; one could still find a tiny octopus or two in tide pools at Hammonds, and grunions came in regularly by the thousands at Miramar Beach on a full-moon high tide. Oh, and the county had only recently mandated that bulldozers would no longer be allowed to clear our creeks, for fear of upsetting Mother Nature. Not to be a Debbie Downer, however, Montecito has retained most of its semi-rural charm and our residents are as handsome and beautiful as ever. – J.B.)

Chasing Doom

Let’s see: Why would a 20-year-old on campus (maybe) feel suicidal these days? For starters, socialism is depressing. Being a victim is depressing. Laying your life at the feet of a corrupt and inept government is depressing. Hating your country is depressing. Being told we only have 12 good years of life left on this planet is depressing. Just hanging around the Climate Change Doomsayer Crowd is depressing.

(Crap), I’d be reserving a spot in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge at midnight myself if I believed all that (stuff).

David S. McCalmont
Santa Barbara

Homeless Celebrities

A few comments on a recent guest editorial by Bob Hazard (MJ # 25/39). From what I’m aware of, someone who’s employed at the Coast Village Road Chevron station is without a home, at least part of the time. The numbers Mr. Hazard quoted, especially in LA/LA County, proves homelessness can happen to anyone. I believe Ernest Borgnine, James Michener, Larry King, Jim Carrey, Whoopie Goldberg and many others have all spent time without regular shelter. Just Google “celebrities who’ve been homeless” and you’ll be amazed at the listings.

Since Mr. Hazard is, I believe, someone of considerable means and lives not too far from the upper village shops, perhaps he could take in one of the poor women he’s complained about. (Just sayin’…)

And why is Sharon Byrne the executive director of the Montecito Association, as she certainly doesn’t live there?

Just sign me

A concerned member of the community,
Santa Barbara

(Editor’s note: FYI, there is no residential requirement for the administrative position of executive director, although there are strict residential restrictions for all members of the Montecito Association Board of Directors and their concomitant committees and sub-committees, all of whom must live or own in Montecito proper. – J.B.)

The Daily Noose

I was noodling around one morning and found an article in The Economist about how smart speakers are now being fitted with cameras to monitor one’s daily movements while in the home. I thought about this for a while and started writing. I think I might have been channeling William S. Burroughs while I used my pen and paper as it came through as a poem, not a letter:

The World This Week

A roundup of political
and business news.
America and Iran
are on a collision course.
Trade talks,
Deal, or no deal?
Latin America 
is under The Volcano!
The Istanbul election
is going down,
and there is a creep 
in your kitchen
Your smart speaker
is watching you cook
All eyes
are on you!

Michael Edwards
Santa Barbara

(Editor’s note: Yeah, I know what you mean/feel: I often get a little creeped out when “Alexa” pops up to make a comment about something we’d been talking about minutes before – J.B.)

Keep the Lights On

Thousands of burning candles in Montecito homes during hot, dry, windy conditions is not the answer to fire prevention.

Bruce Savin 
Montecito

(Editor’s note: Point well taken, sir! – J.B.)

School Daze

This missive was prompted by the recent letters from Steve King on the educational system, which really rang true to my experience with putting a child in the public schools. After my son began going to school, his entire personality changed; it was as though I had put him in a prison. He was more often than not in some sort of trouble, and I sensed he very much resented me making him go.

Prior to that he had always accompanied me in whatever exploits I was up to on any particular day. After that when I gave him some advice, he would do the exact opposite, I believe just to get back at me for putting him in school.

The person that always comes to my mind whenever I discuss this topic is Jack London whose education was primarily derived in Heinold’s Saloon in San Francisco, now (unofficially) known as The Jack London Rendezvous. The saloon owner took him under his wing and made him sit at one of the empty tables studying a dictionary. He was a dyed-in-the-wool socialist most of his life, which changed after he became wealthy enough to buy his own property and had to deal with the Italian workers.

Thomas Sowell had a recent column, which advocated that those disenchanted with public schools should support the voucher system in order to get a little more control over their children’s education.

Larry Bond
Santa Barbara

Wasting Water (Or Not)

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) can act as conduits for many recalcitrant anthropogenic compounds, such as polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), leading to the environment through effluent discharges and land application. PFAS are found ubiquitously in wastewater. Some of these anthropogenic materials are considered as “forever materials.” 

For us here in Montecito, considerations of using recycled water might be worth a broader discussion. If remembered not long ago, there was a developed program to allow in-trucking of Goleta recycled. That water includes a reasonably broad based industrial and healthcare related input to the wastewater base. The same can be said for Santa Barbara.

Various industrial pretreatment requirements may be attached to a variety of dischargers using a local sewer system. In many instances, how pretreatment requirements are determined depends on the particular sanitary district. Dilution of the industrial discharge with extra water is one way of meeting current pretreatment discharge requirements. This dilution is for the comfort of the microbes living in the sewer plant as they are used to break down (digest) materials sent to the sewer plant.

One can think of a sewer plant as a big mechanical stomach. Domestic and human wastes, along with industrial wastes are mixed, and in some cases, the industrial waste, which includes myriad toxins, can be changed by what the various microbes digest during treatment. Some of these microbe-driven-changes to the incoming chemicals, toxins and pharmaceuticals, may make them more available, more toxic or combine materials to create new-not-considered toxic byproducts.

When this effluent-derived fluid is recycled, it can reconcentrate these detractors within the soil as discussed by Chad Kinney and the USGS (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16519291). For example Glyphosate can be bacterially broken down to produce an additional or second form of carcinogen. See also:Glyphosate toxicity and carcinogenicity: a review of the scientific basis of the European Union assessment and its differences with IARC.Tarazona JV et al. Arch Toxicol. (2017)

The various bacterial contaminants are also able to set up biofilms when used as irrigation water, which biofilms by their nature protect bacterial systems from degradation. Thus reservoirs of biofilm enhanced microbial communities can be established by irrigation with recycled water: see Fahrenfeld: Viability-based quantification of antibiotic resistance genes and human fecal markers in wastewater effluent and receiving waters. See also: Reclaimed water as a reservoir of antibiotic resistance genes: distribution system and irrigation implications.

Each source of recycled water will have a different course of intractable pollutants. Unless there is a steady-state of inputs, the effluent, that part of wastewater becoming recycled, will shift. Thus assuming a steady state of source and product may be naïve and may well vastly miss the mark as the target constantly shifts. There are at least three possible sources of recycled wastewater available to use as a source available to Montecito: MSD, Santa Barbara, and Goleta. Of the three, MSD is probably the most stable.

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) can act as a conduit for many recalcitrant anthropogenic compounds, such as PFAS, to the environment through effluent discharges.

Irrigating lawns in this local climatic system can take up to 52 inches of applied water. That is 4.33 feet of water. Not all of that will evaporate or be used in plant metabolic processes. This extra water may affect the local aquifers. There is a flux of water contained within aquifers, this is caused by wells pulling cones of depression which can severely affect adjacent well levels as well as a way to mix ground water, the idea that groundwater is static or injection does not affect adjacent wells has a poor basis in fact.

Long ago I did a groundwater reconnaissance of the 1.7 million-acre Los Padres Forest as a geologist with the USFS. We were often asked to do luncheon lectures on geology in the forest. In one such lecture I showed a series of slides that were originally from the doctoral work of Jay Lehr. A series of micro wells were sunk into a lab series of different groundwater basins and as they were activated it was easy to see the extended reach one well system had on the field and adjacent wells. The luncheon was attended mainly by geologists and their general response was, “Wow, I had no idea; is that how it really works?”

There are many unknowns in this field relating to the interaction of toxic materials, soils, microbes and inputs of wastewater and effect on local wells. Hooking up pipes to transport recycled wastewater is but a very tiny part of what is being suggested. This is not to say it cannot be done, just that it is not all that simple and the end result of doing it wrong out of ignorance or for profit/cost-cutting can have long lasting adverse impacts.

Dr. Edo McGowan
Montecito

Back In Focus

We very much enjoyed working with Joanne Calitri and her “Our Town” column on her profile of our fStop Warrior Project at the SBCC Wake Campus. Community support for our transiting Post 9/11 veterans is essential for the successful re-integration after their service in America’s OEF/OIF conflicts.

We are now focused on bringing other generations of veterans into the fStop photography program starting with our Winter Session, which we are planning to start in January 2020.

In order to accomplish our mission, it is important that we are able to have a clear channel of communications with the veteran communities we wish to serve.

Unfortunately, our email address in Ms Calitri’s article was not correct. We contacted her about the error and she assured us that a correction would been forthcoming. We have still not seen that correction.

The correct email address for our program is: tford@pipeline.sbcc.edu 

We would very much appreciate the Journal publishing a correction. Thank you for your continued support! 

Terence Ford 
fStop Foundation