Mopping up after our own messes
We’ve been witness to a number of reports this winter of sewage
spills in San Francisco Bay. That should have special significance
to all of us who live in San Benito County.
Mopping up after our own messes
We’ve been witness to a number of reports this winter of sewage spills in San Francisco Bay. That should have special significance to all of us who live in San Benito County.
When what is thought to be animal burrows led to the failure of Hollister’s waste water treatment plant in 2002, 15 million gallons of sewage spilled into the San Benito River, and thence to Monterey Bay.
The reaction was decisive. Hollister was slapped with a moratorium on new sewage hookups and the building industry shut down. Combined with a national real estate slowdown, San Benito County encountered an economic perfect storm that still rages today.
As of last week, the San Francisco Chronicle reported there had been 276 sewage spills into San Francisco Bay thus far this year.
Two-hundred seventy-six.
Certainly, the urban centers that allowed this catastrophe to occur again and again are subject to the same regulatory shutdown, right?
Wrong.
Nearly 20 million gallons of sewage has been reported as spilled into the bay thus far this year.
In spite of that, the bay is a healthier place than it was not so long ago. A generation or two ago, San Francisco Bay’s wetlands were generally thought of as unproductive wastelands.
The muddy flats were filled, and Foster City and Emeryville sprouted. Salt evaporation ponds turned seawater into money.
Every trip along Hwy. 880 through the bay’s eastern shoreline was an assault on the sinuses, a powerful chemical stench that we were taught was simply the smell of mudflats.
Time and more enlightened environmental policy show us that we were quite wrong.
San Francisco Bay’s fringes – the places where sewage is allowed to spill – wriggle and writhe with life. It’s a nursery for fish, a banquet for shorebirds and home for staggering numbers of invertebrates.
It’s too precious to regard as our toilet.
But as we in San Benito County know all too well, policy-makers in urban enclaves set a different standard for themselves than for the rural bumpkins of San Benito.
We’ve had six years of moratorium to think about that injustice.
It almost goes without saying that the “get out of jail free” card the Bay Area has drawn does not excuse Hollister’s past actions. But it’s galling nonetheless.
It’s hardly unique. Rural San Benito County is a place outsiders seem to take special glee in lampooning. “Aren’t you guys the Haybalers?” Darn right, and proud of it. “Isn’t Hollister over near Firebaugh or someplace?” Yep. Don’t ever visit. Your hair is likely to spontaneously burst into flames, such is the brutality of our weather.
The San Benito River – our river – flows nearly the length of our county before spilling its meager contents into the Pajaro, and thence to Monterey Bay. Occasionally, we are given the gift of abundant rain. Tens of thousands of square miles of saturated earth, able to bear no more water, shunt the rain into the Pajaro. The result both here and downstream is flooding.
But there are some important distinctions to be made.
First and most important, flooding in San Benito is seldom a catastrophe. Local laws forbid construction of any but agricultural structures in areas likely to be inundated every 100 years or more often.
Second: we are used to taking care of our own business. We mop up and go on with life.
Downstream, construction continues today in mapped floodplains, even as finger-pointing aims upstream at San Benito County.
The politically influential communities in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties will have their say. The population numbers and contribution dollars trump justice every time.
Is it right? Certainly not. Will it continue? Certainly. But some day, long after Hollister’s sewer moratorium is a memory, people may point to San Benito County as a place that takes care of business.
Mark Paxton can be reached at
mp*****@pi**********.com
.
