Pipes & Politicians & Power

After 25 years a political free-for-all has developed in the Ross Valley.

Our local member of the County  Board of Supervisors has been suffering from a serious health issue that has had people thinking that this seat of power could be opening up for the first time in decades. Scrambling for this potentially open seat started late last year and in some of the candidates zest and “LOOK AT ME!” approach to gaining the attention of the electorate, they have gone too far. Some of them have engaged in outright lying about an important agency that is in place to protect the public health and the environment in what seem to be attempts to rapidly build some kind of civic reputation for themselves.

The geographic area of the Board of Supervisors seat is the Ross Valley which is made up of multiple cities and towns and a lot of unincorporated land. The only other governmental organization that has approximately the same geographic boundaries is the Ross Valley Sanitary District, the local sewer agency. So it appears that last August when the unfortunate news about the Board of Supervisors incumbent circulated and aspiring politicians looked around and thought about how they could raise the public’s awareness of themselves in the same area, they fell like wolves on the Ross Valley Sanitary District (RVSD) as their attack target.

What’s interesting is that these attackers did not come to any RVSD meetings with any questions or concerns themselves which is the normal method that citizens use and is the reason why public meetings exist. (The RVSD  Board of Directors meets at least monthly. For years the public has ignored these meetings with only about zero to perhaps 3 members of the public attending.) Instead they  chose to make accusations in the media. This tends to make one question what their real agendas are and whether or not their aim is to try and understand the functioning of a low-profile infrastructure agency or gain media attention for themselves.

Unfortunately for our community, these purported “leaders” did not know very much about the sewer business, so they proceeded to make up and misinterpret things at a rapid rate. And even worse, they have been taking advantage of the fact that the public in general knows or understands very little about what a sewer agency does or that they even exist or that they are separate from fresh water or storm water systems.

Most citizens have a feel for how the police operate, or how the fire department serves the public and even how the building or planning functions of a city work. And over the course of their lives they have some contact with these various services or at least see police cars and fire trucks driving around. These public services all have a visible presence in our worlds. However, sewer pipes are buried and are therefore out of sight – out of mind. One can see that the police car that patrols our neighborhood is a Crown Victoria but how many of us know the diameter of the sewer main pipe that runs down the middle of our street? Or even where the pipe leads? Or what a sewer agency employee does during the course of a day?

These seemingly ambitious politicians are taking advantage of the public’s lack of knowledge and using it for their own personal goals by spouting off nonsense and inflammatory statements to alarm the citizenry for their own hopeful political gains. And citizens who are unfamiliar with how a sewer collection system operates are unfortunately ripe to believe some of the negative assertions.

This is politics at its very ugliest and is a classic reason why people in general hate politicians.

Pipes & Politics

I’ve decided to take up my mouse to blog. I’m a local activist and elected official dedicated to protecting the environment and public health through sewer system and wastewater issues awareness and education. Wow, I’m sure that sounds deadly dull or of no interest to the average person as it certainly did to me some years ago. It all started when I was innocently attending a funeral of a long time friend when another long time friend I hadn’t seen in a while started to bend my ear about the shenanigans of our local sewer board.

Now I know I never really thought about what happened to ‘things’ once I had flushed the toilet, but a whole lot of other people do have to think about it and work to take care of it for us citizens. Well it turned out that the good old boy board that was running the sewer agency was unfortunately more interested in attending junkets and partying at public expense than repairing the sewer pipes in our 110-year old system.

Then, like out of an old Jimmy Stewart – Hollywood scripted plot, a group of reformists took over the board at the next election and ousted most of the old guard. A year later, I was then appointed to fill a vacancy on the board when another of the old guard resigned. This is where in the movies it would be fade to black, inspirational music would swell and everyone could exit the theater enjoying a vicarious moral victory feeling all warm and cozy inside.

Of course, as you might have guessed by now, the old timers did not like losing and have been waging battle ever since then to regain what they lost – POWER and CONTROL – two of the scariest words out there.

I’m going to try, through this blog, to hopefully raise awareness about the importance of all those pipes that are buried in our streets and the fact that they provide a vital level of public health for us that is not available in most of the world.  And maybe, just like me, there is a chance you will recognize the critical nature of this infrastructure and want to learn just how valuable it is for the environment and the continued health of all of us – something that we should not take for granted.