Close to Home: Shaky science, high cost in river plan

The Press Democrat missed a very important point in its June 16 editorial (“It's time to adopt a Russian River plan”). It is time, definitely, for a Russian River plan; unfortunately, the one being put forward by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board staff isn't that plan.

There is one financial and one technical point that the public needs to understand. First, this plan would cost many people on the lower Russian River their homes. The cost of a septic system is phenomenal. There are a great many homeowners who simply cannot afford $25,000 to $50,000 to install a new septic system. They will sell and move away. Our communities are already seeing this flight. The plan isn't yet adopted, and already it is severely harming our communities.

Second, the only indicator pathogen that the state allows to be used to determine if a stream is impaired is E. coli. By the water board's own testing, there is no E. coli in the main stem of the Russian River.

Let that sink in for a moment. The water board staff is insisting that our fellow citizens in the mostly disadvantaged communities on the lower Russian River spend as much as $30 million in aggregate to resolve a problem that doesn't exist. How do they justify this draconian program? By cooking the books.

Along one stretch of the river, the justification is that there is E. coli in one of the tributaries, Dutch Bill Creek. But to place as many homes as possible under this harsh and unaffordable regulatory regime, the staff creates an artificial “watershed” that extends up to a dozen miles upstream of Dutch Bill Creek. The idea that residents of Forestville will have to spend ungodly amounts of money to remedy pollution in a creek in Monte Rio is more than regulatory overreach - it's regulatory hallucination.

More cooking of the books: Farther upstream, near Fitch Mountain, the staff could not find any E. coli in the river or its tributaries. So they used another pathogen, one that is expressly forbidden to be used for such purpose by the water board itself, combined with a history of beach closures. Such closures usually occur on holiday weekends. The idea that forcing homeowners 600 feet up Fitch Mountain to spend a fortune on new septic systems will have any effect on people pooping in the bushes on the beach on the Fourth of July is simply madness.

A group of citizens from several communities along the river has been involved in the formulation of the current staff plan. They have not only devoted thousands of hours of their own time but have offered dozens of thoughtful, well considered and scientifically competent suggestions to the staff. I understand that since the publication of the latest draft plan they are feeling, in the words of two members of the group, “utterly defeated.” Staff has simply ignored the most important ideas brought forward by this group and substituted their own deeply flawed concepts instead.

So the work of the staff, as woefully misdirected as it is, is nearing completion. Now it's up to the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. The board members have two choices: They can leave a legacy of a clean and improving Russian River, or they can be remembered as careless regulators who forced people out of their homes and ruined communities.

I hope each of them looks in the mirror and decides who they want to be.

And I hope the Editorial Board of The Press Democrat takes a more careful look at this plan.

Phil Grosse is vice president of the Hacienda Improvement Association in Forestville. He lives in Petaluma.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com