Cayucos backs out of sewage plant deal with Morro Bay

Morro Bay is better off without the CSD – WAY better off. The CSD has caused a huge waste of Morro Bay taxpayer money and significantly delayed the project. For example, the CSD’s insistence on looking into the ridiculously expensive and impractical CMC option delayed the project for months and cost Morro Bay taxpayers $87,000. The CSD refused to pay any of that.

This latest announcement appears to be just one more game the CSD is playing to try to get its way. They want to control the project, but they don’t want to pay their share – which has been typical throughout the whole history of the shared WWTP.

Morro Bay offered to let them pay 30% of the new plant cost, while Morro Bay would cover the remaining 70%. However, although they would have paid just 30% of the cost, Cayucos wanted 50% of the control – and they complain about fairness? ridiculous! Just last year (see the CSD’s May 15, 2014 minutes) their own district manager said that being a customer would be the easiest thing, and they could then invest the money saved in the community. Now they pretend to be offended when Morro Bay wants them to be a customer.

Has the CSD been a good partner, or even a good neighbor so far? No. Aside from not wanting to pay their share, they have not shown a lot of concern for the health and safety of Morro Bay residents. For about a decade, toxic hydrogen sulfide gas from their sewer trunk line down Main Street was escaping from manholes and polluting the air in Morro Bay. People complained again and again over the years but it was only this year that Cayucos finally fixed the problem – under duress, I suspect.

Recently, the CSD made a ridiculous attempt to portray themselves as more clever than Morro Bay because it took them a mere $20,000 and a few months to do their sewer plant study, while Morro Bay took two years and over $400,000. What the CSD failed to mention was that their own consultant told them that their little “study” – actually a “technical memorandum” did not include major, necessary work.

Their consultant said, “Typically, there are a series of work steps taken prior to developing conceptual alternatives that WSC will not be addressing in this work, ie meeting with regulatory agencies to determine the regulatory constraints in which the concepts will be developed. These typical steps can be time consuming to develop but would lead to a superior work product.”

Their consultant further told the CSD, “is focusing this scope of work on development of alternatives to provide the District with some “book end” alternatives and cost information that the District can use to inform its future decision making process. The preliminary conceptual alternatives will be suitable to that end, but could likely have significant flaws that further analysis and evaluation might uncover. The District will need to refine and develop these preliminary conceptual alternatives through future study and effort.”

Obviously, the CSD did not do the kind of work necessary to ensure a good work product, but yet they tried to portray their work as superior because their so-called study was done with less money and in less time – again, ridiculous.

Is Morro Bay really rid of those characters for good? I wish that were the case, but this looks more like a melodramatic attempt to get out of paying for work done so far – and to coerce Morro Bay taxpayers into continuing to allow Cayucos have half the project control but pay WAY less than half the costs. Their resolution, read at the last JPA meeting says “Cayucos hereby declares its intention to suspend consideration of participation in the Morro Bay WRF Project…” Note the word, “suspend.” They did not say, “terminate”.