Los Osos Affordability Report: Sewer Costs to Lower-Income Residents Will Be ‘Unbearable’

There is no escaping it. No topic in the far-flung Los Osos Wastewater Project universe remains on more residents’ minds than affordability. Yet the word and what it stands for – thousands of people forced to leave Los Osos because of the looming $250 a month sewer bills -- has all but disappeared from the public dialogue, as if the issue never existed in the first place.

When the County officially eliminated any alternative collection system – in favor of expensive gravity collection – on April 7, 2009, they also eliminated any hope for affordability, because an alternative system would have cost at least half as the County’s proposed $165 million gravity project. The County has also admitted that their project will be unaffordable for many residents of Los Osos.

To document the ongoing ground-level reality of this overriding issue in Los Osos, Sherry Fuller and Mimi Whitney last year co-authored a “white paper” on the potential sewer project costs to lower income residents of Los Osos. Their “Affordability Report” of January 2009 used census data from the year 2000 that had been projected to the year 2008 by a leading computer modeling firm (ESRI) that is widely used by both government and industry.

“With the new Census being prepared now, we should see updated figures next year that will most likely be even worse that what I reported last year,” co-author Mimi Whitney recently told The Rock. “Consider the effects of our current recession on Los Osos residents: unemployment, bankruptcy, the housing market...

“We will do an updated ‘white paper’ after we have the new census data to work with. Stay tuned for the really bad news.”

Though widely circulated and read by the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors, both the Tribune and New Times refused to print any part of the report. “The Tribune would not even return my phone calls,” Whitney said.

“The Board of Supervisors does not want to discuss the impact of cost on the lower income people living in Los Osos. They barely acknowledge there will be an issue.”

At a recent Board hearing where financial assistance to community projects and organizations were itemized, Whitney said, “County staff included Los Osos on a long list of recipients that needed funding.  However, we were not approved for funding assistance. The Board has alluded to federal funding that would ‘provide some grant monies’ to assist qualified homeowners in Los Osos with sewer-related costs.”

Los Osos still might net something, but at this time there are no grant commitments in hand or “in the mail.” The County has applied for $80 million in USDA stimulus dollars, but $64 million of that is in the form of a loan. With a starting sewer bill of $250 per home per month, trending to $300 per home eventually, it is obvious that Los Osos residents will need more financial assistance to pay their sewer bills than will be available to them. The result: The amount of assistance will only forestall the inevitable, especially for the disabled and seniors who will have to pay one-third of their income to the sewer.

“An Environmental Impact Report was required, but no ‘environmental justice’ or ‘socio-economic’ impact report,” said Whitney. “It was not required, according to the law, so it was not considered although it could have been. The Board felt is was more appropriate to put off the bad news until after the project is built and funded.”

The Rock is publishing the “Affordability Report” as a reminder to Los Osos residents and government officials of the socio-economic and environmental-justice disaster that the County’s proposed project will bring to Los Osos.

Take a few minutes to read the attached report. Summarizes Whitney: “If you make less than $45,000 annually the extra monthly sewer fees will be hard to pay. If you are in the very low income bracket, or make under $35,400 per year, pack your bags!” (2009 LOS OSOS AFFORDABILITY REPORT)

Note: This month Golden State Water, the largest water purveyor in Los Osos, announced it will seek a 48% hike in water rates in 2011, when sewer bills will also hit homes, raising the financial misery index for Los Osos homeowners and residents in the “Prohibition Zone” selected to pay the bill for the sewer – at the same time that water bills double.

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