Among the current insanity, it seems that it can, and did, occur. The federal bureaucracy, once protective, became under Whitman little more than a rubber-stamp, it seemed, for industrial polluters, promoters, and postponers.

Now Whitman has resigned. Will the replacement be any better? We can only hope that the current USA government finally has some appreciation for past laws and agreements, and honors these laws in the observance as well as in verbiage.

"WASHINGTON - Christie Whitman...resigned Wednesday as head of the Environmental Protection Agency...to spend time with family. "...it is time to return to my home and husband..." she wrote...Whitman had a history of clashing with the White House, starting with the president's abrupt decision to withdraw from...Kyoto..."

Clashing, perhaps, but not very effectively. The current administration has rolled back, unilaterally abrogated, and/or denounced protections laboriously built up over the last century. The cost will be tallied in decades to come, if anyone is around to notice.

Don't forget to mark MAY 27 on your calendar. The OCRegister, and Orange County Sanitation District, are planning to try to weasel out of the Clean Water Act's 1972 standards -- which were only intended to be a start, not an end goal.

Please attend, and support Clean Ocean!

Also write a letter to the evil OCRegister, letting them know that there is no retreat here from the decision to treat sewage at least to the same standards as Lost Angeles. The Pew Oceans Report, as well as indpendent studies from all over, are showing increasing evidence that the toxics, poisons, sewage, treated wastewater, plastics and other offal dumped into the Ocean are, in fact, killing it.

It is a different Ocean even from the memory of those now living; but as the Surfrider "shifting baselines" campaign points out, the clarity and beauty of the Ocean increasingly fades as we get used to less and less. The memory of clear water, the
memory of large fish swarming off piers, the memory of swarms of birds, is gone, and we settle for the Whitman view of "wetlands clearing house" instead of protection of what little is left.

/Doug

Orange County Register
letters@OCRegister.com
PO Box 11626
Santa Ana, CA 92711
FAX=(714) 796-3657
VIA EMAIL TO: letters@ocregister.com

RE: AUDIT Orange County Sanitation District

Dear Editor:

Mr. Blake Anderson, in charge of Orange County Sanitation District, unfortunately now seems to be blaming huge requested sewage increases on the move to full secondary standards.

Secondary treatment standards are the minimum in place everywhere else our size. Bringing the plant up to that level is fixing a bad case of deferred maintenance.

The question is why Mr. Anderson has postponed the move until now, when it should have been planned-for decades ago -- as would seem prudent, considering our immense growth.

According to Mr. Anderson's own documentation, 80% of the proposed increase would have to be spent in any case on other deferred maintenance on other parts of the plant. To blame the move to secondary on past managment failures is perfidious in the extreme.

Rather than accept these bloated figures from Mr. Blake Anderson, recommendations of professionals should be followed, and an audit and accounting of the entire operation must be immediately ordered.

Management's incompetence and dalliance should not be confused with the requirement to reduce the impact of our debris on the Ocean.

Sincerely,

Name_________________

Address___________________

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