above: marco gonzales of surfrider san diego, selling out the ocean
~The Surfrider San Diego Sewage Controversy!~
Dateline: Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
Correspondent Joey Racano reporting for EarthSourceMedia
Representing: Mother Ocean
At issue: The world’s most trusted ocean-protection organization, Surfrider Foundation, has lost it’s San Diego arm to a wild band of sewage defenders, led by Surfrider San Diego, Sierra Club San Diego, Coast Law Group, and San Diego CoastKeeper.
At odds with nearly every other environmental activist and organization in the USA and the State of California, these dirty-water mavericks have made a dirty deal with mayor Sewage himself, Jerry Sanders of San Diego.
slideshow:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v678/spiritpen/?action=view¤t=a1710cd0.pbw
Background: San Diego is the last and final holdout in the clean water State of California that still operates under a ‘waiver’, letting them dump over 200 million gallons per day of filthy human fecal debris into the ocean at Point Loma, directly into Cabrillo National Monument.
Why?: Mayor Sewage (Jerry Sanders) has signed an evil pact with the ‘Dirty Three’; Marco Gonzales (Surfrider San Diego), Bruce Reznik (CoastKeeper), and Ed Kimura (Water Conservation Chair, San Diego Sierra Club) allowing the waiver to continue for at least 5 more years!
The Math: At 200 Million Gallons per day, 5 years of dumping sewage will pollute San Diego’s ocean waves with 164 Billion Gallons of additional sewage eminating from 450 square miles of San Diego’s industrial and residential community, and all having recieved less than the full secondary standard. Making this gross out even more alarming is the fact that secondary treatment was only the minimum requirement of the Federal Clean Water Act 35 years ago!
Although the ‘dirty three’ were captured by the Ocean Outfall Group on video speaking in favor of the waiver (before the EPA, Regional Waterboard and State WaterBoard), they then went on TV before the people of San Diego and said they ‘opposed’ the waiver- a complete lie, intended to mislead the public.
You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23LwQRN_fqg
The waiver decision cannot be complete though, until it goes before the California Coastal Commission and the State Water Resource Control Board, so there will still be an opportunity for public input. Tell them, “Hey! Do us a favor- get rid of the waiver!”
The famous Surfrider San Diego Sewage- Poem:
I know you, surfer boy and girl- a lover and a giver
but Surfrider San Diego just sold you down the river
Their leadership seems really hip-, a ‘bro-bra’ he may be
but he just made a deal to have you surfing in debris
debris of the fecal kind, as you suit up to unwind
crapola shinola he’s got you on a pole-a
he spoke in favor of a waiver from someones ass-a-hola
200 million gallons they’re dumping every day
Pumping to the bay
Cabrillo National monument’s
a toilet bowl they say!
into Point Loma, see that brownish foam-a?
If you swallow at the beach you’ll get a carcinoma
Surfrider San Diego likes the waiver, they’re doing someone a favor but it sure aint you if clean blue waves is something that you savor
Its called a 301h like preparation H
They dump enough every day to fill charger stadium to its gates
three times over! Aint that a four leaf clover? Pathogens are not your friends
why’s surfrider rolling over?
They signed a bad agreement with evil mayor sewage
instead of doing secondary he;s representing spewage!
So drive your winnabego down to San Diego
attend their meeting and give this greeting
whats the link between that stink
and Surfrider San Diego?
STOP THE WAIVER!!!! Here’s how:
Some videos of the Jan. 21 sewage waiver meeting in San Diego:
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=BboqECGlF04 (overview of the sewage issue)
For more, here’s Ocean Outfaller Larry Porter… “Larry?”:
PART TWO- A letter from Larry Porter to EPA:
Dear Friends:
This is what I sent to the EPA and Regional Board
Deadling is 5PM today? 28th
Use as much of mine as you wish.
Waivers are evil
All the best
Larry Porter
“Captain Sewage”
Forwarded Message: San Diego Waiver - Deny
San Diego Waiver - Deny
Wednesday, January 28, 2009 10:26 AM
From:
Dubbietub@aol.com
To:
stuber.robyn@epa.gov, mvaldovinos@waterboards.ca.gov
FROM : Larry Porter
1501 Westcliff DR #201
Newport Beach , CA 92660
Tel : 949 722 9166
Email : Dubbietub@aol.comU.S. Environmental Protection Agency , Region IX
NPDES Permits Office (WTR-5)
75 Hawthorne Street
San Francisco , CA 94105
Attn: Robyn Stuber
415-972-3524
stuber.robyn@epa.govSan Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board
9174 Sky Park Court , Suite 100
San Diego , CA
Attn: Melissa Valdovinos
858-467-2724
mvaldovinos@waterboards.ca.govRe : San Diego Waiver - Oppose / DenyDear Ms. Stuber and Valdovinos,I’m writing to urge you to DENY San Diego’s again application for a 301 H Waiver. Please. Please.The discharge of this waste is an insult to our environment. It must compromise the future. It must cause harm. We are not children. Its is the behavior of barbarians. There is no future in using the ocean as a dump. Civilized people render their waste benign , they get a beneficial use from it , they realize there are generations to come that need a clean , healthy environment , a clean healthy place to live and play.And - And — San Diego is the last waiver ! ! ! Haven’t we learned anything? Waivers are just wrong.
With a waiver one can discharge twice the amount of waste , stuff , goo , nasties - that one can utilizing secondary treatment ! ! And the ocean won’t revolt? Who is kidding who?
“The Trade” — At the EPA hearing a deal was made that traded the “waiver” waste for : A two million dollar study for more reclaimed water use - the results of which can be ignored? Really ! ! ! The enemy is not overseas . How can people who want a good future , who don’t want to cringe when they look in the mirror , condone such a trade? The waste wins. No? Why? To save some money? At the expense of a decent future? Is San Diego a spoiled brat that has to be coddled? The waiver is wrong. The waiver is bad. We all know it.
Orange County , Goleta , Morro Bay , and just recently Honolulu bit the bullet. So San Diego can thumb it nose at the civilized world? For “The Trade”? Is something wrong with this picture? Decidedly so , yes !
Who do the San Diegans thinks they are? Their waste can do no harm and be strewn about willy nilly? What a fairy tale !
Sincerely,
Larry Porter
Part Three: ’Just the Facts’ by Ocean Outfall Group Director Doug Korthof…
San Diego Surfrider, Sierra Club and Coastkeeper have approved the San Diego Sewage Waiver.
This allows sewage to be dumped into the Ocean meeting less than the secondary treatment standard, which itself is not that clean. You would become very sick if you drank sewage treated only to the secondary level: there are viable virus, rampant worms, and live bacteria of all sort, a very lively collection of small critters, vermin and beasties.
Yet San Diego is going to continue to apply for the Waiver that allows it to dump sewage that doesn’t even meet secondary standards, little more than a settling operation and then flushing it out to sea.
Now there’s a lot of things they are not telling the people who rely on the Health Dept., who swim or surf. More than you ever wanted to know.
One problem with sewage is a disease called “toxoplasmosis”, informally called “brain-worms” due to the main organ it affects.
The brain-worms are one-celled protozoans which thrive in the intestinal tract of cats and are found, in their most infectious form, in cat feces. They persist in the environment for up to one year in their most virulent form.
More than one out of five Citizens of the USA are infected with Brain-worms.
The brain-worm normal life-cycle is to be ingested by a mouse, migrate through the intestinal wall and spread, replicating wildly. When the mouse’s immune system detects the infection, the brain-worms migrate to the mouse’s brain, muscles and organ tissue and encyst inside sturdy membranes where they can hibernate throughout the life of the mouse.
During this encysted state, the brain-worms affect the mouse’s fear of cat urine, making the mouse more likely to be eaten by a cat and thus continuing the spread of the brain-worms to new mammals.
There are three stages to the life of brain-worms:
OOCYST, eggs which are only produced by cats and are infectious about 24 hours after extretion but can live for up to a year in the soil, can’t be killed by sewage systems or disinfection;
TACHYZOITES, which are the wildly reproducing brain-worms before the immune system cranks up;
BRADYZOITES, which are the encysted form, can live for decades inside the host body.
With the advent of modern sewage treatment systems, large volumes of poorly-treated wastewater are discharged to the near-shore Ocean, usually less than a few miles offshore. Especially where there is no secondary (biological) treatment, the sewage merely goes through a chemically-assisted settling process with the tincture flushed out to sea.
Many chemicals and pollutants move directly through the sewage plant without change, and “hitch-hike” through the outfall to land in the Ocean. Where the discharged sewage ends up is officially a mystery; officials pretend not to know, but to pay for extensive “testing”.
The only requirement is to test for live fecal bacteria concentrations; there is no test for “hitch-hiking” chemicals, virus, protozoans and other substances.
The idea that these discharges don’t come back to the beach is a quaint belief best left to the gullible; those who know the Ocean realize that if an organic dye were added to the discharges, the beaches would be eternally purple. Thus we might assume that dead fecal bacteria, and the other, accidental riders on the sewage stream, are also found throughout the water around outfalls.
One of the hitch-hikers is the OOCYST or active, infectious egg form of the brain-worms, which enter the sewage system during treatment of dry-season runoff, spills, other inflows, or, especially, from disposal of cat litter in the toilet.
These brain-worm eggs are desperately pitched into an unknown environment; they were never designed to be cast into seawater. But they are hardy; they are designed to encapsulate in a form that remains active in the soil or wind-blown dust for up to a year. That same protection also serves them in the Ocean.
The brain-worm eggs can last up to a year in the sea, but they desperately crave a mammal to infest.
Sea Otters eat lots of shellfish and other sea creatures which filter sea water; the brain-worm eggs accumulate in the Sea Otters in massive quantities. Even after they are “immunized”, that is, their immune system is ready to kill the worms, some worms get to cells and burst them.
Mammalian swimmers and surfers who ingest the seawater are also potential targets for the brain-worm eggs.
When the brain-worm eggs are ingested, they come alive in the stomach of the Sea Otter or surfer, boring easily through the intestinal wall and migrating through the body.
The eggs invade individual cells, transmogrifying to the TACHYZOITE form, where they multiply rapidly in the cell, bursting it and spewing brain-worm larvae out to infest other cells.
The mammalian immune system, reacting to the invading worms, attacks them; they then go into “hiding”, migrating to the brain and other organs and building protective walls in the BRADYZOITE form. As such, if you eat the uncooked flesh of an infected mammal, you can become infected.
But even if immunized, new brain-worms can damage the host cells before the immune system can get to them; this cumulative damage can itself be fatal.
About 22% of the USA population is walking around with brain-worms encysted in their muscles and/or brains, likely proving that yes, the sewage does come back to shore, infesting Sea Otters as well as swimmers and surfers.
EFFECTS OF BRAIN-WORM INFESTATION
1. Once your immune system is aware of the brain-worms, new infestations are destroyed or, possibly, forced to encyst prematurely, so the host is said to be “immune” but may accumulate new injuries. Sea Otters, who ingest massive amounts of eggs, do die from new infestations. Once a cell is burst with brain-worm larvae, it is not replaced, creating a tiny “hole” in organs or flesh.
2. Pregnant women can pass the infestation to their foetus, which can result in death to the foetus; also, immuno-deficient individuals can fail to stop the infestations, and perish.
3. The eggs are not infectious for 24 hours after the cat expels the feces, but remain a danger for up to a year in soil. The feces can disintegrate, and the eggs can be ingested in wind-borne dust or via hand-mouth contact.
4. Some studies are showing that infected humans exhibit behavioural changes, perhaps analogous to infected mice, and other potential effects.
Surfer Magazine ran a piece on the brain-worm issue, but the “expert” claimed that it was no big deal, that the sewage probably doesn’t come back to shore, and that you could become “immune” to brian worms, all questionable. Brain worms are real, and infest a significant portion of the population; anyone swimming in sewage that contains cat feces is at risk.
San Diego, and other places that generate massive sewage outflows, may be doing more harm than good by spreading our debris, containing items such as brain-worms, out into the sea. In this sense, sewage outfalls are not eliminating the problem of sewage, but spreading the infection more widely and dangerously.
Whether or not the sewage waiver is granted by Obama’s EPA, San Diego should clean up its act; and the Sierra Club, Surfrider and Coastkeeper should not support dumping poorly treated sewage into the Ocean.
/Doug Korthof
562-430-2495
Joey Racano
805 540-8970
our founder:
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