Page 28 - Sonoma County Gazette April 2017

First, an update on Occidental Wastewater: For more than 20 years, the Occidental County Sanitation District has been looking for a solution to its wastewater problem. Based on comments received from neighbors and others about the District’s most recent proposal, it will take a few
more months to address that challenge.
Over the years, the District has studied alternatives that range from working
with Camp Meeker on a small regional system to upgrading its plant and piping the water to farmers for irrigation. None of the approximately 15 options considered have been feasible – due to either costs, environmental concerns or community opposition. But time is running short: The District is under orders by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board to stop the current practice of discharging recycled water into a pond at the headwaters of Dutch Bill Creek by January 2018.
With the clock ticking, the District determined that trucking Occidental’s wastewater to another sanitation district is the most cost e ective solution.
A recent environmental document analyzed trucking the wastewater to the Russian River County Sanitation District’s main lift station on Riverside Drive, with a back-up option of trucking to the Airport-Larkfield-Wikiup plant. At a public hearing held in Monte Rio in February, the Riverside Drive neighbors made clear their opposition to the project, with more than 20 people speaking out.
I am happy to announce that the Sonoma County Water Agency sta (working on behalf of the District), is pursuing other options and will be releasing a new environmental document in the summer. I look forward to working with the Occidental community on a solution that is acceptable to them – and to their neighbors!
Next, an update on homelessness in the lower River: Two months into my first stint as an elected o cial, I’ve faced down four oods, a half- dozen major road failures, dozens of mudslides, thousands of evacuation advisories, Occidental’s wastewater, and a creek overtaking Green Valley Road – all in District 5. Now I find myself embroiled in an emotional controversy surrounding a contentious land use issue smack dab in the middle of a town that helped me win the election.
The town I’m referring to is Guerneville, where rural homelessness has been a thorn in the side of the community for decades. Over the past two weeks, a solution proposed by community members and currently under consideration by the County has brought that thorn into sharp relief. Suddenly, the topic of homelessness is endemic, surfacing everywhere in the lower River, from co ee house chatter to the marquis of the Rio Theater.
The proposal which will be considered by the community and ultimately the Board of Supervisors involves creating shelter, a service center, and supportive housing on a ten-acre rural horse property located less than half a mile from Guerneville Elementary School. The property is one of the few in Guerneville that could support a small, village-like development to provide housing for
the homeless – and also one of the few properties that is not either in the ood plain, or filled with buildings falling apart from decades of neglect. Real estate opportunities in the River are few and far between. The proposed property is, in fact, beautiful: a barn and ranch-style home that backs up to a redwood-filled canyon.
28 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 4/17
On a recent Friday morning, an orange, spray-painted sign was splashed across the property’s fence. “LYNDA LISTEN,” it read, addressed, in all caps, to me. “NOT IN OUR TOWN.”
The phrase “Not In Our Town” rubbed me the wrong way. After all, “Not In Our Town” is what white Southerners told Black people after the Civil War, and continued to tell them through the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. “Not In Our Town” is what straight people told gay people during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. “Not In Our Town” is what happened in Billings, Montana, in the early 1990s, when someone lobbed a cinderblock into the bedroom window of a young Jewish boy, kickstarting a spiraling series of hate crimes.
OUR COUNTY cont’d on page 29