Community Commentary -- Joey Racano

I’m interested in the letter by Bob Polkow, titled “No restoration

until contamination solved,” which appeared in the Nov. 22 edition of The

Independent.

I think that I’ve been used to the rantings on what he had to say

about the “Henny Penny” syndrome group of activists called the Ocean

Outfall Group in an attempt to spread our hysteria that the Orange County

Sanitation District is at fault for our contamination problems.

But it’s not that the sanitation district is responsible. What’s

responsible is the one-quarter of a billion gallons a day of poorly

treated sewage sludge that the district is dumping four miles off

Brookhurst Street. The sanitation district is really just a symptom.

They’ve got this waiver and unbelievably, out of 16,000 sanitation

districts in the United States, 15,964 comply with the federal Clean

Water Act without the waiver.

Thirty-six have the waiver, and of those 36, the Orange County

Sanitation District is the largest. You have Point Loma that has

international complications, agricultural Goleta, deep sea environments

like Puerto Rico and Hawaii. The rest are Alaskan fishing villages.

Polkow doesn’t realize that we’ve been doing our homework. Not just

shooting off our mouths. There’s more going on daily than a couple of

“Henny Penny” people spreading hysteria. The protests at Ellis Avenue and

the San Diego Freeway are very effective. The public is very

knowledgeable now.

* JOEY RACANO is a Huntington Beach resident and activist who ran

unsuccessfully for City Council last November.