City is standing still by standing water

Having just agreed with my gardener to pay off $100 on his citation

for using his hose to wash down the gutter in front of my house after

his weekly maintenance on July 30 I have the following comments to

make, the first of which is to advise the city of Newport Beach to

add a directive to its pamphlet “How To Protect Our Bay and Ocean.”

City officials need to advise homeowners to pass the information on

to all contractors coming about their premises and to publish the

information in Spanish and to set forth the effective date of the

code.

In addition, I would suggest listing the cities covered by the

regulations or, if it is countywide, say so.

The use of cameras to “find cracks and blockage in sewer lines” is

inventive and shows the use of up-to-date technology. This is a

“plus”; but I am concerned about the “Big Brother” aspect of the use

of a camera. The inspector from the city of Newport Beach came by my

house at 9:32 a.m. when my gardener was finishing up and apparently

parked and watched him while he hosed off my driveway, but when he

hosed down the gutter he took a photograph of the event and then

cited the gardener and, as I went out to talk with the gardener about

the incident the inspector gave me, as the owner of the property, a

wave and drove off. Would that he had just talked to me so that I

could have taken responsibility for the incident and not had it

passed over to a hard working man who was apparently not made aware

of the change in the code.

The gutter in front of my house has a depression that holds water

until it stagnates unless there is a southern flow to the storm

drain. The most recent flow, which happened when I was out of town,

brought along a white substance but I do not know from whence it came

or, for that matter, if the “exporter” was cited.

I have asked the city to correct the gutter problem but to no

avail. Flushing out this area would hopefully have helped to restrict

the outbreak of West Nile Virus, as reported by the city based on a

discovery on July 16. It was some 14 days before the date of the

infraction by my gardener when a dead crow was found at Mariners and

Dover infected with the virus! Is it possible that his having to

leave the standing water in the gutter contributed to the West Nile

problem? Let’s hope not. Why was this information not made available

before July 30 when my gardener was cited?

Let all the people in Orange County address the problem of water

quality but let us not imperil the citizens on a one-by-one basis of

“ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Get the word out first, then

collect on the citations!

DAVID A. W. YOUNG

Newport Beach