Anthony Koslow, Eric Miller and John McGowan — marine biologists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla — were responding to comments made at a Dec. 1 panel about ocean desalination in Ventura County by Tom Luster, the agency’s lead staffer on the desalination issue.

Luster actually had cited Koslow, Miller and McGowan’s research in arguing against open intakes given a 75 percent reduction in plankton off Southern California since the early 1970s. Citing the Scripps research Luster said it would be “hard to maintain and enhance marine life like the Coastal Act requires in a situation like this and so open intakes have a hurdle to overcome.”

In a sternly worded Dec. 29 rebuttal letter, Koslow, Miller and McGowan said Luster’s comment reflected “an inaccurate understanding of our research,” adding that their paper showed “many of the taxa are predominantly distributed offshore but share the same trend as more coastal taxa.” 

“It is therefore not reasonable to attribute this decline to the impact of coastal development or nearshore power-plant intakes,” the scientists wrote. “We ask that you refrain from repeating your Ventura forum comments, or anything similar, as it presents an almost exactly opposite conclusion to that obtained by our research.”

The Scripps researchers’ conclusion was that large-scale ocean forcing, not local coastal processes, are behind changes off the Southern California coast since the 1970s. They added that they hoped their science could “inform regulatory decisions wherever applicable, but the science needs to be interpreted correctly.”

In an emailed response, Luster said his point was that the decline in plankton populations had made it difficult for the new proposed project, which he said “would represent an additional adverse effect to meet the Coastal Act’s requirement to maintain and enhance marine life productivity.” But Miller — one of the Scripps researchers — reiterated that their study, which found that environmental forcing had reached tipping points in 1976 and 1989, “did not detect an influence of power plant cooling water intakes on nearshore fish populations.”

“It’s a mystery to me how my quote was misinterpreted,” Luster said, in an interview.

The question at issue is no mere academic matter. The future of the Huntington Beach desalination plant isn’t just about one proposed facility, but about the statewide future of a technology that turns saltwater into drinking water. That’s a particularly important question as the state begins to emerge from a long-running drought. Decisions by the commission and other state agencies on the Huntington Beach plant will help decide whether developers pursue a number potential plants up and down California’s coastline.

A desalination plant went online last year in the north San Diego County city of Carlsbad, but the makeup of the Coastal Commission and state regulations have changed since the approval process for that facility. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the state water board “directed desalination plants to install wells — offshore or on the beach — or another type of subsurface intake that the state says would naturally filter out marine organisms.” However, the plant’s supporters point out that state laws require subsurface intake technologies to be technically, economically, socially and environmentally feasible.

According to Poseidon Vice President Scott Maloni, the harm to plankton is minimal.

“There are estimated to be 115 billion larva in the source water of the desal plant,” he said. “Our estimated entrainment is 0.02 percent. Put another way, for every 10,000 fish eggs the desal plant is anticipated to entrain two. That means that 9,998 fish eggs are not at risk. This entire debate is over the potential loss of two out of 10,000 fish eggs in the desal plant’s source water, 99 percent of which die of natural mortality.”

The latest fracas over the Huntington Beach desalination plant bolsters Coastal Commission critics who believe the commission’s problems with the plan stem more from its hostility to growth than any real concerns about the fate of the food chain’s lowliest members.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Legislature blocks bill punishing Fentanyl kingpins…

Good morning. TGIF. The Legislature headed home for the weekend after secretive, yet productive, Appropriations hearings, where the two committees decided the fate of hundreds of bills.

One bill in particular would have imposed mandatory sentences on large-scale dealers of Fentanyl, a powerful opioid responsible for a rash of deaths and overdoses over the last few years.

Calwatchdog has more.

In other news: 

• “A stalled bill to prohibit behind-the-scenes communications at the California Coastal Commission survived in the Legislature Thursday, but lawmakers weakened it with amendments that would allow the controversial practice to continue for developers and elected officials,” writes the Los Angeles Times.
• “Among the explosive findings included in a new audit of the state gang database, CalGang. Auditors say they found 42 individuals in CalGang who were supposedly younger than one year of age at the time of entry — 28 of whom were entered for ‘admitting to being gang members.’ The audit confirms many of the fears that Weber and others have long expressed about the CalGang system: that it cannot ensure individuals’ rights to privacy, that people can be entered in the database without proper substantiation and that people are kept in the database long after their names should have been purged,” reports the Voice of San Diego. 
• “A Santa Monica consumer group is criticizing Gov. Jerry Brown for his ties to utilities and other companies reliant on fossil fuels, linking almost $10 million in contributions from 26 oil, gas and power companies to decisions by Brown administration officials that directly benefited the donors,” reports The San Diego Union-Tribune.
• “A bill to put an excise tax on medical marijuana in California was killed Thursday by a Senate panel after advocates for cannabis users said it would put a financial burden on patients,” writes the Los Angeles Times. 

Assembly:

• Gone ’til Monday. 

Senate:

• Gone ’til Monday.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @saraflocks

Roger Hernandez retaliating against the Women’s Caucus?

Good morning. Happy Friday eve.

A bill to expand parental leave was killed in committee Wednesday, leaving the Twitterati to point to an appearance of retaliation by the chairman, Assemblyman Roger Hernández. 

The perceived retaliation came two months after the West Covina Democrat was asked to step down by the bill’s sponsor amid domestic violence allegations (that he’s denied) surfaced and after being placed under a temporary restraining order from his wife.

CalWatchdog has more.  

In other news:

• State senator and congressional candidate Isadore Hall was served with a subpoena on Election Night for an issue dating back to his time on the Compton City Council, in a dispute where owners allegedly misled tenants at a housing development Hall helped pushed through and now lives in. The Los Angeles Times has more. 
• “A Bay Area legislator is crying foul after discovering that a state audit he requested almost one year ago about psychiatric drugs prescribed to foster children has been delayed because a state agency supplied incomplete information,” writes The San Jose Mercury News.
• “Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget advisors have approved an emergency loan of $1.45 million to the California Coastal Commission after an agency staffer said it was in danger of not making payroll in July,” writes the Los Angeles Times.
• “In response to the high-profile case of a Stanford student sentenced to six months in jail after his rape conviction, state Democratic lawmakers are introducing two competing bills to mandate prison sentences in such cases,” writes the Los Angeles Times.

Assembly:

• In at 9 a.m.

Senate:

• In at 9 a.m.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @JohnAederHCM @doclobby

A bill to stop automatic suspensions of driver’s licenses for unpaid fines is only a few votes and one signature from becoming law.

Senate Bill 881, sponsored by Sen. Bob Hertzberg, has cleared the Senate already and is working its way through the Assembly. But the momentum has been building a while. 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is pushing a poll suggesting Rep. Darrell Issa is tied with his unknown and underfunded Democratic challenger after a poor primary showing for the Vista Republican earlier this month. Disclaimer: The DCCC’s sole purpose is to get Democrats elected to Congress. But while the source of the poll has an interest in skewing the race, the results of the primary suggest the poll may accurately reflect voter sentiment at a certain moment in time. 
• “Read the letters recently exchanged between Bakersfield’s Republican assemblywoman and the head of California’s largest state employee union and you’ll sense the antipathy that two failed bills stirred up. Again,” writes The Sacramento Bee. 
• After voting to fire the executive director of the California Coastal Commission in February, one commissioner lost the Del Norte County supervisor seat she’d held for 20 years. Capitol Weekly has more. 
• “Dozens of faith-based colleges in California are objecting to legislation that they say would infringe on religious freedom by allowing lawsuits from gay and transgender students who feel discriminated against because their sexual orientation conflicts with church tenets,” writes the Los Angeles Times. 

Assembly:

• Full slate of hearings. 

Senate: 

• Full slate of hearings.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @ChristineHaddon @shestokas

• Bay Area court stops suspending driver licenses over unpaid fines
• SF to look at its sanctuary city policies
• Bernie and Hillary come to SoCal
• State Senate votes to ban private communications with Coastal Commission

Under pressure from civil liberties groups, Contra Costa County Superior Court announced last week a moratorium on the practice of suspending driver licenses over unpaid fines.

Civil liberties groups have urged courts and the California Judicial Council — the policy-making board of the California court system — to take action for months now, arguing that suspending licenses for unpaid fines disproportionately affects lower-income drivers.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• According to the AP/SF Gate, San Francisco officials plan to look at the city’s “sanctuary city” protections for undocumented immigrants, a policy that led to national criticism last year following the death of Kate Steinle, who was killed allegedly by a Mexican man living in the country illegally. 
• Events on Tuesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, two Democratic candidates for president, are putting Riverside and San Bernardino on the political map, writes the San Bernardino County Sun.
• Meanwhile, Sanders, who is a longshot in the race, is scrambling for votes in the Golden State, writes CalWatchdog. And the OC Weekly compares a Sanders rally to a “very tame Woodstock.” 
• The state Senate on Monday approved legislation “that would prohibit developers, environmentalists and others from having private, off-the-record communications with members of the California Coastal Commission that could influence decision-making,” writes the Los Angeles Times.

Assembly:

• Full slate of hearings. 

Senate:

• Joint hearing on marijuana legalization. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @StephenSchatz @TimAnaya

So far, global aquaculture has been concentrated in unhealthy, environmentally degrading mass fish farms in Asia. This has led to ambitious plans in California to “do aquaculture the right way.” In January 2014, the Coastal Commission approved a “shellfish ranch” project in federal waters off Catalina Island. Now an immense San Diego undertaking — the Rose Canyon Fisheries Sustainable Aquaculture Project — is gaining attention and turning heads. This is from an October 2014 Voice of San Diego account:

[A] partnership between [the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute] and private equity firm Cuna Del Mar, it will be the first commercial offshore fish operation in the United States. The term “offshore” means the farm will sit beyond the three-mile mark typically regulated by the state, but still within federal waters.

 

The sheer size of the project – 29,000 square meters, or about six football fields — means it will be the first and most ambitious offshore operation of its kind. The project will start with half-a-million yellowtail the first year, with the ability to scale up to 10 million fish per year (5,000 metric tons) at full capacity.

Objections to San Diego proposal emerging

But saying the project “will be” this or that assumes it will come to pass. A year later, the project still has momentum, but some key environmental groups have decided they’re not on board. They object to the project’s effects on ocean views and raise much more sweeping concerns as well, as this KPBS report explains:

Matt O’Malley, a lawyer with San Diego Coastkeeper, [said], “We’re talking about putting a floating factory farm right off the coast of San Diego.” …

 

O’Malley points out 11 million pounds of fish would create a lot of, well, fish poop, and said that waste could change the chemistry in the water below the farm and on the ocean floor, and could lead to algae blooms.

 

He also worries fish could escape the cages and spread diseases or breed with wild populations, hurting genetic diversity. Plus, he worries seals and sea lions would be attracted to all of those caged fish and get entangled in nets and ropes, and that the farm could change whale migrations and wild fish behavior.

It’s not clear how the Coastal Commission will react to the environmental concerns. Rose Canyon Fisheries officials express deep confidence in their studies, some of which were launched nearly a dozen years ago. But SeaWorld’s role in the project could be problematic, given the commission’s recent move to block the San Diego aquatic park from breeding more killer whales, a move that included some commission members denouncing the park’s killer whale shows as amoral and unwelcome in California.

Commission has heeded concerns about effects on views

Another point of note is that the initial, seemingly less serious concern raised by San Diego Coastkeeper — about the effect of the fish farm on coastal views — has a history of winning favor with commission staff and members.

In 1997, San Luis Obispo engineer Dennis Schneider began attempts to win regulatory approvals for a 10,000-square-foot home on a bluff over looking the Pacific Ocean. In 2000, he got the go-ahead from city officials. But the Coastal Commission subsequently blocked the project on the grounds that it would be an aesthetic affront to kayakers, surfers and others using the ocean near the home.

In 2006, however, a state appeals court sided with Schneider. This is from the Los Angeles Times’ account:

Less-than-pleasing views for passing sailors are no grounds for the California Coastal Commission this week to restrict seaside development, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday.

 

“We believe that it is unreasonable to assume that the Legislature has ever sought to protect the occasional boater’s views of the coastline at the expense of a coastal landowner,” the 2nd District Court of Appeal wrote in a unanimous opinion.

It’s not clear if the Coastal Commission would find this ruling binding or applicable to the Rose Canyon Fisheries project, however.

The project is expected to come before the state panel sometime next year.

The board will take up possible changes in state rules affecting Diablo Canyon’s cooling water intake structure, a common feature of power plants build next to large bodies of water that are crucial to reducing excess heat during power production but that also can hurt nearby ecosystems. Diablo’s two nuclear generators, which produce more than 2,200 megawatts total, are located on the Pacific Ocean 13 miles south of San Luis Obispo.

It’s considered highly unlikely that the state water board would do anything dramatic. Federal law leaves the most important decisions on nuclear plants to federal authorities. But greens believe that their years of raising questions about the San Onofre nuclear power plant helped clear the way to the decision to shutter the north San Diego County facility in 2011 after it had severe problems with defective steam generators at both its towers.

The owner of the Diablo Canyon plant, Pacific Gas & Electric, has quietly made major progress toward keeping the plant in operation through 2045. This is from a July 13 greentechmedia account:

The license renewal process for Diablo Canyon, California’s last remaining operational nuclear power plant, has just been restarted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

 

Diablo Canyon’s reactors became operable in 1985 and 1986 and their licenses expire in 2024 and 2025. … PG&E started applying to the NRC for a 20-year license extension in 2009, but Japan’s Fukushima incident put the extension on hold until new seismic studies for Diablo Canyon were completed and submitted to the NRC and California Public Utilities Commission.

 

In September of last year, the seismic study conducted by PG&E to determine the safety of the Diablo Canyon plant found that the facility was “designed to withstand and perform [its] safety functions during and after a major seismic event.”

Seismic study sure to face questions

This study is sure to face sharp criticism at the state water board meeting next week. A preview of the criticisms can be seen in a San Francisco Chronicle story on the seismic report earlier this month.

Activists who never wanted Diablo in the first place have been pushing hard to close it, particularly after California’s only other commercial nuclear plant — San Onofre, north of San Diego — shut down in 2012.

 

They argue that PG&E has consistently underestimated earthquake threats to the plant, and that PG&E has a long record of snafus at Diablo, such as replacing the steam generators and vessel heads without first conducting a necessary seismic test. PG&E, in contrast, says the plant boasts a solid safety record.

 

“Our point is, this is a pattern with them,” said Jane Swanson, with Mothers for Peace. “They keep screwing up — and this is a nuclear plant.”

A different dimension to this energy fight

But this battle has different overtones than many fights over energy sources, which often involve declarations that fossil fuels should be scrapped entirely as soon as possible because of their role in generating the greenhouse gases believed to contribute to global warming. Some defenders of Diablo Canyon say it’s their side that has the moral high ground because the plant is a crucial component of an intelligent policy to address climate change. This is from the Chronicle:

California law forbids building more nuclear plants in the state until the federal government comes up with a long-term solution for dealing with the radioactive waste. And with San Onofre closed, nuclear advocates say the state needs Diablo Canyon in order to rein in greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear plants generate electricity without pumping carbon dioxide into the air, and unlike solar power plants and wind farms, their output doesn’t vary from one hour to the next.

 

“We really need to have a low-carbon, base load source of electricity,” said Jessica Lovering, a senior analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland think tank focused on energy and the environment. “Taking offline the last nuclear plant would be pretty detrimental to carbon emission reduction goals.”

The California Coastal Commission at some point is also likely to have some regulatory say over any relicensing of Diablo Canyon.

PG&E is believed to consider the plant to be a cornerstone of supply generation for decades to come. But as the greentechmedia account noted, the giant utility “has not yet made a decision about whether to move forward with the relicensing process” — despite building a case for an extended permit for nearly a decade.

“Today we are standing on dry grass where there should be five feet of snow,” Governor Brown said at a press event in the Sierra Nevada mountains. “This historic drought demands unprecedented action. Therefore, I’m issuing an executive order mandating substantial water reductions across our state.”

To combat the state’s ongoing drought, the governor has ordered the State Water Resources Control Board to implement a 25 percent reduction in water use by local water agencies. He’s also calling on water districts to adopt conservation pricing, a streamlined permitting process for water projects and an investment in new water infrastructure technologies.

“People should realize we are in a new era,” the governor said. “The idea of your nice little green lawn getting watered every day, those days are past.”

Water everywhere, but only fraction from the sea

While conservation is the key element of the state’s short-term drought response, those latter provisions of the governor’s plan have many Californians turning to desalination as a promising long-term solution to the state’s water needs.

“The Governor’s Executive Order issued today is consistent with the policy goals established in the state’s Water Action Plan and clearly demonstrates his commitment to developing new local water supplies including seawater desalination,” said Scott Maloni, vice-president of Poseidon Water, a water development company that specializes in desalination.

For hundreds of years, sailors have found ways to remove salt and other impurities from the earth’s salt water and turn it into drinking water. Today, that process has gone high-tech at more than 17,000 desalination plants in 150 countries around the world. According to the International Desalination Association, more than 300 million people use approximately 21.1 billion gallons of water produced from desalination every day.

However, outside of the Middle East, where desalination is a vital component of the region’s water portfolio, desalination is responsible for just a fraction of the world’s drinking water.

“Even with all of the water in Earth’s oceans, we satisfy less than half a percent of human water needs with desalinated water,” Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute and author of the book, The World’s Water, pointed out to Scientific American. “The problem is that the desalination of water requires a lot of energy.”

As of 2013, the California Department of Water Resources estimated that desalinated water cost $2,000 an acre foot, or double the price of water from other sources. But, the high energy production costs aren’t stopping enterprising companies from entering the desalination market, rather it’s a lengthy and bureaucratic permitting process.

Desalination plants battle lengthy permitting process

Next year, a $1 billion desalination plant in Carlsbad is expected to come online and produce 50 million gallons per day — after years of permitting battles with city governments and state agencies.

“They went through seven or eight years of hell to get here,” Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies, told the San Jose Mercury News last year. “But they stuck it out. They got it done. If it succeeds, it will encourage others to try. And if it fails, it will have a chilling effect.”

Poseidon Water, which spearheaded the Carlsbad Desalination Project, is now working to gain final approvals from the California Coastal Commission on a desalination plant in Huntington Beach that would also produce 50 million gallons per day.

“A streamlined permitting process will significantly help our proposed Huntington Beach project become a reality,” said Maloni of Poseidon Water. “We are looking forward to bringing this project before the Coastal Commission for their approval this year and finally bringing a drought-proof water supply to millions of coastal residents.”

If the company gains its final discretionary approval from the Coastal Commission, the plant is scheduled to be operational by 2018. That’s not soon enough, given the state’s dwindling water supplies. Earlier this year, the Orange County Water District announced its intention to buy all of the 56,000 acre-feet of water produced by the plant.

“Desalination should be front and center”

The longer the drought persists, the more likely parched water agencies will be to add desalination plants as a component of their water portfolios.

“While conservation is a must, looking at ways to overcome the obstacles that have thwarted previous efforts on desalination should now be front and center in the water deliberations,” writes Joel Fox, editor of Fox & Hounds Daily. “Proposals to desalinate water from the Pacific Ocean have run into environmental concerns and cost issues. … The thinking on the cost issue is changing, however, because of the severity of the drought, the increased value of water, and potential energy resources to make the process work.”

In order to change thinking about desalination, it will require overcoming challenges from environmentalists, who view desalination as a precursor to more development.

“If you’re going to do something like desal, you want to make sure you’re doing everything you can in terms of conservation, water recycling, water re-use,” Susan Jordan of the California Coastal Protection Network told KQED, “and you don’t want unsustainable development that just perpetuates your problem, or the state’s problem.”

But it you wanted to pick the one state agency that most consistently advocates a radical view of government power, you’ll never top the California Coastal Commission. It was founded and run for a quarter-century by a green zealot named Peter Douglas — a guy who really and truly didn’t believe in private property rights and who pushed the commission to ridiculous extremes. I wrote about one of his crusades in an editorial in 2006:

“Consider the case of San Luis Obispo engineer Dennis Schneider, who hoped to build his dream home on a cliff above the ocean in a remote area north of Cayucos. Incredibly by normal cognitive standards, typically by Coastal Commission standards, the agency blocked his plans on the grounds that the home would be such an aesthetic affront to passing kayakers, boaters and surfers that it would violate their rights. We are not making this up.”

But the courts backed Schneider up, thankfully. So there was a way to deal with Douglas’ assault on conventional notions about property, individuals and government control of property and individuals.

Not just power to assess fines, but limited checks and balances

Now, the San Diego Democrat chosen to be the next speaker of the Assembly wants the commission to be given more powers with fewer checks and balances. CalWatchdog alum Steve Greenhut talks about Toni Atkins’ scary legislation in his latest U-T San Diego column.

“Last year, the Atkins bill (AB 976) was controversial enough even among some environmentally minded Democrats that it was rejected in the Assembly. But as Atkins ascends to the Assembly speakership, it’s likely that this legislative priority will rise again.

“Is it needed? The vast majority of the commission’s complaints against homeowners already are resolved before going to court. If the commission still meets resistance, it petitions the state attorney general for legal action.

“If the Atkins bill passes, the commission can decide on its own to begin assessing daily fines. The property owners can attend a public hearing before commissioners, but it’s not a neutral proceeding with witnesses and due process. The burden of proof would shift from the agency to the individual property owner.

“Not many owners could risk the bank account by challenging the agency. Some critics say the bill would provide an incentive for the commission to target picayune issues because the more fines it imposes, the more money that fills up an environmental-restoration fund.”

Groan. This is not what California needs — further empowering the Peter Douglas disciples who still run the Coastal Commission two years after his death and who still think Douglas’ views about property rights are what matters — not that minor clause in federal law known as the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“In beautiful La Jolla Cove, art galleries and coffee shops meet a stretch of unspoiled cliffs and Pacific Ocean. Home to former presidential candidates (Mitt Romney has been spotted pumping his own gas here in recent days) and seal colonies alike, the neighborhood provides one of this city’s primary tourist draws.

“But the smell, a pungent stench that emanates from the accumulation of bird feces on the rocks, has become a growing problem. And strict environmental regulations in the cove have stymied the city’s efforts to address the problem before it drives tourists and businesses away, effectively roping the rocks off with red tape.

“’I’ve lived here my whole life, and the smell from the birds has never, ever been as bad as it is now,’ said Megan Heine, the owner of Brockton Villa Restaurant, which overlooks the cove from a historic building that has been on the cliffs for more than 100 years. She said guests asked about the stench so frequently that her wait staff had become adept at explaining its cause.

“’If nothing is done and the smell becomes unbearable, I’m fearful of what that will really do to the business and the appeal of being in La Jolla,’ she said.”

An indictment of the stupidity of our government

Guess what? The problem is still horrible. I wrote about it in today’s U-T San Diego.

“Of all the advances achieved by the Roman Empire before its collapse in the fifth century, one of the most unprecedented was the infrastructure to ensure the efficient removal of animal and human waste from urban areas.

“Incredibly enough, some 1,600 years later, a city that is home to some of the most advanced scientific research on Earth finds itself unable to deal with disgusting conditions triggered by waste from seals, sea lions, pelicans, seagulls and other birds.

“That is the proper context with which to see the maddening saga of the stench emanating from the rocky areas and cliffs at La Jolla Cove. It has been 13 months since a New York Times story laid bare for the nation not just our local shame but the collapse of common sense in the Golden State — the idiocy of environmental rules so rigid and so far-reaching that removal of animal feces is somehow classified as a threat to nature.

“The odor problem ebbed for a time, but now it is back — a nauseating pall on an otherwise beautiful part of San Diego. And this time, it has prompted a lawsuit by the owners of the nearby La Valencia Hotel and George’s at the Cove, who argue — correctly — that city officials haven’t done enough to fix this stomach-turning problem.

“But that’s also true of state and federal regulators who pronounce themselves unable to act with any sort of urgency. If state and federal law governing nature is so all-powerful that it prevents the removal of animal waste from areas densely populated by humans, then, as a Charles Dickens’ character said, the law is an ass.”

Does anyone defend the bureaucratic sclerosis here? Can anyone with a straight face argue that it makes sense?

I didn’t think so.

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