During the next term of the Cambria Community Services District board, the appeal of a Coastal Development Permit application will reach the California Coastal Commission. At the crucial hearing there, I want our board to show unequivocal support for the permit. Only current board member David Pierson and candidate Tom Gray have promised their support. Your vote for these two candidates will give us the best chance for local control of the facility we built and are paying for.
Mike Lyons
Cambria
This article appears in Student Guide 2020.
Suggesting that folks vote for David Pierson and Tom Gray is like asking Cambria’s homeowners, renters, businesses and visitors to each drive two more nails in the coffin of financial debt Pierson and Gray and their C4H2O (Cambrians for Water) have shoved us into.
The primary driving force of Gray and Pierson is to change an emergency water system for use in Stage 3 drought situations only into a continually running SWF at the expense of rate payers. Years and millions of rate payers’ dollars clearly prove such a venture is absolutely
UNsustainable!!
Furthermore their venture’s long term, negative effects on local environment is unconscionable as it would produce thousands of gallons of brine waste every day costing rate payers even MORE money through rate increases to pay for dumping the waste. Hauling huge truckloads of brine waste through our town to Oceanside for ocean outfall is costly and polluting!!! Tom Gray even called waste hauling a “stop gap” measure in a recent Q&A when Cambrians asked about that part of his plan.
During his Q&A, Tom was able to list several infrastructure needs that are not being prioritized, but failed to mention that rate payer dollars are being diverted away from infrastructure needs and into this SWF project that he and David Pierson are so focused on.
This duo’s insanity has so be stopped!!!
HARRY FARMER and KAREN DEAN are voter’s best choice to give the CCSD Board of Directors the conscience and wisdom to get rate payers out of this death spiral of unnecessary taxes and fees that has been going on for 6 years by:
-Returning the Emergency Water Facility to use in Stage 3 drought situation ONLY
-Addressing necessary upkeep to vital infrastructure so that all water Cambrians have is not wasted through aging waterlines/connections, storage tanks or treatment plants
-Providing transparency to Cambria’s rate payers about options BEFOREhand
-Protecting Cambria’s environment
-Working FOR Cambrians vs. personal special interests.
Holly Ludwigson
Cambria homeowner and full-time resident
Correction to my comment. Brine waste trucked to OCEANO (not Oceanside).
I have no idea what Mike Lyons is referring to by “local control.” CCSD has local control and has had throughout this boondoggle of a project that has cost ratepayers in Cambria, 2-3 times the original cost of the $13.4 million dollar loan to pay for a brackish water desal plant. The project, the Emergency Water Supply (EWS), was built supposedly, Cambrians were told, as a water supply for current residents in times of a District declared Level 3 Drought Emergency. Behind closed doors, and without any voter approval, the project was re-named the Sustainable Water Facility (SWF), with a different purpose and intent: GROWTH! Yes, Cambrians are paying millions, and will be through 2034 for the loan, so that 650 folks on a Water Wait List can build here.
The EWS, after being built 6 years ago with an Emergency Permit from SLO County Planning, remains without a regular Coastal Development Permit (CDP).
Our water rates have doubled since the facility was built, yet we get no water from it–nor have we needed to. As of September 1, our rates have increased yet again, by approx. 12%.
It is a travesty at best, and by voting Pierson and Gray, it will only get worse. Their goal is to grow Cambria by 650 development projects. Cambrians are sick and tired of the same mentality that got us into this mess in the first place–actually for the last 20 years; let’s not keep going down the same rabbit hole with more spending for consultants, engineers, more staff, studies, etc. The only study that needs to be taken seriously is an instream flow study, repeatedly requested by the Coastal Commission, and yet to be fulfilled by the Cambria CSD.
Cambria has very few resources to fight fires; we live in a Monterey Pine Forest; there is one way in and out of town, Pacific Coast Hwy. 1–a single lane highway making evacuation a huge challenge. Tourism, despite Covid-19 is at levels unprecedented. We are extremely vulnerable to the threat of a serious fire, the likes of which we are seeing throughout the state. But Pierson and Gray aren’t concerned about that because their goal is to grow Cambria by another 650 or more homes! I submit they would provide very questionable leadership!
VOTE– KAREN DEAN and HARRY FARMER, not Pierson and Gray.
Tina Dickason,
Cambria, CA