Bad Signs
Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, the first of the bad signs went up at Ocean Beach. We received much needed rain, almost an inch in a 48 hour period, in this, our driest year on record.
(Photo credit: Ocean Beach Bulletin)
Almost immediately, the signs went up. The volume of rainwater added to the combined storm/sewer system overflowed the system, was screened and sent untreated into the ocean. A friend, whom I recently paddled out with on his 40th birthday, called with the surf (sign) report. “This sucks, man!” was the report. Today, the signs came down. It goes without saying that traces remain.
I’ll issue the surf report today for Friday around the noon hour. It’s little, ride-able, light sideshore winds, interval is kind of tight, good exercise on a sunny afternoon, could be fun…but, here’s the disclaimer–it’s kind of shitty. The chunks got filtered out, but who’s going outside the break to check the water? Not me. I’m going to sit it out today. I just decided. And, I’m going to try not to think about that Dungeness Crab I want for the holiday feast.
It sucks, man. Sadly, it gets worse. I just got a copy of the proposed budget for the conversion of the Beach Chalet Meadow into a keep-the-light-on-for-ya toxic Field Turf dump. It calls for containment of the toxic slurry that will filter through the ground-up tire crumb infill. Where’s all that toxic crap going to go? Yup, into the combined storm/sewer system. Well, at least there won’t be any chunks in it when that, too, gets pumped into our Ocean. Maybe the plan is to kill the pathogenic organisms of shitty origin with the toxic wasted water from the shitty fields. That would be of some comfort, an indication that there is something of a plan behind this knuckle-headed industrial soccer stadium complex.
It’s been pretty quiet since the election kind-of-sort-of wrapped up. The law requires that Department of Elections certify the vote by the day after Thanksgiving. Then, thankfully, that will be over. I look forward to analyzing the stats. I can already be proud of the fact that my District will have cast more ballots than any other in the City. I’m happy to know that I know my neighbors a little better than I did previously. With their encouragement, I’ll continue to press the two main issues that prompted me to run for Supervisor–ending the appointee/incumbent cycle to restore a sense of fairness to the electoral process, and protecting our watershed and our ocean from toxicogenic projects like the one proposed for our Golden Gate Park. Without social justice, environmental justice is a tough row to hoe.
In closing, for the record, for those who don’t know me well enough, I am not opposed to soccer. Nor am I opposed to fields of play for elders and youngers. Soccer was never my preferred sport, but if any team needs a goalie, I’m willing to fill in and probably do a mediocre job at it. Being in a wide open field reminds me of my younger days when I did play ball, from my childhood through college as a Division III athlete. I spent a lot of time on fields of play, enough to know them well and to appreciate the significant advantages of playing on a well-maintained natural grass field over a shoddy plastic substitute.
I also know this about the games we play–sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes, it rains. And, sometimes when it rains, it sucks, man.
Thanks to the Ocean Beach Bulletin for reporting the news.
Mike Murphy 