Reminiscent of the disastrous chain of events that led to bankruptcy for the Los Osos sewer project, the five-year odyssey of the Los Olivos Community Service District's sewer plan appears to be headed for implosion under the weight of the LOCSD Board.
The board was voted in to maintain "local control": locals could tackle the town's groundwater challenges cheaper, faster, and better than the county or the state. Instead, a much larger and more expensive sewer project is moving forward, but the LOCSD seems to have "forgotten" to inform the community it is supposed to serve.
The project has gone off course. In August 2019, after a series of public workshops with residents, the LOCSD Board unanimously adopted Board Resolution 19-04, describing a phased approach that would start with the downtown core and expand only as necessary based on groundwater monitoring data. In 2020, the LOCSD acquired from the county a small parcel of land between St. Mark's church and Mattei's Tavern to accommodate a treatment system for the downtown core.