The History of the Toxic Soup Tour: PART I

Clean Water Now! has recently taken the “Toxic Soup Tour” down off the shelf of our Water Quality Strategies 101 section and behold: The TST rides again! Co-founder of the TST Mike Hazzard and I decided that after a 7 year hiatus, we needed to remind South Orange County residents that their local, county and state governmental agencies continue to fail them regarding the sad plight of our watersheds.

Originally, back in early 2000, we conceived of the TST as a Swiss pocketknife for ecological reform. It would be part confrontational guerilla theater, part chum (bait) to attract sharks (attorneys) for legal representation, part humiliation for the agencies and officials who’d dropped the fiduciary ball regarding their environmental accountability, and part up-close-and-personal education for those who had no idea how the detritus of urban runoff was plummeting our local watersheds into degrading meltdowns.

Offering organized, personally guided tours of toxic hot spots, we had publicly-elected and appointed officials come along. These hot spots were ponds or pools of urban runoff in the Aliso and San Juan Watersheds that the OC Health Department tested as being very high in pathogenic bacteria concentrations. We also had massive media interest with newspapers, magazines and TV stations joining concerned citizens in a kind of “Band of Gypsies meets Monty Python’s Flying Circus” entourage.

For a few frantic, frenzied months the TST was everywhere. Saturating the public papers and airwaves, there were shocking photos and journalistic accounts of Huck Finn, idyllic-looking areas where children splashed about, places that were in fact health and safety hazards near schools. Like Paul Revere, Mike and I naively thought that if we knocked on people’s informational doors, if parents realized these attractive nuisance pollution spots in public open space existed, they’d become alarmed, rise up and demand remedies.

From our usual start-up point at the Aliso Creek Beach we took them to several sites in the watershed up to its origins near Cook’s Corner. Then we’d drive across O’Neill Regional Park to the upper reach of the San Juan Watershed (Holy Jim Canyon & the Arroyo Trabuco) bouncing back down to Doheny Beach. As everyone knows, this Dana Point strand is the most chronically contaminated spot around, gets perennial “F’s” on any half-brained water quality report card.

We had quite a few macho guys who dropped out after only one or two stops. Gagging, nauseated, the pungent fumes over-whelming the olfactory, some were mentally and spiritually repulsed by what we showed them. The women who were moms and grandmas seemed the most infuriated. Nonetheless, to paraphrase the novel and hit movie “Some Went Running” and who could blame them? In a sense, we didn’t need to sell them. Eventually, it became the “Seeing-Is-Believing Tour.” Everyone was outraged.

We made every attempt to de-bunk several myths about water quality the public did not know due to government obfuscation and spin: They only tested for 3 pathogenic bacteria that could make you ill, true, but it was the toxicity, the heavy presence and increasing accumulation of carcinogenic substances (metals, chemicals, etc.) that worried us. We discovered and interviewed HUD housing children in Laguna Hills taking home crawdads for ingestion. We discovered indigents camping out in Aliso Viejo, washing themselves and their utensils in these hell-holes. We discovered and interviewed children near the Del Lago Elementary School in Mission Viejo who would ride the standing waves of urban runoff during peak rainy events on their boogey boards in a tributary stream right next to the playground.

On one exclusive TST in spring 2000 we took attorneys from RFK Jr’s Keepers Alliance, including San Diego BayKeeper, OC CoastKeeper, Surfrider Foundation, and the parent California chapter of the Keepers. Despite our pleas, none would ever provide legal assistance. They “tsk-tsked” a lot, shook their heads in disbelief, but failed to impress us with actual eco-compassion for two little David’s trying to slay the Goliaths of local watershed distress. It was obvious that the County of Orange, who allowed unbridled development without water quality mitigations was responsible, but apparently these supposed national champions had bigger fish to fry elsewhere.

After the outrage subsided briefly, I then shopped the idea of massive class action litigation, interviewed Chatten-Brown & Associates of Santa Monica. After paying them thousands of dollars, they like the Keepers Alliance said it wasn’t a big moneymaker, all that they’d realize was wages. I then drove 4 hours round trip to the law offices of Ed Masry (of Erin Brockovitch fame) for what turned out to be a 2 hour free consultation. He too said: No big bucks in it, hence no pro bono or contingency representation. I drove home to Laguna through the killing noise and haze of LA, realizing that there were a lot of phonies in our midst, who talked the talk but wouldn’t walk with us.

Next Up: “Fallout From the TST”

Roger E. Butow is the founder of CWN!, a 61 year old So Cal native and 36 year resident of Laguna Beach. He is an environmental actionist and lives with his cat Zoey in Victoria Beach. He can be reached at www.cleanwaternow.com