Chapter 16

	Then (at the end of this decade) came the War of the Water Board.  As I mentioned 

before, at the perfect music sessions I would serve cold tap water.  I always served it 

calling it "sweet mountain water," which it was.  It came from numerous springs in the 

forest that shaded the Santa Cruz Mountains.  This was clear, clean, great tasting water, 

needing very little treatment.  This vital resource was controlled by an elected water board.  

No one was paying much attention to this group until the water suddenly turned brown, 

smelly, and foul tasting.  This sudden deterioration of the water quality aroused the 

community, the customers of the water board.  We started to pay attention to something 

that up to now we had taken for granted.  We descended on the water board, attending 

their dull, boring meets, scrutinizing every word, facial expression, posture attitude, style 

and dress of all the elected water board members.  To ease the boredom and help record 

these meetings, I drew pictures of the board members.  These folks, all male, were the local 

developers, construction company owners, and the owner of the local hardware store.  All 

that attention wasn't exactly welcomed by the board, but they couldn't do anything about 

it.

	It turned out these guys had dug a big hole in one of the valleys in the path of a 

small stream and plugged up the downhill side of the stream valley to create a new very 

large reservoir.  They had logged the valley and filled it with water from storm runoff.  

They couldn't use the San Lorenzo River because most of the mountain community was 

using it as a sewer.  The immediate result of this project was a process called utrification, 

which means the putrification of the organic material, stumps, logs, leaves and plants, etc. 

buried under the water as they dissolved and enough energy was created to cause a 

circular flow or current from the bottom to the top of the reservoir, thoroughly polluting 

the water.  Enough chlorine had to be added to make the water taste like poison.  It was 

still brown and smelly.  This sudden deterioration of water quality aroused the community 

instantly.  A grassroots organization was quickly formed and went into action.  I joined as 

soon as its existence was proclaimed in the local paper.  We named ourselves "Citizens 

For Clean Water."

	When we investigated, we found that the Water Board had allowed the old system 

of fresh water springs to deteriorate to near uselessness.  In some cases, the water from 

these springs was being transported in simple stovepipe laid on the ground, which leaked 

massively.  It also gave way and came apart easily when bumped by animals.  There had 

been no upkeep on this system.  All the money seemed to have been spent on getting 

ready for and completing the new dam and reservoir.  The rationale was the community 

needed a larger water capacity for continued growth.  It seemed to us that they were 

sacrificing the water quality of the existing community for the benefit of people who didn't 

even live there yet.  The plan was to develop the wonderful wild mountain ranges into 

large suburban developments, now known as "bedroom communities."  Naturally, they 

didn't tell us about their plans; we found out only after the drastic downgrade of our water 

quality.  Now the Water Board meetings, which had once been attended only by the board 

members and one or two people seeking water hookups for building permits, were 

standing room only, crowded with angry residents watching every move the Board made 

and demanding clean water and the reasons for its degradation.  We mobilized, we went to 

work, we demanded action.  We sought out the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors.  

Our district supervisor was a pleasant enough old-timer with a nickname of "Hoot."  

Unfortunately for his political aspirations, he was in the pocket of the Water Board.  When 

he ran for re-election, we got rid of him in favor of a younger environmentalist.  We voted 

out the old Water Board and replaced all of them with the "Citizens For Clean Water" 

slate, but it was too late to have a major effect on the water quality.

	My own personal struggle with this travesty was possibly the most dramatic series 

of events of the "Water Board Wars."  It goes something like this. After putting in the 

dam and logging the valley to create the new reservoir, it was necessary to improve and 

expand the pipelines and pumping stations to distribute this foul product.  This was done 

to service the as-of-yet nonexistent citizens of the community.  It was decided to put a 

pumping station directly across the street from my home, and a huge pipeline running to 

and from it.  I'm not sure what the actual diameter of the pipe was but it was big enough for 

a large human being to crawl through it.  This pipe was buried in the middle of the road.  

The narrow road had a 90 degree turn as it approached my backyard then curved gently 

around my yard and house down a small hill to the one lane bridge across the San Lorenzo 

River.  The pipe had another 90 degree turn as it entered the pumping station.  All this was 

buried about six feet under the ground, then filled in and paved over with asphalt.  While 

the work was going on, this once quiet rural street became a noisy work site with smelly 

roaring diesel engines and that awful beeping every time the backhoes went into reverse.  

They damaged my fence and almost destroyed an antique rose bush that grew on the 

fence producing giant pink roses, big as grapefruit.  I had to stand out in my backyard and 

watch them work to make sure they did no more damage.

	At one point during this construction project, as I stood watching and taking 

snapshots of the work, the backhoe operator raised the bucket over my head and asked 

his superior, "Should I off him?"  I was infuriated, I stood my ground still taking 

photographs.  They went on with the project.  I complained to the Water Board at its next 

meeting.  This was still the developers' water board.  They apologized but did nothing to 

the individual involved.  When the job was finished and the street paved over, where once 

the street had drained in the road down the hill into the river, the water now came into my 

backyard and drained, gushed over my gravel driveway and high stone bank down into 

the river.  The new drainage pattern threatened to erode my driveway and my whole 

backyard at its narrowest point.  Every time it rained, I had to put on my Army poncho and 

go out into the rain with a shovel to build up the dike I erected to control this drainage 

problem.  Besides this, there was now a huge spoon in the road's surface just past that 

corner which collected a giant puddle to intensify the drainage and make the problem 

much worse.  Traffic driving through this puddle sprayed surf-like plumes of muddy water 

into my backyard, breaking down my earthen barrier and intensifying the erosion.

	I complained to the Water Board.  They told me it had always been like that and did 

nothing.  I complained to the highway department, to public works, to the county 

supervisor.  Meanwhile, the spoon got bigger.  I called the highway patrol, I wrote letters 

to the local paper, and finally they sent the crew back and dug up the pipe only to 

discover that one bolt and nut had been left off the joint of the 90 degree elbow that 

turned the pipe into the pumping station.  Water was shooting out of the hole this made in 

the joint and washing the dirt away around and under the pipe.  The Water Board and the 

construction crew maintained it was an accident.  I'm absolutely sure it was done on 

purpose.  They had to redo the job and this time they did it right.  The water now drained 

down the road as it had before, but they weren't through with me yet.

	The next thing they did was mount a singing transformer over my head on a 

telephone pole to power the pump.  This infernal contraption howled night and day with a 

discordant half step, two notes that were one half step away from each other.  I found 

them on my string bass.  They were a B flat and a B natural.  Where once the river had 

sung me to sleep each night, now this hideous dissonance howled twenty four seven.  It 

was literally driving me crazy.  I was suffering from headaches and sleeplessness.  It made 

me irritable and eventually depression set in.  Once again I complained to all concerned 

with no effect.  The infernal thing kept on humming that one horrible monotonous 

discordant chord.

	Then one night as I was trying to fall asleep, a car drover by and I heard a gunshot!  

Then the thing went silent.  I feel asleep.  When I awoke in the morning after the first good 

night's sleep in months, I went out to the street to see what had happened.  The street was 

wet and slimy with the toxic oil they put in those things.  Of course it had drained into the 

river, so it was a mixed blessing.  Well these a--holes in the water board came right out and 

put up another transformer just like the one that had been shot out.  It took them a few 

days to get the job done, so there were a series of quiet days and nights but then the 

thing was back.  This time, however, it didn't last very long.  A couple of nights after it 

went up, whoever it was, my unknown benefactor, came by and shot it out again.  Well 

this time the jerks decided to bury it across the street in a big hole covered with large steel 

doors in a box to muffle the tone.  That solved the problem to my great relief and I was 

able to live a normal life again. I would like to take this opportunity to thank, from the 

bottom of my heart, that wonderful unknown friend who saved my sanity those many 

years ago.

	The eventual outcome of all this turmoil was that we got rid of all those guys on the 

old Water Board and the Supervisor, and put in a new Water Board with all members 

concerned about the environment and that changed the course of history for our beloved 

San Lorenzo Valley and its residents.  That was the end of the control of our valley by the 

oligarchy of development interests and the victory of the peaceful political evolution of 

the citizens.  To this day, that coalition of concerned citizens still controls the Water Board 

and the Board of Supervisors.  I hear my good friend Jim Nelson, the organic farmer, now 

sits on the Water Board.  In spite of all the negative things that came out of the sixties, this 

is one thing which gives me a lot of hope for the future and an abiding belief in the power 

of the people.