to share with you.
Our poor, modest little town (pop. 130 or so) faced a crisis a few years ago. Briefly described, it had no sewer system, only septic tanks. The county health department, who had oversight, declared that no new septic systems would be approved unless they included 10,000 square feet of drain field and another 10,000 square feet of "backup," space reserved for another drain field in case the first one failed. Effectively, this was a ban on new homes and therefore a death sentence on the town. Their reasoning was legitimate. The status quo threatened the local river and its endangered salmon stocks. And we like our salmon. . .
Against considerable opposition, a solution was devised: a new municipal sewer system. The original estimate: $1.8. million.
The money was not there. So an alternative was found. We found a little money from the Forest Service, and a little from Washington State's Dept. of Community Trade and Economic Development.
We had $.8 million.
With some help from The Rensselaerville Institute, a community self-help plan was developed. It envisioned doing everything possible ourselves, from gluing PVC pipe to revising blueprints to digging by hand to writing legal defences.
After a year of fraternal and sororal infighting that would put even the Kos community to shame, we began. Even then, the wars continued. I will cite just one example of many:
We decided that each hookup owed the community 40 hours of labor - any kind of labor. Digging, letter writing, lunch making, etc. At one point, an argument erupted over pickles, very reminiscent of the battles here. Exactly how many hours are a pickle worth, shouted some. My sandwich didn't have any pickles. If a pickle falls in the forest . . . .
For every such quibble there was someone willing to donate a few extra hours to someone else who wasn't capable.
Cut to special pleading. Cut to appeals and hectoring from a variety of quarters (right and left sometimes have little meaning in the local, organic context.) My appeal at the last minute: Abandon your philosophy of scarcity, adopt a philosophy of abundance because our time and our energy and our blood are all that we have and they are not scarce.
Battles. Good cop, bad cop. Personal attacks, complete with all the latest cues from the MSM, way out here in the wheatfields. Nastier than you'd wanna be.
Against all odds, we finished the project. It works. We returned $80,000 because we didn't need it. It is a thing of beauty. Pumps aside, it has no moving parts. No lagoons. No smell.
The Democratic party didn't help us.
The Republican party didn't help us.
No elected official would help us. (until the photo-op)
The (Republican) County Commission did everything they could to stop us.
The county health dept. did everything they could to stop us.
(We had one ally: the Washington State Dept. of Ecology. Thank god for them. What they did was basically demand that everyone get out of our way.)
We might as well have been in Haiti. The similarities are disconcerting. We are white, you see, but poor.
The most beautiful memories of my life are associated with the two years I spent on this project, at a salary of $15 per month.
I remember a hot day when an old auntie hobbled up and offered me a glass of iced tea, because that is what she had to offer.
I remember a fleeting vision, for a few moments, of the way the world could be.
My point, if you demand one: literally anything can be done if the will is there.
Tear me up.