Cleaning Up Rincon Point?

The New York Times recently published an article regarding the ongoing Septic vs. Sewer controversy at Rincon Point, a premier surf break in Southern California, and nexus to a small community of 72 homes. Now don't get me wrong, I'm the first to admit that sewer systems are not the most appealing coffee-break conversation, but I actually care deeply about this issue, because I live there -- and most importantly, because I surf there!

In the interest of full disclosure, I am the President of the Rincon Point Property Owners Association, a volunteer board that consists of a handful of community-conscious homeowners and residents. I should make it clear that the Association has no official position on the septic vs. sewer issue, and that these are my own personal opinions.

                

Now, the setup: In 1999, Heal the Ocean director Hillary Hauser commissioned a DNA study of the Rincon Point Watershed, to determine the extent of bacterial contamination in the lagoon and creek mouth, and to identify its most likely sources. On the ostensible basis of that study, the Rincon Point community will soon be voting on whether to hook up the Point to a large-scale sewer system, or whether to remain on septic. Here are a few relevant excerpts from that study:

"Recreation 1” bathing standards found in the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board Basin Plan indicate that waters that are used for recreational purposes where full body contact (swimming, surfing, and wading) is likely, should have levels of fecal coliform below 400 mpn (or cfu’s). Only one water sample of the 150 collected tested at a level above 400 cfu’s.

Translation: The Rincon Point Lagoon already meets swimming-pool standards for cleanliness.

                

Unfortunately, the limitations inherent with this particular scientific method and application in this setting does little to identify pathogens, or measure any significant infectious levels (doses) within the watershed. E.coli is a coliform bacterium that has many subspecies; the majority are hosts of normal intestinal flora. Only a few, such as E. coli 0157:H7 have been found to be pathogenic. However, while not specifically a component of the workplan, Dr. Samadpour did examine each of the species matches to determine if the E.coli isolates were pathogenic E.coli 0157:H7. Dr. Samadpour reported that no E.coli 0157:H7 was present in the isolates tested from the Lower Rincon Creek Watershed.

Translation: No known pathogenic bacteria were found in the Rincon Point Lagoon or creek mouth.

                

Although the majority of species matches were due to wild animal population, 46% of the species matches were attributed to domestic animal sources (which includes human sources). The observance of domestic animal waste in the watershed, especially in the lagoon and surfzone area, suggests that source reduction strategies should initially be targeted in these areas.

Translation: Most of the bacterial DNA matches were from non-human sources. Therefore, even if a sewer system were to remove every trace of human bacteria from the lagoon, the total (already low) level of contamination would not be significantly reduced. Moreover, our initial attention should be focused, not on septic tanks or sewers, but merely on cleaning up after our pets!

                

And yet, here we are, eight years later, on the verge of committing over $88,000 per homeowner (!) to hook up to an elaborate sewer line, that may not even be warranted in the first place. To put this in perspective, this project is MORE expensive, on a per-household basis, than Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens' infamous (and rightly-lampooned) $398 million Bridge to Nowhere.

Furthermore, the New York Times article states that sewage from Carpinteria Sanitary District is pumped 1000 feet offshore, but they neglect to mention that the sewage outfall is in only 27 feet of water, easily accessible with a mask and flippers. That's barely deeper than some college swimming pools, so it is hardly out of sight, let alone out of mind (and more to the point, out of the surf zone), and is a fish you'd hardly want to see!

                

In a telling and ironic twist, Heal the Ocean is now pushing for an environmental study of such sewer outfalls, a bona fide admission that sewage disposal is no panacea, as it would have Rincon residents believe. From Heal the Ocean's Spring 2007 Newsletter:

There are more than 37 direct-to-ocean sewage outfalls discharging into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. Of these wastewater treatment facilities, at least 13, or 35% of them, are discharging treated sewage effluent into particularly shallow waters, 40 feet or less, where there may be a high probability of contact between treated sewage and people recreating in the water. More than 21 million gallons per day of sewage goes into the ocean off California daily in less than 40 feet of water, at distances less than a mile from the shore.

Now, there's no dispute that we all want cleaner water, and a cleaner ocean. And some homeowners understandably look forward to expanding their lots, or building bigger homes; it's undeniable that staying with septic might complicate the permitting process for such projects. But spending $7 million to hook up all of Rincon Point with a massive sewer infrastructure, when the scientific case for it is dubious at best (and harmful at worst), is an appalling misallocation of funds and resources. Five percent of that money should easily cover any possible septic repairs or upgrades that might be required to achieve an equivalent water-quality result. The initial Rincon Point DNA study was a thoughtful and appropriate exercise, but I fear that its benign tale is now being misconstrued to wag a very, very large dog.

One final thought, and then the vote will be up to the community: If Rincon Creek is so polluted... why is a barefoot Hillary Hauser stepping in it?

Tesla Test-Drive: The Silver Bullet

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Malibu, with puffy white clouds left over from the rain, I had the opportunity to test-drive drive the Sterling Silver Roadster VP10. After driving down from Santa Barbara in my Mitsubishi 3000GT Spyder (which the Roadster will replace, shown below), I met three Tesla representatives: Zak Edson, Darryl Siry, and Aaron Platshon, and we spent a while chatting about the Roadster, with the occasional interruption from googly-eyed Pepperdine undergrads. One particularly noteworthy detail: the 3.5-hour recharge time is dictated not the battery pack itself, but rather by the 70-amp limit of the home charging unit. With an industrial-strength charger, the Roadster's input could theoretically accept over 200 amps, and top off in about an hour! This is brilliant news for those of us pondering roundtrips between LA and SF, presuming Tesla can make such a charging station available. Back in Malibu, I first expected to be taken for a short spin to get used to the car, but instead, Darryl simply tossed me the car keys and said "go!"

So, with Darryl riding shotgun, we drove up Malibu Canyon past Pepperdine, and along twisty Mulholland Drive. Zak and Aaron followed behind in their silver 328i chase car. My driving soon became more aggressive, and the car's handling soon felt natural. The Roadster was pleasure to drive, even without first gear; there was plenty of acceleration (0-60 in about 5.6 seconds, compared to the theoretical 5.3 for my Spyder), and I can only imagine what first gear will feel like! The acceleration off the line was a thrill, and I found several opportunities to test 0-60 on a straightaway, as well as the motor-mediated 60-0 braking. The braking felt somewhat different from my other car; less of a friction-based grind, and more the sensation of a spring being wound up, which is more or less the case.This made the brake feel slightly over-controlled, but I'm sure this will be tweaked for the production models. On the regeneration front, my preference would actually be for less regen; when I take my foot off the accelerator, I expect and prefer the feel of efficient coasting, particularly at highway speeds. (Too much regen makes me constantly feel like I need to upshift.) One size obviously doesn't fit all in this department, and I hope Tesla finds a way to incorporate user-adjustable regeneration settings; or perhaps have it adjustable at the dealer during servicing.

Compared to my familiar Spyder, the most noticeable handling difference was the steering wheel itself. The Roadster lacks power steering, and this fact, when combined with the Elise-vintage 12" steering wheel, made twisty roads feel like the Teacups at Disneyland: Oodles of torque, applied to a fairly small disc; resulting in dizzying changes in direction. I suppose that this goes with European sports-car tradition (by contrast, my Japanese-made Spyder has a power-assisted 15" steering wheel, decidedly on the luxury-sport side), and it's obvious that a short time with the Roadster will do wonders for one's arm strength, let alone motion-tolerance! Still, this didn't prevent me from cornering hard enough to feel the computer limiting the throttle as I accelerated into the turn; the car is over a thousand pounds lighter than my Spyder, and felt incredibly responsive and well-balanced both in turns and on straightaways. The driver's seat, though non-adjustable, was surprisingly comfortable, particularly compared to the red EP2 prototype I squeezed into at the TED conference last March. Even after forty miles of high-speed twists and turns, my body felt fine, though my head was definitely spinning... Nice job, Tesla!

No car is perfect (though the Roadster comes impressively close), and my most prominent area of concern was with the driver-side blind spot. Preparing to merge left, my reflexive over-the-shoulder glance yielded an expansive view of the B-pillar and not much else, giving an oddly claustrophobic sensation (and I am 6'0"). As a conscientious driver, I don't like to rely on mirrors exclusively while changing lanes, especially in unpredictable city traffic (and particularly in LA, where the crazy drivers are out in, er, droves). I'd prefer it if the Roadster had slightly larger, wider-angle side-view mirrors (e.g. Multivex Mirrors), or perhaps some sort of active warning system (e.g. Volvo's BLIS) to compensate for the limited rear views. I'm sure Zak would say that the blind spots are small enough that only another Tesla could fit into them (which may be fine THIS year, but what when it's the most popular car out there??)... Come to think of it, it might be appropriate for Tesla to offer a training course to emphasize safe lane-changing techniques, as well as proper mirror adjustment. The Roadster feels different enough from the average car to warrant this, and these skills should NOT be learned by trial and error!

Naturally, no test drive would be complete without a thorough shakedown of the car's audio system, soft-top, cruise control, bluetooth cellphone integration, carbon-fiber hardtop, A/C controls, night-driving ability, iPod connector, wet-weather performance, heated seats, navigation system, low-gear acceleration, and cup-holder! To this end, I must humbly request a follow-up test drive, posthaste... ;-) My color choices are locked in (Thunder Gray, with red and black interior leather), and I eager await the day I can ease my very own Tesla Roadster into my red-carpeted driveway!

Special thanks to the Tesla team for such a wonderful opportunity,
-Ben

Fractals, Fractals Everywhere

You know you've really reached the big time, when your mathematical algorithms show up on a Linens 'N 'Things gift card. Ring me up for 2π dollars, please!

Review - Oceanic DataMask with Heads-Up Display

Dive toys just keep getting better and better, don't they? On a recent trip to Grand Turk, I tested out the new Oceanic DataMask, a stylish black dive mask with a futuristic heads-up display. No more SPG's, no more wristwatches, just floating information at your eyeball-tips. Sounds great, huh?

The mask comes in a high-tech molded case, with a hefty instruction booklet and software CD. The design is somewhat asymmetrical, with the heads-up-display unit protruding in the lower right, and two control buttons on the outside of the mask. The right side of the frameless visor is somewhat smaller than the left, to accommodate the HUD lens assembly. The left side also has a nice little side-view window, which the right side lacks. My first impression was that the mask was somewhat higher-volume than my previous mask, but the difference wasn't noticeable during my dives.

As I soon found out, the only way to operate the dive computer is while you're physically wearing the mask; since there's no external display. I took a while to get used to the stark two-button operation (my previous computer, the Suunto D9, had a generous four buttons), but the interface is logically laid out, and after a couple dives I stopped referring back to the manual. While wearing the mask, a glance to the lower right shows the LCD display, hovering in black space, about ten inches away.

After scrubbing out the mask, and applying liberal amounts of defog (especially to the HUD lens), it was time for my first dive. The DataMask fit well, no problem with comfort or leaks. The balance of the mask was noticeably uneven on the surface, but this went away underwater, and it was easy to forget I was wearing a special mask. (So easy, in fact, that for my first few dives I found myself looking at my D9 wristwatch, forgetting about the heads-up display!) The display is in the corner of peripheral vision, so it didn't distract at all from the actual diving. The field of view seemed significantly less than my usual mask, but not problematically so.

During a dive, all the dive information is accessible with a couple clicks; one button flips through pages of data, and the other toggles the HUD display on and off. I found it most convenient just to leave it on; the display was unobtrusive enough that I could ignore it easily.

Both the DataMask and my D9 use wireless transmitters, attached to the high-pressure ports of my first stage. Not once during a solid week of diving did the transmitters interfere with each other or fail to sync, and the pressure and depth gauges were in exact agreement between the two computers. (The D9 wristwatch regularly reported a depth one foot lower than the mask, which stands to reason, if you think about it.) The only real discrepancy was with temperature; the D9 consistently reported 84-85 degrees, but the DataMask consistently 79-80 degrees. (Diving comfortably in a 1-mil vest, my money's on the D9.) I may send it in to have it calibrated, or I may simply consider it a nice nitrogen-narcosis test, having to add five in my head...

On my first dive, I developed an itch on my nose, and gave in to the temptation to remove the mask to scratch it. Putting the mask back on, some sunscreen got into my right eye, and for a minute or so I was diving left-eyed. As soon became apparent, this meant I couldn't see my gauges! (Nicely, I had the D9 for backup.) On a related note, I'm not sure how much of a safety concern it is that my gauges aren't readable by my buddy, and it isn't clear how this could be remedied, short of some wireless data-sharing. Another problem I noticed was that the viewable angle of the HUD is very limited; the mask has a tendency to slide up on my face a bit, which greatly reduced contrast on the display. I occasionally had to push the mask down into place before I could see the display properly. (Or this could just be due to my funny-shaped nose; I have the same problem with most masks.)

Fresh off the pixel-happy iPhone technology-fest, I had subconsciously expected the visual LCD itself to be a bit more high-tech. Instead, it resembled something of an 80's Casio wristwatch, with large blocky LCD digits and an oddly speckly blackish background. Perhaps this low-res approach was done for reliability, but it certainly leaves room for aesthetic improvement. The backlight is adjustable from 5% to 100% brightness, and I had it at 5% during my night dive, which was perfect; the trouble came when I went to dive again at noon the next day, and the display was nearly impossible to read. I had to squint a lot and try to find some shade before I was able to adjust the controls back to a more legible 75%. Perhaps the display should default to a higher brightness level after a few hours, just as the nitrox setting defaults to 21% one day after a nitrox dive? (The D9 always remembers the nitrox level, which is great; I wish the DataMask would just stay at 32% and display the percentage on the main screen. Instead, it just says 'nx'.)

The one feature of the D9 that I most missed in the DataMask was an ascent rate indicator. It's true that the mask beeps if you ascend too quickly, but it would be much nicer to see a visual indicator, so you have some warning. On the other hand, the DataMask shows a nice nitrogen-exposure bar graph; when it hits the top, you're in deco. (I didn't do any deco dives this trip, so I wasn't able to test this mode.) The mask was a little squirrelly about safety stops; once when I swam up to 19 feet and then descended to 27 feet, it kept counting down the three minutes. It also was fairly annoying about 10-minute air warnings; I would get an alarm for 10-minutes of air time left (til hitting 500psi), then ascend two feet and have 12 minutes left, then go down a foot and the alarm would go off again. The mask also freaked out a couple times when I hit the 10-minute limit during the safety stop, and it wasn't quite obvious what it wanted me to do, just displaying a blinking "ATR" (air-time remaining) instead of the three-minute countdown. With 650PSI left at the time, 12 feet from the surface, that seemed a little odd.

Finally, a feature of the mask that I really wanted to test, but wasn't able, was its freediving mode. In freediving mode, times are in minutes and seconds, instead of hours and minutes; you can set time-based alarms and countdowns, and it does its best to track nitrogen levels for freediving mixed with SCUBA. The one time I did some light freediving was just after a shallow dive, when the mask was still locked into scuba mode. (I was somewhat paranoid about locking up the computer, which the D9 is prone to if used for freediving after scuba.) This will have to wait for the next trip!

So, in summary, I'd say that my overall impression was mostly positive. (4 out of 5 starfish, I'd say.) The DataMask was very natural and comfortable to use, and I got used to it after the first couple dives. However, on balance, I did not find it overwhelmingly better or more convenient than my D9. There is, however, lots of obvious room to improve, and I heartily expect that versions 2.0 and 3.0 will knock my watery socks off!

Happy diving,
Ben