Revolution

The fight over the Humboldt Bay Wastewater Authority (HBWA) project had turned bitter and personal. HBWA’s attorney, John Stokes, and most of its board members had lobbied hard against Arcata’s alternative treatment plan. Dan Hauser, usually diplomatic, seethed with resentment. “HBWA has set itself up as the enemy,” he wrote in a September 1977 opinion piece in the Arcata Union. “Therefore, we have no alternative but to defend ourselves by attacking HBWA . . . We must stop this $52 million boondoggle.” Hauser, still Arcata’s representative on the HBWA board, pledged to work toward the “total redesign or total destruction” of the regional sewage system. Other members of HBWA were growing panicky. The Committee for a Sewer Referendum’s lawsuit kept the board from issuing bonds to finance construction, while inflation caused the project’s already huge price tag to balloon. Concealing the move from Hauser, the board applied for a $5.9 million loan from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Arcata, at Mayor Hauser’s suggestion, promptly sued HBWA for seeking the loan without the city’s consent. Meanwhile, Hauser organized an appeal for Arcata’s wetland treatment system before the State Water Resources Control Board. The city mustered support from representatives of the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Audubon Society, along with academic experts on Humboldt Bay oysters and low-tech sewage treatment. Wade Rose, the shaggy upstart from the governor’s Office of Appropriate Technology, would speak. After Stokes cross-examined Rose at the regional board hearing, “it became a crusade for the entire Office of Appropriate Technology,” Hauser explains. “They singled out HBWA as the ultimate in obsolete technology and concrete overkill.” When the Arcata contingent arrived at the state board hearing in Sacramento, one of the board members, brandishing a newspaper clipping in his hand, called Hauser forward. The clipping was a story from the Arcata Union, quoting Hauser saying that the marsh project would not get a fair hearing. “He asked why I was there if I believed they were already biased against me,” Hauser remembers. “I told him we have to go through this process to get to the next step.”