Men’s Club: September 2018 News

On Tuesday, August 7, the Morris/Wollin team served another breakfast surpassing all expectations. As we are in the electoral season, we heard from two of the candidates for the South Coast Water District—Bill Green and Dennis Erdman—both incumbents running for re-election to the board.
They also exceeded our expectations. Roy Dohner said it exquisitely: “Just wanted to say that you and your (South Coast Water District) team (including Sonja Morgan) did an excellent job at the NSCA Men’s Club Meeting. With only a week of reserves in the Water District coffers, you highlighted the potential danger our community faces in case of a major earthquake cutting off our water supply.
This makes the case for building the desalination plant. However, current and pending major investments exceeding $200 million puts the debt issues into perspective, considering the size of your customer base. The presentation emphasized the importance of properly managing our water supply, related sewers and treatment facilities which most of us take for granted. Thank you for the work you do for our community.”
Dennis Erdman and Bill Green made a thorough, enlightened presentation of where we are in augmenting our limited water resources in time of drought. They demonstrated professional technical skills working for the benefit of the District and our community. We learned that eighty-five to 100 percent of our water is imported through aging and vulnerable infrastructure. As built and operated, this provides us with a seven-day supply of water. Two $100 million projects are addressing the need for reserves. First, a well designed and well conceived environmentally effective slant drill desalination project at Doheny Beach. Second, a major upgrade of the seventy-year-old sewer treatment system, including redoing the tunnel from Monarch Beach to Aliso Beach. If you google the Dana Point tunnel, you can read the particulars. And to address another concern: No, SCWD is not feeding us recycled
product as drinking water.
Our excellent August 21 breakfast was provided by the Roberts Team. Even though our program coordinator, Cdub, tirelessly works miracles putting together a continuous array of interesting speakers and political candidates, the originally scheduled Levin and Harkey each separately backed out of the meeting. But Cdub has many tricks in his bag and brought us a speaker with outstanding credentials and a non-political mantra: Volker K.H. Sonntag M.D.
Dr. Sonntag built his life and practice as a neurosurgeon on the premise of hope, honesty, hard work, and humility. His four H’s took him from a post-World War II German displaced person camp to a preeminent American medical practice. Along the way he learned English by watching the Mickey Mouse Club and flipped hamburgers to get through medical school. Dr. Sonntag provided an inspirational morning and a welcome relief from all things great and small in Dana Point politics.
September 4 will bring breakfast by the Clark team led by Al Glatt and Bob Baker (assisted by Steve Morris) and a return to Dana Point politics with all eight candidates for Dana Point City Council on the agenda.
—Robert F. Saint-Aubin