Charles Koch,  David Koch

Video: Look What the Big Bad Capitalist Koch Brothers Did to My Community

Well, I am being a little disingenuous in the headline of the post. I live in Thousand Oaks, California and what the Koch Brothers did through their company Koch Membrane Systems is in Santa Paula, California which is about a 30 minutes drive from here.

What did the Kochs (You know those dirty capitalists who support all of those right-wing (pro-business) think tanks/conferences and rail against the LEFT in this country) do?

In Santa Paula the Kochs helped build a state of the art water recycling plant to help the environment – as well as the folks that live there.

The Santa Paula water recycling facility (WRF) is a membrane bioreactor (MBR)-based, 3.4MGD (expandable to 4.2MGD) water recycling facility located in the City of Santa Paula, California. The new facility is the first of its kind built under California’s Government Code Section 5956, which promotes public-private partnerships in public infrastructure projects.

Construction was completed in December 2009 and the facility became fully operational in May 2010, seven months ahead of the Regional Board compliance deadline.

And, why the replacement facility?

Before commissioning the new facility, the City of Santa Paula was served by a wastewater treatment plant built in 1939. It had reached the end of its service life and required replacement.

The original plant was also unable to comply with the waste discharge requirements of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The non-compliance discharges were being transferred into the Santa Clara River, as a result of which the city faced fines of over $8m from the State Regional Water Quality Control Board.

In May 2007, a consent judgement given to the state allowed that it could apply the fines toward construction of a new wastewater treatment facility, if completed by December 2010. Following the judgement, the city decided to replace its old plant with a new wastewater recycling facility.

Frankly, I don’t know what to say – either the Koch Brothers have gone “GREEN” or maybe, just maybe, the media portrayals of these BUSINESSMEN have been a little skewed.

I know what the residents of Santa Paula think…..