I am not a “sewer nut,” though being from Los Osos and having a concern for the sewer’s economic impact to our county from the loss of discretionary spending for residents tends to classify me as one. That’s the unfortunate picture the Tribune, Bruce Gibson, and apparently you paint of discourse in Los Osos.

You’re not facing a new minimum $175-per-month sewer bill; it’s easy for you to follow others’ lead without consideration or research into why residents are still protesting the building of the sewer. You’d rather protect the poor exhausted board of supervisors from the relentless critics you characterize with contempt acceptable to your industry standard.

The county has estimated there will be $10 million annually removed from our county economy due to the additional Los Osos sewer taxes. With the multiplier effect, that’s conservatively $15 million lost every year from the San Luis Obispo County economy for the next 40 years. The way that affects you and your paper is businesses everywhere in our county, your advertisers, will see in example 300,000 fewer $50 transactions every year. What the loss of spending does to job creation and stability for families and individuals has yet to be seen as the total monthly costs are not yet fully assessed—that doesn’t happen until 2015. A little foresight questions the ramifications and asks what will replace this lost spending.

Don’t be so quick to take the easy way out and follow your peers who depict genuine and valid concern for community as that of extremists only to be dismissed and diminished. The county won; the sewer is being built with the labor of individuals from L.A. and Orange County, not local unions whose members’ employment would have benefited our county, not Southern California’s.

Be a real reporter, not a sheep. Investigate who is building the sewer and why these jobs weren’t given locally. It might take more work to lead than follow, but who knows? Maybe some day you’ll be good at what you do.