On Election Day this November, voters in San Francisco will vote on a local initiative to rename one of the city’s largest waste treatment plants in honor of George W. Bush.
A national George W. Bush Legacy Project to rename American sewage plants after Bush over the next decade could provide a perfect foil to the surely coming efforts by Bush dead-enders like Karl Rove to rewrite the failed history of the Bush era into a series of triumphs for their Dear Leader.
If the initiative passes — and since the number of Republicans in the city is statistically zero, it very well might — the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant will be forever known as the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. It is as fitting a monument to the eight years of the Bush presidency as we can think of, with the possible exception of a naming a garbage dump after him.
The San Francisco effort is the work-product of local activists who came up with the idea in the most grassroots of all settings: over beers. Subsequently, the group set up the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco, which handled promotion for the petition drive. On Thursday, the city’s Department of Elections certified that the 7,168 signatures the commission submitted were valid and approved the initiative for the November ballot.
Although the organizers in San Francisco are clear that their effort is satire, this is a cause that grassroots organizers in other cities should consider seriously. This nationwide effort could be similar to, but hopefully more successful than, the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which was the brainchild of the anti-government lobbyist Grover Norquist, who is best known for his close associations with corrupt Bush cronies like (now-imprisoned) Jack Abramoff and (perhaps incarcerated one day) Karl Rove.
Norquist and company established the Reagan project in 1997 with the goal of naming a monument after Reagan in all 50 states. (They even briefly suggested adding his visage to Mount Rushmore.) The project’s failure can be attributed first to the fact that most people recognize that Reagan was, at best, a flawed president who will not be treated kindly by history after sympathetic memories of his lingering illness fade — and, more importantly, to the sulking, accusatory tone of Norquist and his whining cohorts who are irrevocably invested in their imagined victimization by the corporate media and liberals.
In the battle that will surely come in the next decade over Bush’s legacy, a national grassroots campaign to rename sewage plants or other facilities all over America after George W. Bush could provide a perfect foil to the well-funded efforts by Bush dead-enders like Rove to rewrite American history, circa 2000 to 2008, into a series of fictionalized triumphs for their Dear Leader.
For example, here in Los Angeles, the massive Hyperion Treatment Plant, which services the 12 million residents of the United States’ largest county, and occupies a (once) beautiful stretch of beach near Los Angeles International Airport, would be an ideal candidate to rename in Bush’s honor.
The San Francisco project appears to have hit a nerve in the White House, as evidenced by the way Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino got a little tongue-tied when asked about it:
Q The New York Times reported this morning from San Francisco that the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters to change the name of the prize-winning water treatment on the shoreline to, “The George W. Bush Sewage Plant.” And my question: What is the White House reaction to this New York Times news report?
MS. PERINO: I just don’t think it dignifies a response.
Well said, Dana.
Not as much of a jab as they intended. This is a facility that takes liberal crap and makes it safer for the environment.
#1 comment from Will Wallace:
“Not as much of a jab as they intended. This is a facility that takes liberal crap and makes it safer for the environment”.
One could also say that it would be inappropriate to name the San Francisco sewage treatment plant after George W. Bush, as it is a facility that takes harmful waste and turns it into something good, whereas GWB did the reverse in taking goods things and turning them to SHIT.
This comment came to us via email, but it’s a good one, and I thought we should share it:
The blithering idiots who thought to name one of the most important infrastructure entities in any community are simply too very stoooopid to realize how critical this plant is to their very existence. To name such an enterpise after the resident is ridiculous.
Evidently, the fools who did this are not aware that Civil Engineers with probably Masters’ degrees from good schools designed this facility. To name something this important after someone who probably flunked kindergarten is truly an insult to the profession as well as to the actual need for thousand more of these installations.
Are you aware that the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the infrastructure of this country a D-??? Surely a higher grade than the Chimp ever legitimately received.
And we piddle away our money on a an illegal, immoral invasion based on lies. Lovely.
The next time someone dies from bad water, or in a bridge failure, perhaps the morons who came up with this should name that occasion after you-know-who.
Get a grip, please. Name some silly drink after this coked-up drunk, not something which benefits an entire community.
Roxanna
I think we should name condemned buildings, closed bridges, etc. after Bush. The dedication plaque should be placed on the structure no sooner than within one hour of blowing it up or tearing it down.
If “all politics are local”, as Reagan Enabler Tip O’Neil once said, then America’s Municipalities, Counties and States still have considerable power. One of them is to name and also build monuments to Politicians. Politicians who are always concerned about their “legacy”, in addition to $$$ looted. The majority of Americans are against Torture, War Crimes and Illegal Wars and many would support their local governments making such monuments.
So, the San Fran George W. Bush Sewage Plant should only be the start. How about all those communities who have passed anti-Iraq War resolutions selecting an existing monument or building a specific one to dishonor the Criminal Bush Regime. For starters. There is even the possibility of private individuals setting up their own monuments on private land.
And as a grander project, there should be a Neo Con Mount Rushmore featuring, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice. This could be made out of recycled Garbage. One thing’s for sure, there would never be a libel suit.
bad idea.
Hoover Bldg for FBI, GHWBush for
CIA tells ya what they are about, namely nefarious activity.
This does not–its an insult to people doing good work.
With the proposed name change of San Francisco’s Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Plant becoming a national news story, I wanted to make sure the value and role of this and other water pollution control plants are not lost in the parody.
Most residents don’t think twice about their wastewater treatment plants or sewer systems, and that’s because the environmental professionals who operate plants like Oceanside are proudly doing their job, day in and day out. Most of the time, the efforts of these professionals seem effortless to us: we get to flush the toilet and not think about the ramifications of what goes where; we take baths and showers and watch the water “disappear” down the drain. In truth, however, plant operators’ tasks are huge under the best of circumstances. Wastewater treatment plants have a monumental job. The Oceanside Plant, for example, treats an average of 17 million gallons of wastewater each day during dry weather; in wet weather, its capacity is 65 million gallons per day. That’s enough to fill 120 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
In the nine county San Francisco Bay Area alone, nearly 7 million people benefit from 42 sewer agencies’ work – treating all domestic, commercial and a significant amount of industrial wastewater, while maintaining stewardship of the San Francisco Bay Estuary. Simply put, wastewater treatment plants protect public health by keeping sewage off streets and protecting our Bay and Ocean waters for recreation, fish and wildlife.
The people who work in these plants are dedicated and justifiably proud of the work they do. They are in the trenches of environmental work and strive for excellence all the time. Do they deserve to be the ultimate victims of this political statement?
Oceanside is an internationally recognized, much visited and award-winning facility. Built almost completely underground so that it does not impose on the recreational area in which it is sited, the facility was lauded by the Society of Civil Engineers in 1995 shortly after it went into operation. It has also been twice presented the National Association of Clean Water Agencies Platinum Award for five consecutive years of a 100% record of meeting regulatory requirements.
Clean water agencies around the country need public support and funding to rehabilitate and maintain our aging systems – not to come up with a new name. So let’s leave Oceanside as Oceanside and focus public dialogue on improving sewer infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay Area and all over the nation.