“Consider that a Divorce.” OVSD gives Rainbow the Boot; more school districts to follow?

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I know, think of that time you left your old cell phone or internet provider, that was so comfortably habitual but full of embarrassing little bugs that you put up with, and overpriced to boot, and now after a little getting-used-to everything is much smoother, and you no longer have to deal with everyone rolling their eyes when your computer says “YOU’VE GOT MAIL.”

Or that time you stopped smoking.  Or drinking.  Or better, when you left that little closed-minded town out in the Midwest to bask in the glory of California.

Or I know, when you finally, after years of thinking it was unthinkable, pulled yourself out of that terrible stagnant and abusive marriage you’d gotten yourself into at age 18, and woke up to a new world of freedom and possibilities.

Well, just so, Huntington Beach’s Ocean View School District, after too many years of frustration trying to get Rainbow Disposal to properly enclose their operations across from Oak View School, after way too much wasted time failing (so far) to reach a legal agreement, have given the trash company its walking papers effective June 3-6, at which time Stanton’s CR&R Environmental Services will pick up, dump and recycle all of the district’s waste.

schadenfreudeThat’s 25 sites in the district, most of them with trash pickup – this’ll cost Rainbow something like $100,000 a year;  but there’s a meeting coming up of the presidents of the “big 7” school districts currently using Rainbow, and OVSD will make the pitch for all of them following suit – THAT would cost Rainbow closer to a million a year.

CR&R, of Stanton.  In stark contrast to Rainbow, folks who live near and have been near their facilities off Knott and Katella say that they’ve NEVER smelled foul odors emanating from the premises.

Yes, OVSD can do this, unlike the City of Huntington Beach itself with its imponderable legal entanglements with Rainbow, and its Rainbow-funded politicians and other officials.  OVSD in contrast is answerable to a higher authority, the state of California.

"Ourania Seven" and C.E. late in life, still searching.

“Ourania Seven” and C.E. late in life, still searching.

NOW CUE the caterwauling “I told you so’s” from Chris Epting and his small band, who have been claiming from the start that CR&R is behind the OVSD effort to make Rainbow clean up.  “Follow the money!”  they cry, “This has nothing to do with the kids!  This is a money grab plain and simple!  Corruption!  Corruption!  Oh, this proves what we’ve been saying all along!”

You know what?  Whatever.  Let them say that.  That lonely little crew can go to their graves stooped and wizened, searching fruitlessly for a shred of proof to their nonexistent conspiracy.  

Meanwhile the legal fight to make Rainbow actually clean up and enclose properly continues, and is headed for a jury trial soon.  Watch this space…


About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.