Troy Talks: Episode 6 • Chris Duenas has a good idea, so we invited him onto our show

This show rarely will feature elected officials on the set with me, and that’s because elected officials rarely have something valuable to offer the public discourse. Today is the exception. Chris Duenas is pushing legislation that has the potential to reduce homeownership costs for all of us, and to get the economy going from the bottom up.

We’ve discussed this bill – Bill No. 175-37 – a few months ago, when he first introduced the bill. It does a lot of things, but in a nutshell:

This is the current problem:

• GovGuam generally has sucked for decades, and part of that sucking was having no vision back in the days of the Public Utility Agency of Guam (the forerunner to Guam Waterworks Authority) to build water and sewage pipes into places throughout the northern half that GovGuam knew would be populated with people.
• The northern villages (generally a portion of Yona through Asan up all the way to Dededo and Yigo) rest on top of the aquifer and the Guam Water Lens, which is the source and filtration system for the majority of the water we drink. Anything we throw – including concentrations of feces and urine – will filter through the water lens and into the aquifer.
• In order to slow down contamination, the government long ago made it illegal to install a septic tank in any private lot smaller than half an acre, removing so many private properties from the possibility of responsible development and considerably limiting affordable housing development.
• The reason for the regulation, however, was because septic tanks leak concentrations of effluents which are horrible for the aquifer.
• The government, however, has never been able to stop people living on properties without sewage system or septic tank hook up from using the bathroom. When nature calls, solid waste is getting deposited on the Guam Water Lens.

Here is a partial explanation of the solution Chris Duenas is proposing through Bill No. 175-37:

• If passed, his legislation will recognize a Japanese-invented, globally-tested technology that is a significant update from a septic tank. The cost is comparable, but what is released from this leaching field is inert material that will not harm the aquifer.
• The legislation also will change the half-acre lot size regulation to allow for permitting of this so-called nitrogen-reducing system on quarter-acre lots. This not only will make home construction loans possible for residents who inherited property from their parents, it will double opportunity for the development of affordable housing subdivisions.
• Those immediate and intermediate impacts will – according to financial and real estate experts – actually reduce the cost of homeownership.

Makes sense, right? Whoa whoa whoa, slow down there, partner. If it makes sense in the government of Guam, it is going to struggle to find the light of day.

This legislation was introduced in September. It was referred to Sabina Perez’s environment committee that month. It took Ms. Perez this long to call a public hearing, which will happen Thursday at 1:30 p.m.

Mr. Duenas, who was candid with us on Troy Talks, suspects his colleague has purposely delayed action on the bill because her constituency would be opposed to it.

He’s talking about the people we colloquially call “the activists.” I call them crazy. Obstructionists. People who offer no solutions and, worse, create problems and obstacles to progress. I’m not sure what under what eba tree they dwell, but thousands of people are living in squalor and without proper human waste sanitation. Children are going hungry. A backlog of solutions are bottlenecked at an impasse of poverty, and all the complainers want to do is kumbaya to the sound of their voice and to defend a tree with a virtue signal.

Meanwhile, the people on the ground – they’re literally shitting on that tree.