Morning Report: Toilet to Ocean

Every winter, the rains come. And every winter, garbage and sewage flow from Tijuana into the Pacific Ocean.

In the latest edition of our video series San Diego Explained, we head south of the border to take a look at what gets flushed into the sea, and why, and we tell you a few things you didn’t know. Does anyone have a plan to fix this mess?

In Other News:

• The San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce may do something quite unusual and perhaps unprecedented: diverge from Mayor Jerry Sanders. The chamber seems likely to come out against Prop. D, the financial-reform-and-higher-sales-tax measure.

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• A councilman who supports Prop. D says things in San Diego are really bad when it comes to city services, and he’s presented numbers to make his case. San Diego Fact Check took a look at his statistics and finds that they’re mostly accurate but not entirely.

• The northern San Diego community of Sabre Springs now has speed detectors — those devices that tell you how fast you’re going — and raised reflectors on a street where three people have died in accidents recently.

• The San Diego school district has agreed that it broke the rules in hiring principals from outside the district and outside the union, and it’s now figuring out on how to compensate principals who were hurt. The dispute highlights the district’s difficulties as it tries to change the way schools hire people.

Meanwhile, readers are commenting like crazy on our post asking what the district should cut to resolve its budget mess.

• County supervisor challenger Stephen Whitburn has finally come up with a proposal about how to fund the extra fire protection he’s been calling for: he wants to dip into the county’s reserve funds. Will he be able to convince the other county supervisors (who will remain mostly Republicans) to support the idea if he gets elected?

• One was a hand-shaking charmer whose blue eyes made a woman swoon. Another may have had bedding and boozing on his mind. (Yes, a shocker.) A third zipped down a Mission Hills street as little kids watched in awe: the chief executive didn’t stop there, though, and neither did the famous “buck” he liked to talk about.

Our readers chime in with stories of their encounters with presidents, including a woman who helpfully explains why she wasn’t JFK’s type. We’ve also got a first-hand tale of how a presidential candidate nearly got into a fistfight at the Sports Arena.

Want more? Check out the bipartisan presidential history in our archives: a look at the Kennedys in San Diego (including a scary moment in the final days of RFK’s life) and Ulysses S. Grant’s unexpected local connections.

• The southern San Diego community of Shelltown now has a new 300-foot mural on a wall once plagued by graffiti.

• The Trolley Dances — performances that take place within walking distance of trolley stations — are definitely unique. Our writer calls them “an artistic urban adventure for youngsters and adults” and interviews a 27-year-old dancer, teacher and budding choreographer.

• The Photo of the Day is positively hair-raising.

Elsewhere:

• A spokeswoman for the anti-Prop. D folks declared that lifeguards and libraries aren’t essential city services. Talk about low-hanging fruit. CityBeat — which has criticized what it considers to be the pro-Prop. D campaign’s thumb-twiddling — reports that supporter Mayor Sanders went to town over this statement, using it to bash Prop. D critics.

• A spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa tells the NCT that his boss is just too focused on other things to debate his Democratic opponent. What’s he doing? Getting ready for investigations of Dems if the GOP takes the House.

• More than a third of city workers in San Marcos earn more than $100,000 a year, the NCT says.

• Finally, our editor took a trip down memory lane yesterday to the time we held a contest to come up with a name for sewage recycling (derisively known as toilet-to-tap). I’m a bit partial to “Fecal Sequel,” but one reader gave us a humdinger of a winner: “Asses to Glasses.”

If you ever see the suggested term in one of our headlines, the drinks (purified sewage, of course) are on me.

Please contact Randy Dotinga directly at randydotinga@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter: twitter.com/rdotinga.