Backstory / (Long) Executive Summary


This is a Civil Demand for three executives who have been with the Monterey County Environmental Health Bureau (MC EHB) since at least 2013

The demand arises from concerns of engagement in and perpetuation of a Commercial and Public Health Hoax with multiple damage vectors that  may have cost taxpayers of Monterey County Millions of dollars with no measurable benefit,  while creating community stress, individual stress, and false beliefs about scientific methods and drinking water safety. A portion of this demand reveals a situation in which the entire testing scheme used for drinking water compliance standards for organic organisms has a grossly fatal flaw in it whereby people were led to a false sense of security which may have harmed millions in Monterey County over the past few decades, and that’s just one of several vectors of damage. And given Monterey County is following California and Federal standards the testing and compliance portion of this may be massive, but that is only one part of the story. 


The best way to get a feel for what has been transpiring in Monterey County since the early 2000’s and seemingly for years or decades prior, and that which these three executives may have been introduced to upon employment -- and then decided to engage in and  sustain for job security, benefits, a sense of power or other benefits is via a chronological presentation of events starting in the early 2000’s with a man by the name of Doctor JC Milrod.


 Milrod’s two decade nightmare provides an introduction to regulation, permitting and oversight gone rogue and it leads to an introduction of these executives and that then leads to the exposure and unraveling of a multi decade facade for Public Health that slowly fell apart when they all worked feverishly over a 4 year period to get an overreaching drinking water ordinance accepted that should never have been proposed. 


Around 2003 Doctor JC Milrod, Chiropractor, applied for a building permit to build a small dream home on a new property he had purchased. He applied for permits. He made it to the end of the permit process. With only the last hurdle of a water quality test to pass it was a sure thing.  The well had permission to connect to already two connections, making it a regulated “small water system” already, so what could go wrong?


The water sample purchase via a private testing service was slightly high for nitrates. To his shock, he was denied a building permit to build a home by the Monterey County Environmental Health Bureau (MC EHB / EHB) for “high nitrates”. 


The actual health concerns with nitrates are questionable. The thresholds for harm and nature of harm are also questionable. They are most commonly from commercial farm contamination of water. But it’s not all bad news.  


Nitrates can be filtered out with “point of use” water filters (POU e.g. under sink water filters) or  “point of entry” water filters (POE’s eg whole home filters). Furthermore, given a human only drinks about 40 ounces of water a day, why treat 140 gallons of water a day for 40 ounces of drinking water a day?   Putting that another way, why treat 1000 drops of water for drinking when you only need 7?  And what about bottled water or the water kiosks that had satisfied residents for decades? So all in all this really should not have prevented a permit in any way shape or form from. 


Yet, Milrod was told by the Environmental Health Bureau that the only way he could get a permit was to install a ‘brine system” to filter all the water coming from the well for all three connections with a large upfront cost and a $3000/month service fee. Alternatively he could drill a new well and hope he hit a different aquifer that was not contaminated. 


And all this happened after spending $300,000 for a lot with an agreement from a well owner next door that he could make a connection. There was no notice from any county or state agency or real estate disclosure form that a currently functioning and regulated well might be deemed a non-viable water connection point.  This was an invisible risk that caught him out of nowhere. 


Milrod, being a Chiropractor, did his research. He questioned the health threat of Nitrates. He showed he could get POU and POE devices to eliminate the hazard and he made the case for using the water kiosk less than a mile away for the 40 ounces of water he might consume a day, while reminding him he’d be at work most days so his total in-home consumption was just drops.  


However, per Milrod,  the MC EHB was unswayed. They were adamant that while those may have been logical arguments and solutions,  they simply didn't meet the county and state regulations for permitting for the added connection. When Milrod asked if the system was going to have to put on the filtration because of the high test even if he didn’t connect, he was told no. It was as if it was grandfathered in and this required change would only apply if a new connection was aded. . Really strange stuff, right? How dangerous could it be if they didn’t care about a regulated system for existing citizens but forbid it for a new connection?


NOTEs:
 the definition of hoax via Merriam Webster is “ to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous; an act intended to trick or dup” Cambridge states it’s “a plan to deceive someone” (and remember, this was happening at the beginning of the internet age when it would have been harder 


Milrod , a man who had suffered from seizures for years which escalated when he was stressed, became frustrated and felt he had done all he could. He spoke to Attorneys who said MC EHB got the final word. To manage the situation, he moved a small RV style trailer onto the property, he ran a hose from the well where he was supposed to connect and he started living in the trailer illegally, left to only dream about his new home that  was seemingly not to be.  


By 2013 or so, Encarncion, Flagg and Sandoval all worked at MC EHB. Sometime in 2013 Sandoval and Flagg participated in a 3 part video education series with Sandy Ayala, a person believed to be their senior lead at that time, and a TV host who was also a county employee. These videos become relevant later.  


Around 2014 Milrod decided to try again to get a permit.  This time they had him do water testing first not last, as makes sense IF a water fail might stop a permit process. The test came back slightly high for nitrates again. This time, per his testimony,  Milrod met with Sandoval and Encarnacion to discuss matters. They told him the exact same thing he had been told 10 years prior. According to them, nothing had changed. Milrod again went through the arguments about nitrates as minor harm, POU and POE options, bottled water or water kiosk options and nothing was accepted. 


From 2014 to 2019 there was not a lot of activity in this story. Milrod took on a new client from the East Coast with real estate and contracting background, and they did a little work together on his small business. 


In 2019 that client and acquaintance of his heard something odd about water quality in the area nd he went to a town hall. At the town hall there were some bizarre dialogue about a new POU/POE ordinance that would force filtration systems on homes and wells because of contamination concerns and because “bottled water was too expensive”.  


From where comes a county’s belief that they should mandate where a person might get 40 ounces of  drinking water a day?

  

County Executives and the EHB employees including Encarnacion and Sandoval were saying and putting things in writing that made no sense. When statutes were introduced, they seemed to be interpreting them in a very aggressive and even magical way.  


Milrod's acquaintance sent an email to the Monterey Board of Supervisors, it was forwarded to Encarnacion and a response was provided.  That type of commercial mystery is “interesting” to him if nothing else, but also concerning given what he saw transpiring with governments and water control around the western world. He produced a small website exposing concerns as part of a volunteer journalism project. 


Then in early 2020 covid hit and progress on the controversial ordinance stopped 


In 2021 as a result of rental housing stress, he and his partner “were forced” to buy a home after a demand notice to vacate their rental was given and the rents were skyrocketing. As part ot that purchase they bought a home with a 9 connection well system and he started learning about small water systems as an owner vs an onlooker. 


The interaction with the county office controlled by Sandoval was strange. The Testing protocols didn’t make sense.  He quickly realized without real time testing he had no interest in claiming any water from his well was potable even if the test and county said it was okay. He made that clear to everyone on the system.  If anyone wanted to drink that water, which was tested as potable quarterly with an occasional bacteria blip that was treated with 1.5 gallons of chlorine it was at their own risk. The well water, from his perspective, was for “domestic use” and not to be considered “potable”. 


As the acquaintance slowly waded into the world of water system ownership, something became clear.  There were no enforceable nitrate standards at that time for his 9 connection system system, and there was no requirement for full system filtration for any type of contamination, even if his system was out of compliance . Thus, how could they have said that was the case for Milrod on an even smaller system?  Was it truly some type of grandfathered in thing? He could find no statues or ordinance to support that.  Could he have been the victim of a really sick hoax? But by who? Who started it in the early 2000’s but more concerning was how or why would Encarnacion and Sandoval sustain it? 


Milrod’s acquaintance started educating him on facts.  Milrod did what he could to follow along. He was a trusting person who thought linearly and with a positive spin, and it was hard for him to imagine two different groups of county employees could have pulled a trick on him that cost him his comfort for 20 years. That just sounded too evil to him to consider, even though he had expressed concerns about the look in the eyes of someone he had engaged in in 2014 that he had noticed. 


In 2023 the POU/POE ordinance came back up but it was not announced to the water system owners. The acquaintance had to find out from someone else. Why would they do that? Why would they not contact the people most affected prior to passing an ordinance?  This was really starting to look more and more organized with every event. 


The acquaintance hatched a plan. He’d write a POU/POE Opposition letter. He’d send it in to the two contacts Milrod had engaged with in 2014. He’d force an acknowledgement email to make sure he had valid email addresses -- while not asking for a rebuttal to make sure they had little reason not to confirm their email addresses. Once those were confirmed he’d send in a joint demand for he and Milrod to try to gain position statement from Encarncaion and Sandoval to see if they could produce anything that made sens for Milrods 20 year torture. 


The plan worked. Both Encarnacion and Sandoval acknowledged after some follow-up and the next day Milrod’s demand was sent to them with a large audience on the cc and possibly the bcc. 


Typically one to push for followups something horrifying happened shortly after that. 


The acquaintance went into the Monterey County Housing and Urban Development office  (MC HUD -the building permits office) to try to find somebody who could explain to him why he had been told he could not put a jrADU in his home a year prior and why he was still being told that, and why there was nothing online to clearly explain the rules. This was a big deal to State Government to lighten housing stress, Santa Cruz county had a really informative website and Monterey County had little to nothing and technicians kept saying there was no final ordinance for the coastal zone (after years of delay).   A senior manger happened to be near the desk when he started the dialogue. She got involved and stated if all he wanted to do was convert an existing space to a Junior ADU that was just a building with permit , with conditions, and not subject to the delayed ordinance. Half relieved and half furious because it meant he could have gotten it with a prior permit and it was going to cost another $2000 or so, he was just glad he got that news. Then the Senior Manager handed him a document that had the MC EHB logo on it with a title of “Domestic (Potable) Water Supply” that was specific for ADU qualifications. 


Do you know what the problem is with that title?  “Domestic” is not equal to “Potable” per any stature or dictionary.  It was stamped with a 2020 create date. Who would create such a thing? That’s confusing and could even be considered inverted , because it was inverting a truth. Then it got worse. A quick review revealed the document did NOT delineate rules based on well connection count, the document was presenting statutes and rules that would apply to the largest of systems not the small ones were many people may be able to create an ADU or Jr ADU -- and on the 2nd page, it stated,

 “For private wells and water systems with 2-14 service connections, the EHB is limited to approving water treatment systems that treat 100% of domestic water from water source (centralized). A device under the Kitchen sink (point-of-use) or a system installed just outside dwelling (point-of-entry) are not currently allowable for compliance”. 


The acquaintance had a 9 connection system. He owned it. He managed it. He had been the responsible contact with the county.  He had obtained old tests cards. He knew the county was only doing “monitoring and reporting" with no forced compliance or followup when a test came back for bacteria. None of this made any sense. From what he saw in Title 22, the county and state didn’ even have the regulatory authority to enforce drinking water standards (aka they could NOT require the well to deliver potable water to the connections)


Yet, this was the EXACT situation that Milrod stated he had been subject to for two decades. 


Nothing lined up. 


The acquaintance (I) had been stifled for two years trying to get an ADU permit.  When I finally went into the office and started asking questions I got logical support and found out I could have done it years prior.  I was given this document as part of that process but now I was being told if my system was out of compliance which it was about 1 quarter a year with no penalty, i’d have to put a centralized system on to treat all water from a 9 connection well to get my 40 ounces of drinking water a day for myself , my partner and an ADU tenant?


This seemed like it was all about the suppression of ADU permits, using MC EHB as the excuse, and everything seemed  HIGHLY illegal. 


How is it I was facing the same hoax Milrod had faced 20 years prior and how many others had been subjected to this as well?  Who was controlling all the real estate in Monterey County? Who had a vested interest in thwarting development?


I expressed concern to the woman who handed me the document. I told her I felt the document grossly misrepresented law.  As I recall she shrugged and suggested it may not be a problem but that it was a EHB decision. 


I applied for my permit. I sent the EHB a copy of a recent test for my well (or told them which well it was and they looked it up) and as I recall my permit was approved with no further dialogue. 


I started educating Milrod on the document. As i recall, it took him a month or two to even wrap his head around the idea he indeed seemed to have been subjected to a hoax that was still in play. Taht is NOT an easy thing to process. 

We started working back through his story, using a few slight hypnotic techniques.  We realized that his first denial in 2004 time frame was from MC EHB but we were able to identify about 4 different people who may have initiated it. It may not have been initiated by MC EHB, they may have just been used as the permit stopper. 


There is more to this story. It gets worse but full clarity was not available until I learned how to use Grok for Support. That’s when I was able to gain understanding about all relevant statutes, apply them to do the document and that’s when we discovered that the few sections on it  properly represents CA or county law with clarity. 


Now, Imagine this...


Imagine you are Ric Encarncion, Marni Flagg, or Cheryl Sandoval. Imagine you worked hard to build a career. Imagine you finally get a good paying job at the county in Environmental Health that presumably was of interest to you. Imagine you may have moved for the job.  


Then imagine that after you started work and learned about some of the rules the statutes that applied to your job somebody senior to you handed you this document and said, “this is what we go by”. 


Imagine that you slowly or instantly realize it contradicts the statutes that you are supposed to enforce?


What do you do?


While what was just presented is really quite bad,  there’s quite a bit of other stuff that came out when preparing this demand that seems to show favoritism for local contractors, favoritism for corporations ,and it’s possible most people will view the actual compliance testing process that was shoved on people for decades as being a total farce too that would have lead people to a false sense of security about their water with untold damaging effects. 


This is a bad story to tell, but it had to be told -- and answers need to be provided to make sure everything that has been concealed is revealed.