Congressional spill

The deepening drought and increasing talk of using recycled sewage for drinking water has been very good of late for city hall lobbyists. Latest to profit is Southwest Strategies, founded by ex-Tribune reporter Alan Ziegaus, who last year helped blow up the Barrio Logan community plan with a referendum campaign funded by military contractors. His newest client is OmniEarth, a tech company from Arlington, Virginia, which “offers data in geospatial solutions and information systems,” according to a July 13 lobbyist disclosure filing. The firm, which recently raised $5 million in fresh investment cash, is seeking “city purchase of OmniEarth system for monitoring water use.” OmniEarth founder Lars Dyrud told the Washington Business Journal in May that “the water crisis is bringing the market to us faster than we can get to it.”

Meanwhile, Vectis Strategies of Carlsbad, co-founded by Democratic ex-congressman Tony Coelho and his former Republican colleague Ron Packard, has checked in to San Diego’s city hall influence-peddling game on behalf of Hadronex of Escondido. Vectis got $9000 to lobby for a pilot program for the city to try out Hadronex’s “smartcover sewage spill prevention technology,” according to a July 10 filing. “The SmartCover® system has emerged as the industry leader in widely deployable sanitary sewer collection system management,” says Hadronex’s website.

Mansion prices for the super-rich are dropping on Point Loma. The asking price on Zillow.com for the three-bedroom, four-and-a-half bath bay front house at 979 Scott Street — next door to a similar place once occupied by billionaire Bill Koch, a semi-estranged sibling of his more political brothers Charles and David — recently plunged $2 million, to $8,958,888.