Men’s Club: October 2016 Update

At our September 6 meet, our guest speaker Jim Carol, a Niguel Shores resident who shared his family’s heart wrenching and uplifting story of their son, Taylor’s, successful battle with leukemia and the gift of charitable enterprise that grew out of this pain and suffering. In 2006, Taylor, age 11, was slightly injured playing baseball. During the subsequent medical checkup, he was diagnosed with a rare type of leukemia and given weeks to live. The Carols rushed to Seattle, one of the few places where treatment was available. Jim recounted how affected his family was by the crowds of people waving them goodbye as they left for Seattle. Taylor started a grueling process of chemotherapy, radiation, and bone marrow transplants, which resulted in him being a rare survivor.
Recalling that Taylor used video games to combat pain and boredom during the long periods of treatment and isolation, Jim and his family made a commitment to leverage innovation and technology to ease the pain and suffering of children recovering from cancer. This is how GameChangerCharity, came to be. With the help of the gaming industry, GameChanger Charity seeks to provide equipment, services, and scholarships to recovering families. The charity visits more than 8000 patients and 35 hospitals a year giving game equipment and scholarships to children who are facing life threating illnesses. Dana Point is teaming with GameChanger Charity to host The Games and Music Festival on Sunday, October 2, 2016, right across the street from Niguel Shores,at Sea Terrace Park, with all proceeds going to the children of Southern California facing life-threatening illnesses. See http://thegamesandmusicfestival.org/ or GameChangerCharity.org for additional details.
Our guest speakers on September 20 were Rick Erkeneff and Bill Green, directors on the South Coast Water District Board. (Yes, they are both Men’s Club members). Rick presented
a summary of our current water conservation efforts: 1) the community is doing well in conserving water (26%reduction in water use); 2) the District is increasing the use of recycled water; and 3) the District is moving forward with an innovative San Juan Basin Project to capture storm drain water and return it to ground-water storage. The troubling part of the drought “big picture” is that the entire US southwest water supply is at record lows, and we depend on that imported water for more than 67% of our water. Additionally, we can store only seven days of our water supply, which makes us extremely vulnerable in the event of earthquake damage to the aqueduct.
Bill then emphasized the need for a reliable fresh water source and pointed out that the District is pursuing the Doheny Ocean Desalination Project. This project will use slant-well drilling to intake water from under the ocean floor. This is desirable because it does not damage marine life and provides a natural pretreatment of the seawater. Additionally, the high salt-content water from the desalination process can be mixed with the outflow from our wastewater treatment facility; thus, reducing the desalination impact on the environment. Additional good news is that the cost to provide this desalinated water is comparable to that of our current supply. Please see http://www.scwd.
org/projects/doheny_ocean_desalination.asp for more detail on this proposed project.
—Jerry Allen