Water Supply

Question: Is bottled water really safer than tap water? How can one make an intelligent choice between Sparkletts, Arrowhead and the others? As for their "deep wells" claims--what about ground-water contamination? How effective is the monitoring of bottled water, and who does it?--B.S. Answer: Everyone in the bottled-water industry delicately tiptoes around the "safety" aspect of what it replaces--tap water.

Environmental activist Erin Brockovich is one of the main talking heads of Oscar-winning director Jessica Yu's "Last Call at the Oasis,"a new documentary sounding the alarm about an impending global water shortage from the producers of "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Food, Inc. "The film looks at diminishing water sources in Central California's agricultural belt and in Nevada's Lake Mead, which could affect L.A. if trends continue. Brockovich, an Agoura Hills resident who was portrayed by Julia Roberts in a 2000 eponymous biopic, has continued her work on behalf of communities with water pollution as the president of Brockovich Research & Consulting.

"Last Call at the Oasis" is a playful title for a film that couldn't be more deadly serious. A thorough examination of the epic crises threatening the world's water supply, crises that few people are paying attention to, this documentary tells you to be afraid, very afraid. Because the water situation is so dire, it has been examined before, in a well-received earlier documentary called "Flow. " But several factors combine to make "Last Call" stand out from the crowd, not the least of it being the surprising artistry with which it's been made.

"Last Call at the Oasis" is a playful title for a film that couldn't be more deadly serious. A thorough examination of the epic crises threatening the world's water supply, crises that few people are paying attention to, this documentary tells you to be afraid, very afraid. Because the water situation is so dire, it has been examined before, in a well-received earlier documentary called "Flow. " But several factors combine to make "Last Call" stand out from the crowd, not the least of it being the surprising artistry with which it's been made.

Name a cash cow in this sprawling city of ragged slums and glass-walled office buildings and it's almost certain there's an organized crime syndicate behind it. The illegal operations, routinely referred to as mafias, are everywhere. There's a land mafia that commandeers prime real estate, a sugar mafia that conspires to control sugar prices, and even a railway mafia that forges train tickets and pilfers locomotive parts. For those on the city's bottom rung, however, the underworld entity they revile the most is the water tanker mafia, a network of trucking firms that teams up with corrupt bureaucrats to turn water into liquid gold worth tens of millions of dollars each year.

California should more aggressively enforce the state's ban on wasteful water use and crack down on inefficient irrigation practices, a state watermaster recommends. In a report that will be presented next week to the State Water Resources Control Board, Delta Watermaster Craig Wilson wades into a potentially explosive area of water law: the "reasonable use" doctrine in the state Constitution. The principle, reinforced in statute and court decisions, holds that a water right does not include the right to waste water and mandates that "the water resources of the state be put to beneficial use. " Although it's a cornerstone of California law, the clause has been enforced mostly on a case-by-case basis, usually when one person claims another's water use is unreasonable.

In light of the Point Loma sewage disaster, we should look to San Diego County Water Authority's Capital Improvement Program for inspiration and future water supply. Unlike the San Diego Clean Water program's proposal to build seven more sewage plants to generate reclaimed water, the CIP is expanding and rehabilitating existing infrastructure. The CIP plan will bring an additional 400 million gallons per day into San Diego (on top of 580 MGD now imported). This program involves a sixth pipeline; improving old, undependable pipelines; expansion and constructing more storage for emergency supply.

Lake Okeechobee's declining water level once again threatens to generate water-supply ripple effects throughout south Florida, leaving less water for thirsty crops and lawns as well as an ecosystem trying to rebound from years of abuse. The big lake is south Florida's backup water supply, relied on to replenish drinking water for some communities and tapped for irrigation by sugar cane growers and other farmers. During droughts, the lake also is a barometer for water conditions across the region.

With California's budget crisis resolved for the moment, state lawmakers Thursday turned their attention to another emergency: a three-year drought that has left key reservoirs at 35% of capacity. Legislators stepped forward with plans to ask voters to borrow as much as $15 billion for projects to expand and improve the state's water supply. "This is the session to aggressively solve California's water challenges," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said Thursday.

Nitrate contamination of groundwater in some of the state's most intensely farmed regions has grown worse in recent decades and will continue to spread, threatening the drinking water supplies of more than 250,000 people, according to a new study. The research, conducted by UC Davis scientists, underscores the complexity of dealing with nitrate pollution, which is largely the result of nitrogen leaching into aquifers from fertilizers and manure applied to cropland. High nitrate levels have been linked to cancer and reproductive disorders and can be lethal to infants.

When Gov. Jerry Brown wrapped up his tenure last time through, he left a huge unresolved question for California: In the wake of a failed 1982 initiative to fund the so-called peripheral canal, how would the state distribute and safeguard its water supply? How to maximize the water supply and allocate it fairly has been debated often in the years since without producing a solution. But it now looks as if Brown intends to finish up this piece of unresolved business. Earlier this month, state water officials presented him with the basics of a plan that would have profound implications for the future of California, as well as the legacy of its governor.

A federal plan to preserve more than 9,000 acres of river habitat so that the threatened Santa Ana sucker fish can fulfill its complex life cycle has run into stiff resistance from critics who say it jeopardizes development and water supplies in the Inland Empire. Two cities and 10 water districts have sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in U.S. District Court over the agency's decision to preserve the habitat. They say that it imposes restrictions on water conservation, groundwater recharge and flood control operations that affect water supplies for 1 million residents, and that it threatens plans to sell Santa Ana River water to thirsty communities elsewhere.

Opponents malign it as "toilet to tap. " But a new National Research Council report says that reclaimed water can contribute a growing portion of the nation's drinking water supplies and be as safe as conventional sources. The assessment is especially relevant to Southern California, which has been a pioneer in recharging local aquifers with treated wastewater but still sends most of its runoff and treated water to the Pacific Ocean. A decade ago, public outcry and electoral politics thwarted a Los Angeles plan to partially replenish San Fernando Valley groundwater with recycled supplies.

Slips of paper are pasted to the broken door of the corner row house, violations for the garbage piled near the front steps. The stench of trash wafts up the dark interior stairway, where an ashtray filled with cigarette butts sits like an abandoned potted plant on the second-floor landing. Nobody lives here, at least not officially. But as you climb the narrow stairs to the top floor, a door opens into an airy apartment that is home to Tasha Glasgow, who is part of a largely invisible population of squatters occupying vacant homes across America.

A water-wise S.F. Re "In S.F., a feud over use of water," Dec. 13 Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has her facts muddled. The Tuolumne River is the source of San Francisco's water supply, not the Hetch Hetchy Valley. The reservoir is one of nine that San Francisco uses to store its water. Multiple studies have determined that using the Hetch Hetchy Valley is unnecessary and removing it from the system would result in a 4% loss of water. If San Francisco matched Orange County in developing sustainable local water supplies such as recycling, it could reduce its use of Tuolumne River water by up to 20%, easily offsetting what it would lose from Hetch Hetchy.

A call for an investigation into how San Francisco gets and consumes its water has sparked a feud between two congressional leaders on opposite sides of the aisle over a proposal to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, dammed 85 years ago to supply the city with clean water. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River), has asked the Interior Department to determine whether the city's use of 190 million gallons of Tuolumne River water per day, without first exhausting local resources, violates a law requiring that it import no more water than is necessary to meet its municipal purposes.

Over at the Sardis Lakeview Cafe, where the sign assures all "hillbillies and outlaws" welcome, folks can't help but worry about losing the lake. With water scarce in western drought-dry Oklahoma and neighboring Texas, cities are trying to tap the lake in Southeast Oklahoma, a region dubbed "Little Dixie" due to an influx of Southern settlers after the Civil War. Sardis Lake has become a battleground, with local Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes...