Wasting Water

The next time you have to ask for a glass of water in a restaurant, or have to flush your toilet twice or take a long shower because of the water restricting devices we are being required to install, think about this.

Down here in Los Angeles Harbor, on Miner Street, there is a huge pile of coal which is continuously replenished as ships load it up and take it to foreign buyers for the manufacture of steel. The coal pile is on land belonging to the city of Los Angeles. It is leased from the city by the Kaiser Corp.

The coal is brought in by train and piled up. Since the pile is in the windiest part of the harbor, coal dust has been a continuing problem, covering boats in the nearby marina, sifting down on the surrounding neighborhoods, and fouling the harbor waters. To keep the dust down, water cannons mounted on poles and on roving trucks spray the pile almost continuously.

I have just received figures which put the amount of water thus used at 105 million gallons a year. And, because salt has a negative effect on the manufacture of steel, those 105 million gallons a year are fresh water! That’s a lot of showers and a hell of a lot of glasses of water.

And this obscene waste of our precious water is all because they refuse to move the operation to a less windy part of the harbor.

By the way, the coal is shipped to Korea to make steel for Hyundais and to Taiwan to make steel for, among other things, the low-flow shower heads the DWP buys in Taiwan and mails to us.

RICHARD KARL

San Pedro