Hardships Grow as S.D. Water Woes Continue

At noon Thursday, with the temperature topping out at 95 degrees, 125 thirsty citizens, armed with five-gallon buckets and looks of desperation, stood in line at a supermarket.

They were waiting for cool, clear spring water from a company willing to pour it for free. One by one, their buckets were filled by a man squirting the water from a nozzle that looked just like the one at a gas station.

“I guess this is the future,” said Paul Erlich, the man operating the water tank for the Palomar Mountain Spring Water Co., which plans to provide the same service in El Cajon on Saturday and Sunday. “We’re here from 10 (a.m.) to 7 (p.m.), and at the rate we’re going, we’ll use up 3,000 gallons by the end of the day.”

In Santee, where the temperature hit 97 Thursday afternoon, dozens of customers pulled up at the self-serve water depot provided by the Pure-Flo Water Co. on Mission Gorge Road. Except for the liquid being pumped, the place looked just like a gas station in the midst of an oil crisis.

Pure-Flo officials said they had fielded 400 calls from new customers in the wake of last Friday’s break in a seven-foot-diameter pipeline that delivers treated, imported water for the 375,000 persons in the Otay, Helix and Padre Dam water districts.

And they’ve had to hire an extra driver to accommodate the numerous requests from customers wanting Pure-Flo’s deep well water trucked directly to their homes, said manager Ninfa Otero.

Santee resident Pete Peters said he decided to stock up on Pure-Flo after washing his false teeth with tap water Thursday morning and all but gagging on the taste.

“I put ‘em in, and they tasted like an old stale aquarium. I used to work in a fish store, I know,” Peters said. “Never tasted anything so bad in all my life! It was like old algae from the bottom of a lake.”

It tasted like that because it was that. Along with Alpine, Riverview and Lakeside, Santee is served by the Padre Dam Municipal Water District, which got a neighborly boost this week from the Helix Water District. Helix’s emergency supply comes from the Lake Jennings Reservoir, which is the water Peters was tasting, and which most of the East and South County will drink until the new pipe is pump-worthy by early next week.

“Yes, it does have a taste,” said Shirley Massie, spokeswoman for the Helix Water District, which serves La Mesa, Lemon Grove, Spring Valley and El Cajon but is providing emergency water to the Otay Water District as well.

“Be reassured, we’re quite meticulous about the treatment of our water. But, yes, the compound formed by Lake Jennings algae is extremely potent. It’s impossible to get the taste out, but it’s completely safe to drink. I hear if you put a lime or lemon in it, it makes it better.”

Massie was optimistic Thursday about the crisis being resolved on Monday instead of Tuesday, as first predicted. She said concrete to repair the new pipe, where the rupture occurred in Scripps Ranch, would be poured today instead of Saturday, thus speeding the process.

However, San Diego County Water Authority spokesman Mark Stadler said Thursday that the pipeline is not expected to be in operation again until Tuesday.

Two sections, each 20-feet long, are being replaced. The replacement parts were specially manufactured in Los Angeles County in three sections, Stadler said. On Thursday, workers spent most of the day constructing a steel frame around the new sections.

Concrete will be poured around the frame today, but officials will not begin piping water through the pipeline until engineers certify that the concrete is cured, Stadler said.

As the crisis eased somewhat during its sixth day, with some districts allowing small amounts of lawn and garden watering, residents of the areas affected complained of foul-tasting, foul-smelling water, dying plants, children desperately in need of baths and the overall stress that such conditions impose.

“I’m leaving for Tahiti (today),” said El Cajon’s Bernie Wethington, who was among those standing in line at Daniel’s Village Station Market in La Mesa for the water provided by the Palomar company. “We had the trip planned, but golly, it couldn’t come at a better time.”

Wethington said that he and most of his neighbors had “cut way back,” to the point of making their children bathe together in two-inch bath water and instituting a paper-plate-only rule at mealtime.

Mary Tyler from La Mesa said she had avoided laundry altogether but may be “forced to do it at a San Diego city Laundromat not affected by this stuff.”

La Mesa’s Pauline Lewis, who’s raising two grandchildren, called the crisis “horrible, one of the worst things we’ve ever been through.” Lewis was filling up with 12 gallons of spring water when she said, “It’s bad enough in the house, with cooking and bathing, but my plants are another matter. They’re dying faster than I thought they would, or could.”

Evelyn Walters of Santee said she was flushing her toilet “only if we absolutely have to” and watching her plants die as the sun bakes them drier day by day.

Dave Cleary of Santee, who said he values a healthy, attractive lawn and garden as one of the “rights” of suburban living, fears the crisis may produce an expensive aftermath.

“We’re not taking showers, we’re not washing dishes, and we’re looking at a big bill if we have to replace a lot of trees and shrubs,” Cleary said.

Santee’s Pat Ward said that, until the shower water gets hot, she collects the initial cold blast in a bucket to be used later for dishes and plants.

Like a lot of people interviewed Thursday, Ward’s worst fear about the crisis is what it poses for the future. If the pipe was damaged more severely than first believed, she said, what does that say about the system as a whole?

Several people expressed concerns about earthquakes and the potential cost of a massive pipeline overhaul.

“I don’t want to raise my armpits too high,” said Santee’s Pete Peters. “I’m not sure which smells worse--me or the water I’ve used. The worst thing about this is the future. We have got to get ahead of it and fast.

“It’s the same with oil and gasoline. We may be on the verge of disaster. Let’s face it--California is a desert. Maybe we ought to stop treating it as thought it isn’t. We should have learned long ago that you don’t mess around with nature. All this thing has done is bring that home in a big way. We better conserve--or else.”

Times staff writer H.G. Reza contributed to this story.