A Sprinkling of News in the Wilson Water Saga

The latest casualty of the state’s lingering drought is a 6-by-12-foot section of Gov. Pete Wilson’s Sacramento front lawn. But rather than replace the dead grass with cactus or some other drought-resistant covering, state workers have re-sodded it.

“There was already grass there, so we filled in the area,” says Dept. of General Services spokeswoman Anne Garbeff.

Besides, Garbeff adds, state workers have also replaced dead plants in Wilson’s yard with 10 drought-tolerant junipers.

The summer spruce-up is the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Wilson’s water use. Last March, after the governor beseeched state residents to conserve, it was discovered that his residence was using well above the state average. The gallonage dropped precipitously once a detection team discovered a ruptured swimming pool valve.

By June, Wilson’s usage had again increased--from 175 up to 650 gallons a day. The sprinkling campaign was undertaken, Administration officials said at the time, in an effort to save the lawn.

NEW IDEAS

Political postcards: Used to be that the Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown were the main attractions adorning postcards of San Francisco.

Mayoral candidate Frank Jordan is trying to change that, with a set of eight picture postcards lambasting the Administration of incumbent Art Agnos.

Among the scenic views depicted on “The Agnos Years--Things to Be Proud” series are a homeless man with a shopping cart, the half-demolished Embarcadero Freeway and a graffiti-riddled bus.

Why dine alone?: San Francisco, always a hotbed of innovative twists, is also the site of a newfangled merger between computers and cappuccino. Wayne Gregori, a local entrepreneur, has installed terminals in tables at five coffeehouses, charging customers $1 for every 15 minutes of electronic chatter with others hooked into his network.

The sipper/typers range from youths with Mohawk hairdos to yuppies--social types that might otherwise find trouble conversing.

“When you engage face to face in a conversation in a cafe, before a word comes out, you’ve pinpointed that person in our society by the way they dress and look,” Gregori said. “By computer, no one knows who the hell you are, so everyone is an equal.”

State Prisoners in California

California’s prison population surpassed 100,000 this last spring, four times the number of prisoners incarcerated a decade ago, according to state officials. As of Aug. 11, the 21-prison system held 101,847 adult inmates. Prison officials attribute the rapid growth of the prison population to tougher sentencing laws, an increase in the number of drug-related crimes and the state’s general population growth.

Below are the prisons with the 10 highest number of inmates:

PRISON NUMBER OF INMATES 1) Calif. Medical Facility, Vacaville 7,676 2) Calif. State Prison, Folsom 7,277 3) Calif. Men’s Colony, San Luis Obispo 6,200 4) Correctional Training Facility, Soledad 6,098 5) Sierra Conservation Center, Jamestown 5,989 6) Calif. Institution for Men, Chino 5,965 7) Calif. Correctional Center, Susanville 5,780 8) Calif. Correctional Institution, Tehachapi 5,694 9) Calif. State Prison, Corcoran 5,455 10) Calif. State Prison, San Quentin 5,455

SOURCE: California Department of Corrections, Sacramento

Compiled by Times Editorial Researcher Tracy Thomas

BUDGET DRAIN

Cash flow problem: With California consumers recycling cans and bottles at record rates, the state Department of Conservation could run out of money to pay for rebates later this year.

Officials estimate that 84% of beverage containers sold in the state from January to July were recycled--a total of 4.8 billion containers.

The financial squeeze has arisen because consumers are paid 2 1/2 cents for each container returned--while the state collects a fee of 2 cents from manufacturers. With the department’s $50-million reserve fund dipping, officials have put the state Legislature on notice to provide more money before the fund is totally drained.

MEDIA WATCH

Mixed reviews: “Are There Aliens on Mt. Shasta?”

Sounds like the latest issue of the National Enquirer. Instead, it’s a front cover headline on the latest issue of Outside magazine.

The story scathingly attacks the New Age sorts who have made the Northern California peak a mecca. “Shasta has become a lodestone for everyone from climbers to kooks,” the magazine reports. “They flock to it on various missions of renewal: mystics, monks and visionaries; color therapists and crystal merchants; Sierra Clubbers and nudists; a vast army of faithful awaiting the dawn of the Age of Aquarius; seekers of all sorts.”

Forbes, meanwhile, takes a swipe at the “wacky economics” engaged in by city leaders of San Francisco. Officials continue to hit the business community “with a barrage of taxes, shortsighted legislative initiatives and the nation’s most Draconian building regulations,” the business magazine asserts. The city’s Board of Supervisors is characterized as “a ragtag collection of soapbox orators and political hangers-on with little economic sense.”

So what’s good in California? The desert.

Joshua Tree National Monument, according to the September issue of the National Geographic Traveler, offers “an embracing, cleansing, profoundly soothing silence.” And the Mojave, Outside reports in a travel piece on last-minute summer escapes, is “a vast, craggy, and unspeakably lovely world.”

EXIT LINE

“Jerry (Brown), having failed in his quest for intergalactic office, is now looking at the presidency. This is certainly at the top of everyone’s list. I figure he’s going to marry Madonna during the first term in the White House and just be the hottest thing ever.”

--Duane Garrett, campaign manager for U.S. Senate candidate Dianne Feinstein, commenting in the San Francisco Examiner on the presidential trial balloon being floated by former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.