WATER MONITOR: Keeping Los Angeles’ water clean...

WATER MONITOR: Keeping Los Angeles’ water clean is a big job, and getting bigger. The Department of Water and Power samples water from 150 sites--50 in the Valley. But the EPA says that’s not enough. It is requiring that four of the city’s open reservoirs be covered to prevent disease outbreaks (Valley Briefing, B2).

WE DEMAND A RECOUNT: Assemblywoman Paula Boland and Councilman Nate Holden had a friendly tiff the other day over how many City Council districts are wholly Valley territory. She said three. He said four. Boland eventually talked Holden out of his contention that Joel Wachs was the fourth all-Valley lawmaker. Holden should have stuck to his guns: As Wachs’ chief of staff, Greg Nelson, put it, “We’re like totally a Valley district.”

THE NOISE OF SUMMER: City Councilman Marvin Braude is tilting at those pesky leaf blowers again. Despite failing to ban them six years ago, Braude has scheduled a hearing Monday on a new proposal to ban the sale and use of gas-powered blowers throughout the city. But those who worry summer will not be the same without the familiar whine needn’t fear. Electric-powered leaf blowers will escape the ban.

TRIUMPHAL TOUR: Most Americans have as much trouble following the rules of cricket as they do finding the tiny nation of Sri Lanka on a map. But to the avid followers of the game long identified with the British upper classes, the arrival this week in Van Nuys of the world champion Sri Lankan batsmen is nothing less than an event (B1).

ON SAFARI: In L.A., the land of fast food and “Fast Times,” the problem can be too much kitsch and too little time. But even columnist Scott Harris, whose job is to tap the Valley’s rich lode of the ersatz and the tacky, was unprepared for what he found at the almost legendary Safari Inn motel in Burbank, where a giant wrought-iron warrior looms over Olive Avenue (B1).