Water Ways

Southern Californians, especially young ones, only occasionally give a thought to where their drinking water comes from. The subject may come up only when there are headlines like those tallying this year’s 200-plus days of drought or speculation on whether El Nino conditions this winter will bring storm clouds bearing 200 inches of rain to make up for the shortage.

But for families interested in knowing something more about this important aspect of our local existence, a Saturday or Sunday drive up I-5 to Pyramid Lake can be eye-opening. There’s a “water museum” right by the Vista del Lago freeway exit.

Its official name is the Vista del Lago Visitors Center. There you can find out, among other things, how much drinking water we actually get from local rainfall (nearly none) and how much comes to us in pipes from 400 miles away (nearly all).

Along with the expected displays about how much fresh water we use in the bathroom and on the lawn, there’s a big area detailing how much is used in Southern California to do job-related things such as process a glass of orange juice (16 gallons) or manufacture the copy of The Times you read last Sunday (the same amount). Brewing, canning and shipping a six-pack of Coca-Cola, by the way, uses up 60 gallons. Simply making a pat of butter takes 92 gallons.

Kids will enjoy this place because there are cranks to turn, computer screens to poke and videos about artificial breeding methods for salmon (containing the kind of graphic natural science stuff that makes adults wince while kids watch saucer-eyed).

Kathy Simmons, a tour coordinator, was surrounded by a class of students on a weekend outing at the Vista del Lago Visitors Center recently.

“If there’s rain from El Nino, it’ll be here one day and gone the next,” she explained, “because it goes into the storm drains and into the Pacific--not into the reservoir system.”

Then she told of how the water we drink has to be piped in from sites north of Sacramento, east of the Sierra or from the Colorado River. The water is stored in Pyramid Lake right below the visitors center, as well as at four other sites around Los Angeles.

It seems that Southern California has enough well water and river flow to support only a third of our 16 million inhabitants. Two out of every three glasses of water we drink have to be piped in.

At first, this information didn’t make much of an impression on the audience of students--until later in the tour when they took to feverishly hand-cranking a machine that replicates the effort it takes to drag one bucketful of water over a mountain or desert into the Valley. Jodie Schwabauer, 12, a student at St. John’s Lutheran School in Oxnard, observed ruefully, 2Oh, how much water we waste . . . I didn’t know how much was used for a shower!”

Her classmate, Kaley Swift, 11, said that she had expected this “water museum” to have “different kinds of water--maybe in a long tube--and how to save it.” She was delighted with the presentation about the fish hatchery, a state facility above Sacramento built to allow salmon to breed despite having their natural habitat’s having been disturbed by the reservoir system.

Noting the boating, fishing and swimming going on in Pyramid Lake below the Vista del Lago center, some kids made such remarks as “Ugh, there’s swimming and boats in it. And we’re supposed to drink it?” Simmons was quick to point out, “We sell this water to 29 local agencies, and they purify it for drinking.”

The center is open during the week for the general public and school groups. Simmons and her staff provide an age-appropriate activities packet, including a “passport book” that third- through sixth-graders can have stamped as they go through the interactive exhibits.

BE THERE

Vista del Lago Visitors Center at Pyramid Lake is open weekdays and weekends 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Take I-5 to Vista del Lago exit, which is 30 minutes north of Magic Mountain. Free. (805) 294-0219.