[Marxism] I never touch the stuff myself

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

[Idyllwild http://www.idyllwild.com/ is a magnificent mountain  
outcropping above Palm Springs, California. It is well-known for  
ISOMATA (a high school of the arts http://www.idyllwildarts.org/),  
hiking, back packing, rock climbing http://www.vertical-adventures.com/  
and more. For Southern Californians, a winter trip to see these  
beautiful mountains covered with snow can be as beautiful and thrilling  
as a summer day trip.

[I went to high school about 50 miles away in Beaumont, California, and  
spent many weekends just wandering the trails, reading, and napping (at  
that height, if you are not used to it, you nap a lot). Between my  
junior and senior year in high school, I spent two weeks at ISOMATA,  
when it was an adjunct of the University of Southern California and  
before it became a permanent arts school.]
____________

An Idyll Interrupted
* After a Hiker Noticed That a Local Creek Had Dried Up, He Suspected  
His Neighbor Was Operating a Commercial Spring-Water Business. And Then  
Things Got Ugly in Idyllwild.

Idyllwild Creek, to the east, is a shallow, sluggish tributary, clogged  
with willows and grasses; Lily Creek, to the west, races down a steep  
hillside, its course strewn with boulders the size of mastodons. Both  
creeks would vanish during the fall dry season, but Lily invariably ran  
stronger and lasted longer. In August 1998, however, Stroud noticed  
something strange: Lily Creek ran dry before its counterpart. "It  
didn't add up," he says. Stroud had heard rumors of someone selling  
local spring water to bottlers, and he wondered whether that might  
explain the anomaly. One day he clambered half a mile up the rocks.  
There, just above State Highway 243, he found what he took to be the  
answer: a pipe that emerged from the slope, split in two, and ran down  
to a pair of steel tanks by the roadside.

Stroud had stumbled upon the site of Idyllwild Mountain Spring  
Waterworks, Inc. The discovery would launch him and his neighbors into  
a continuing conflict. There have been blockades, vandalism, threats of  
violence. One combatant served time for battery. And Idyllwild is not  
unique. In rustic retreats across the country, the spring water wars  
are boiling over.
...

In widely publicized taste tests, participants have shown either a  
preference for tap water or an inability to distinguish it from bottled  
spring water. Yet a liter of bottled water typically retails for 1,500  
times the equivalent from your kitchen faucet.

Worse, environmentalists say, all those bottles may be despoiling the  
very landscapes depicted on their labels. Each year, the World Wildlife  
Fund estimates, around 1.5 million tons of plastic are used in water  
bottles. According to the Berkeley-based Ecology Center, most are made  
with the oil-derived PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, whose  
manufacture generates 100 times more emissions—including nickel,  
benzene, ethylbenzene and ethylene oxide—than an equal quantity of  
glass. Shipping 20 million tons of filled containers around the world  
consumes untold amounts of polluting fossil fuel.
...

What first drew Redwine's attention to Black's operation was the  
trucks. In 1999 their numbers increased to sometimes more than five a  
day. They would illegally cross the highway's double line and pull up,  
facing traffic, in the Caltrans turnout fronting Idyllwild Mountain  
Spring Waterworks. After filling their tanks, they would often reverse  
course—blocking the two-lane highway with the maneuver—and head  
downhill toward I-10. It didn't take Redwine long to connect the  
vehicles with the draining of Lily Creek. "That stream had been  
absolutely glorious," she says. "When I saw the trucks going, I said,  
'Wait just a minute!' "
...

By the summer of 2002, Idyllwild Water District meetings were packed  
with locals demanding that Black's pumping be halted. And on June 30, a  
few protesters resorted to direct action, parking four cars in the  
turnout overnight to prevent the water trucks—by then arriving at all  
hours—from filling up.

The next morning, all the vehicles had been vandalized. Tires were  
slashed, windows scratched, paint savagely gouged. Carved into the side  
of a pickup belonging to Daniel Pietsch were the words "Chuck Sucks."  
Chuck Stroud, who bears some resemblance to Pietsch, believes it was a  
case of mistaken identity. Pietsch decided to sue, and found a  
handwriting expert who identified the penmanship as Black's.

Not long after, officials began turning against Black.
...

Smith led the marchers to the foot of Black's driveway. Black climbed  
into his white Mercedes SUV. Then he pointed the vehicle toward Smith  
and stepped on the gas.

Mercifully, no one was hit. A deputy arrested Black for assault with a  
deadly weapon, terrorist threats and reckless driving. Free on bail,  
Black settled the civil complaint with the county, agreeing to shut  
down his business by 5 p.m. Aug. 5. When the hour came, a crowd  
gathered in the turnout by Idyllwild Mountain Spring Waterworks,  
brandishing a "CLOSED" sign.

In early November, Black pleaded guilty to a single count of battery  
and was sentenced to 60 days, on consecutive weekends, at Banning  
Correctional Institute. The terms of his probation included  
participation in an anger-management program. And this January, a  
small-claims judge ordered him to pay $5,000 in restitution for Daniel  
Pietsch's truck.

The conservancy and its sympathizers, however, see the war as far from  
over. Farther north, on desert land owned by the Morongo Band of  
Mission Indians, Nestlé recently built a 383,000-square-foot plant to  
extract and bottle spring water for its Arrowhead brand; the tribe and  
the company are sparring with state and local officials who say the  
operation would deplete an aquifer that serves the Coachella Valley.
[The Coachella Valley is one of the most important agricultural areas  
in Southern California.]
...

 Among the Idyllwild activists, Stroud and Smith avoid bottled water.  
"I just never got into the habit," Stroud says. Smith says: "It's a  
fad." As for Redwine, she has fallen off the wagon. Her explanation is  
that in 2002, over furious opposition, the Idyllwild Water District  
began tapping a uranium-tainted well to supplement the town's supplies.  
Water officials assured residents that the radioactive water would be  
so diluted as to pose little risk, but when Redwine had hair samples  
taken, she found her levels of uranium to be alarmingly high.

"One of the reasons I came here was the water," she says. "Now I don't  
trust it anymore."

In full at
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm- 
water31aug01,1,5889407.story?coll=la-home-magazine
or
http://makeashorterlink.com/?R4B6130F8




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