Across the Pond

Finally. California's new governor, Jerry Brown, was expected to proclaim today that the drought which has officially plagued the Golden State since 2009 is over. This winter brought precipitation by the tub full: record breaking rain fall in December, plenty more rain in March, 50 feet of snow in parts of the High Sierra. Bottom line we got about 50 percent more precipitation than in an average year. Looking out a restaurant window in Mammoth on March 18 This is great news of course - though we in L.A. should never see ourselves as off the hook. Southern California is a desert. The water that we use here always comes from somewhere else, be it the Colorado River or the High Sierra, and if the drought had an up-side it was that many of us became aware of this. Angelenos aren't - and probably never will be - saints when it comes to environmentalism but as I have said before, we try and there is one L.A. characteristic that works in our favor whenever change is needed: we...

When it comes to environmentalism we Angelenos are not exactly known to be heavily invested. Quite the opposite. L.A. is synonymous with cars and freeways and too many miles driven - and that's just one aspect. The other day I was leafing through this month's issue of Whole Living magazine  when a reader's suggestion caught my eye: Etienne L. is telling us that he has started to collect "all the dregs" in his family of four's water glasses "to take care of the house plants". Etienne simply empties "the last drips into a pitcher instead of pouring them down the drain". He thereby saves "enough water for (his) indoor plants and potted herb garden". Now that's what I call commitment. Dregs for plants. Etienne is from San Francisco of course (Oakland, to be precise). We in L.A. could never pull that one off - but it's not like we don't try to be green. At least some of us. Take an enterprise called Arroyo Food Co-op i...

It's the simple things we miss most when we move to a different country. For me, when we leave Austria this summer, it'll be the clean, refreshing taste of unfiltered tap water. To enjoy drinking water straight from the faucet in a city as large as Vienna - what a luxury! Vienna's drinking water comes from springs located to the Southwest of town, in the mountains of Lower Austria and Styria. It travels around 140 miles, through two large aqueducts which were opened in 1873 and 1910, both under the reign of longtime Emperor Franz Josef I. The springs are part of a water reserve, and the water is so clean, it does not have to be treated. There is, of course, no such thing in Los Angeles. It's a desert. What runs out of the tap is ground water or water from the Colorado River and the slopes of the Sierra. In Southern California my favorite drinking water comes in plastic bottles. It's a designer's concoction, manufactured by one of the food giants of this worl...