Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
June 4, 2009
5. Agencies, Programs, People –
Campaign stresses water over liquid sugar shockers
Las Cruces
Water district on 'fiscal watch' list
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Campaign stresses water over liquid sugar shockers
Long Beach
By Jim Steinberg
Drink more water, preferably from the tap.
That's the message being delivered this summer by a variety of
In the
This group, representing
Meanwhile,
Drinking a 20-ounce bottle of soda daily for a year can result in gaining as many as 25 extra pounds per year, Bogert said.
"With kids off for the summer, it's important to make the home soda-free," Bogert said.
Not only is weight gain an issue with soda, but there is a bone-density risk as well.
Generally, soda drinkers drink less milk. And teenage years are important for building bone density, she said.
Phosphoric acid, which is used in colas, has been shown in some studies to reduce the body's calcium absorption.
Sodas also increase the risk for cavities, Bogert said.
As part of the Desert Sierra Health Network's campaign, the group adopted a "Rethink Your Drink" campaign, said Jeanne Silberstein, project director for the Network for Healthy California - Desert Sierra Region and nutritionist in the San Bernardino County Public Health Department.
Whether the campaign is "Soda Free Summer" or "Rethink Your Drink," health professionals are urging consumers to substitute tap water for bottled water, sodas and other drinks.
The push for tap water is to save the consumer money and reduce the use of plastic bottles, Silberstein said. Water can be enhanced with lemon slices or the addition of other fruit.
Public health professionals warn that fruit juices can contain many calories. For example, 20 ounces of 100 percent apple juice contains 300 calories.
From the calorie perspective, it's better to eat whole fruit instead of drinking the juice, Silberstein and others say.
The "Be Sugar Savvy" campaign is designed to "increase consumer awareness of how many empty calories are hidden in foods deemed as healthy, such as yogurt, apple sauce and cereal bars," said Julie Maniford, a registered dietician and public health nutritionist with San Bernardino County.
Its purpose is to get consumers used to checking labels.
"There is no formula to identify how much sugar in a food is too much," Maniford said. "But the least amount of sugar you can consume is best to offset the risk of being overweight or obese and the chronic diseases associated such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and certain types of cancer.
According to "Be Sugar Savvy" information, Americans eat about 175 pounds of sugar per year, which is almost half a pound of sugar a day.
"It's no wonder that two out of three Americans are obese. They are eating 57 cubes of sugar per day," the materials say.
Think that's really hard to do?
Just have a Cinnabon cinnamon roll in the morning, a 20-ounce regular cola mid-morning, a 2.17-oz. bag of Tropical Skittles around lunch and a Rockstar Energy Drink in the afternoon, and you've got 58 teaspoons of sugar - more than half a pound, the materials say.
In
Campaigns across the state are using materials developed and piloted by the Alameda County Public Health Department in 2007, Goette said.
"No sense reinventing the wheel," Silberstein said.
Funding permitting, next year the Desert Sierra group will likely focus on a "Soda Free Summer" campaign.
As part of the current general education push, the Desert Sierra members are highlighting "Sugar Shockers!," a list of some popular food items ranked by the amount of sugar.
Here's some items on the list:
McDonald's Triple Thick Chocolate Shake (medium), a 16-ounce treat with 580 calories and 21 teaspoons of sugar.
Wendy's Vanilla Frosty (medium), 16 ounces, 410 calories and 15 teaspoons of sugar.
Snappy Lemonade Iced Tea, 16 ounces, 220 calories, 14 teaspoons of sugar.
Original Gatorade, 20 ounces, 140 calories and nine teaspoons of sugar.
Red Bull Energy Drink, 8 ounces, 110 calories, seven teaspoons of sugar.
Burger King Honey Flavored Dipping Sauce, 1 ounce, 90 calories, six teaspoons of sugar.
Del Monte Ketchup, one tablespoon, 15 calories, one teaspoon of sugar.
Well before the "Be Sugar Savvy" campaign, Brenda Parker, a
In that role, she developed a display of several common drinks and displayed the number of sugar packets next to each drink.
"Nine times out of 10, people are really surprised how much sugar is in each one," Parker said. "They tell me they had no idea there was so much sugar.
"A lot of times people say that they will not drink them anymore," she said.
Next school year, she plans to take her display to after-school programs at the
Las Cruces
San Jose
A
The check was delivered Wednesday afternoon on behalf of Philip Philippou for bulk water used to irrigate at the new Las Cruces Country Club, under construction in a subdivision.
"As a result of paying this debt, Mr. Philippou will have the opportunity to work with the city to secure future bulk water services," City Manager Terrence Moore said.
The city had placed two municipal utility liens on Philippou's property, and officials said earlier this week they were prepared to recommend next week that the Utilities Board stop water service if payment arrangements weren't made.
A May 28 letter to Philippou from the city's utilities attorney, Marcia Driggers, said delinquencies could increase by $36,000 a month as the city approached the height of summer watering season.
"When a debt like this becomes this large it affects the rest of the paying customers," Assistant City Manager Robert Garza said.
The city had been negotiating with Philippou to acquire part of a tract of land he owns, but negotiations recently broke down, said
Moberly said Philippou last year offered to transfer the entire tract to the city to satisfy his development company's obligation for the water for the golf course and other considerations.
"To facilitate those negotiations, the city refrained from taking any action to collect Philippou LLC's water bills. Recently, the negotiations stalled," he said. "As a result, and at the request of the city, Mr. Philippou has made arrangements to pay Philippou LLC's water bills in cash."
The tract in question recently was appraised at more than $330,000, Moberly said.#
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12518506?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com
Water district on 'fiscal watch' list
Bond rating company puts district's 'A+' score in danger
By Alisha Semchuck
A bond rating company recently put Palmdale Water District's revenue certificates of participation on a Rating Watch Negative.
Until this year, the water district maintained an "A+" rating, placing it in the upper medium grade for determining the interest rate it would pay on bonds and whether it would even qualify to float a bond.
Credit industry experts consider an "A+" rating as a fairly high score, meaning a lower interest rate would be charged for money borrowed. Although Fitch Ratings did not lower that "A+" rating at this time, putting the water district on a Watch Negative, in effect, is a warning.
The water district "could be downgraded in the next couple of months," said Cindy Stoller, director of Corporate Communications for Fitch Ratings at the company headquarters in
Fitch is one of three leading agencies, along with Moody's Corp. and Standard & Poor's, that analyze credit risks and basically grade government entities.
The Fitch analysis resulted from concern about cash deficits at the water district - what the rating company described as a "sharp drop in liquidity" this past year as well as a lawsuit filed against the water district by Palmdale. A court hearing is scheduled for June 8, with the city seeking a preliminary injunction against the recent rate hike approved by the water district board in a 3-2 vote during a public hearing on May 13.
Based on the new water rates, some customers' monthly bills went up 65%, and others' increased more than 140% as of May 14, with another hike set for Jan. 1.
Water district General Manager Randy Hill, who hired on in November, justified the amount of the increase, saying that without that much of a hike the district would run out of money and be left with between $114,000 and $140,000 on July 31, a situation that would require the water provider to default on paying bills, lay off employees, file bankruptcy or some combination of those three actions.
The report stated that the water district's liquidity dropped to $1.7 million at the end of 2008, "equivalent to 29 days of operating cash and only 11 days of working capital."
"However, the district does show $9.5 million in non-current investments and $3.9 million in restricted cash for debt service at the end of 2008," the Fitch report stated.
Because the 2007 year-end report was altered in 2008, or "restated" as the Fitch analysis put it, the $27.6 million in investments was moved from the current assets column and listed under the noncurrent assets. That makes a difference, because current assets are more readily converted to cash, for instance, the sale of district-owned land.
"In previous audits, investments were listed under current assets and have been at least $20.7 million since 2002. Restated 2007 results began to show a large drop-off in liquidity," the Fitch report said.
Below-average water sales, $2.5 million less than anticipated in the budget, and a decline of $3.1 million in capital improvement fees in 2008 also contributed to the Fitch analysis findings.
The water district board wants to secure a bond of between $15 million and $20 million in the next few months to replenish reserve funds spent down.
Robert Sakai, an analyst with Fitch in the company's
"By the end of the month, hopefully there will be some resolution as to how things are looking. Then we'll evaluate (the rating) at that point,"
Water district Director Dick Wells, chairman of the district's two-member Financial Committee, described the Fitch report as "disappointing."
Asked how the water district would remedy the situation, Wells said, "that's what we're going to discuss at our next meeting, to deal with the issue."
"Everything has been going downhill since Dennis left," said PWD Director Raul Figueroa, referring to former water district General Manager Dennis LaMoreaux, whom the board majority of Jeff Storm, Dave Gomez and Wells placed on paid administrative leave in December 2007, later forcing his resignation.
After that, Figueroa said, "everything just turned around on the entire district."
Figueroa said the financial problems have "been in the making a while now. We've done this to ourselves. We hurt ourselves, we as the board."
"I think we lost sight of things when we started taking (cash) out of our reserves instead of floating the bond earlier, when we still had money," Figueroa said, adding that floating a bond then for Phase 2 of the water treatment plant improvement was part of the plan. But the board decided not to follow that plan.
Had the full board been advised of the financial status at that time, Figueroa contended some of those improvements could have been delayed.
"The Financial Committee meets every month," Figueroa said. "What have they been looking at? You're going to tell me this never came up, that our reserves were depleting? When we spend, spend, spend and we're not taking in money to replenish the money we spent, thus the situation we are in now."
"In 2008, we were out of focus. The focus was the general manager issue at a time when we didn't need to go there," Figueroa said.
"Negative Watch means they're not sure of what the rating will be, but it doesn't look good," said former water district Director Gordon Dexter, who was defeated by Storm in the November 2007 election, after Storm ran a campaign accusing Dexter of supporting "toilet to tap" projects, the use of recycled sewage water for drinking purposes. Official water district records did not support Storm's campaign rhetoric. During his campaign, Storm also said he planned to get rid of a water district administrator.
One of his first actions was to go after LaMoreaux.
"All the years Dennis was there, he kept us afloat," Figueroa said. "I commend Dennis for doing that. He did a good job. While he was general manager, none of this ever happened."
Dexter said he thinks Fitch is waiting to see what happens in court on June 8 before deciding on a rating for the water district.
"My guess, if the judge throws out the rate increase, the Fitch score will go way down. If that gets tossed, bankruptcy is inevitable," Dexter said.
"Who's going to want to lend the water district money? I wouldn't. Would you?" A Watch Negative "means they're looking at the district and the rating will move, most likely (down). They haven't said how far down," Dexter said.
"An outlook means some sort of news, some pending action,"
http://www.avpress.com/n/02/0602_s2.hts
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