San Francisco (KGO) - First it was plastic bags, now San Francisco city leaders are considering banning plastic water bottles. The idea to kick the bottle is still in the early stages, but it appears to be gaining traction at City Hall.

Whether it is a music concert at Golden Gate Park or a street festival in North Beach, changes could be coming. If environmental leaders in San Francisco get their way, people would no longer be able to buy a bottle of water at a public event on city property. Instead, people would be encouraged to bring one of their own.

Miriam Gordon of Clean Water Action addressed San Francisco's Policy Committee of the Commission on the Environment Monday evening. She explained how she was able to pull off a plastic bottle-free event at last year's Maccabi Games -- a youth athletic event. Instead of being handed bottled water, some 3,000 participants filled their reusable bottle at several water stations. Gordon believes, the same kind of thing can be done at even bigger events.

"Tickets can say 'bring your own bottle' on them," said Gordon. "When you go online to buy your tickets, there can be all kinds of information online about what to expect when you get to the event."

Read the complete article on KGO-TV's web site.

Many communities are affected by taint

By Michelle Hatfield
The Modesto Bee, May 5, 2010

The water is not safe. Parents buy bottled water to drink, cook and bathe their infants.

Some children have suffered painful intestinal aches.

These people aren't from a Third World country - they live in Stanislaus County's outlying areas such as Monterey Tract Park and Riverdale Park, where access to clean, healthy drinking water is hard to come by.

Residents and clean water organizers talked about their plight Tuesday in rallies and news conferences across California, in conjunction with National Drinking Water Week.

Thank you for your recent series of articles about our water and the way we use it ("Resurrecting buried streams," June 13; "Short supply spurs push to recycle water," June 14; "Should the state cap water exports?" Insight, June 13; "Make saving water a way of life," Insight, June 13).

The catastrophe in the delta should be a warning that our current practice of using water once and throwing it away is too wasteful and environmentally destructive for the 21st century.

In the April 26 edition of the Los Angeles Times, Clean Water Action program manager Andria Ventura had the following letter to the editor published:

Triclosan shouldn't be in consumer products

As a water advocacy group, Clean Water Action supports banning triclosan and its related chemicals in consumer products, despite industry's claims that it is safe. Our reasons are simple:

Following citizen testimony including that of Clean Water Action Program Director Andria Ventura, Santa Clara County Supervisors moved toward banning single-use paper and plastic bags at a meeting on April 13. Andria's testimony is one of many actions that make up Clean Water Action, California's "Take the Trash Out" campaign to curtail the flow of trash into California's waterways.

Noting that numerous recent municipal and county ordinances as well as the Santa Clara County proposal are leading similar state legislation, Andria told KTVU television news, "What's happening at the local level will drive what's happening at the state level."

To the Editor:

Calling the statement by the Food and Drug Administration about the plastic additive bisphenol-A "a shift in position" from the Bush era is an overstatement.

In 2008, the F.D.A. ignored recommendations of its advisory board and several other government scientific bodies when it determined that BPA is safe. That decision, large portions of which were drafted by chemical industry lobbyists, relied on a couple of industry-financed studies. It contradicted hundreds of studies showing that at extremely low doses BPA causes numerous reproductive abnormalities and other health effects related to the endocrine system, like obesity and diabetes.

Published in The San Francisco Gate, Tuesday, January 12, 2010

How can Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger justify making California's coast the sacrificial lamb for state parks ("Trade-off: Use oil drilling cash to save parks, governor says," Jan. 9)?

In the new budget, he proposes funding state parks by using oil lease revenues from opening up California's coast to offshore oil drilling for the first time in 40 years.

He removed $140 million from parks in the general fund to be replaced with oil lease revenues from the Tranquillon Ridge project off the coast near Santa Barbara, estimated to generate $1.8 billion over the next 14 years. Other oil lease projects are lining up for approval - it's a Pandora's box for the coast.