And the Horse You Rode In On

Pornographer Larry Flynt, who has always been unhappy about having a 21-foot six-ton bronze statue of John Wayne on horseback in front of his office building, may finally see the fabled cowboy star ride off into the sunset.

Plans are afoot to move the American icon from Los Angeles down to Newport Beach in Orange County, where Wayne lived until his death in 1979 and a nearby airport is named for him.

Talk about odd couples. Wayne turned down a part in Mel Brooks' Western spoof "Blazing Saddles" because it was "too dirty" and refused to play "Dirty Harry" as unsuitable to his image. Flynt, the publisher of Hustler and exposer of the D.C. Madam's client list, inherited the statue in 1994 when he bought the building previously owned by a bank for whom Wayne had done TV commercials.

Now Flynt is musing over replacing Wayne with a work of art more suitable to his "adult entertainment" empire, perhaps a 50-foot phallus, but the Beverly Hills Fine Arts Commission might have something to say about that.

America's Drinking Problem

Residents of a county that calls itself the American Riviera will start drinking sewage today. Recycled, refined and filtered through aquifers, but still...

The Orange County Water District in southern California will turn on the world’s largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water. The process, called by proponents “indirect potable water reuse” and “toilet to tap” by the dubious, will be getting close scrutiny from authorities elsewhere.

Water shortages have been making news this year, not only in California, but Florida, Georgia and across the country. The federal government projects that at least 36 states will face shortfalls within five years from a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl and waste.

The problem is universal. A UN report has predicted that more than half of humanity will be living with water shortages, depleted fisheries and polluted coastlines within 50 years.

New technology may ease the problem, but awareness and conservation will be required, even more so than with global warming, where changes in public behavior can do only so much to help. (For a start, we could re-think excessive lawn-watering, car-washing, etc. with tap water that might be used for drinking rather than environmentally damaging bottled water.)

"The need to reduce water waste and inefficiency is greater now than ever before," says Benjamin Grumbles of the Environmental Protection Agency. "Water efficiency is the wave of the future."

We had better all drink to that.