Wisconsin State Journal from Madison, Wisconsin • 49

Wisconsin State Journal, Sunday, February 24, 1991 OUTLOOK 3F California dream running dry San Jose plans to recycle wastewater again and again 17 Cafcforrea't major water-tuppry systems few VY) NEV vegetables. And agriculture, says the Farm Bureau, is a vital part of the state's economy. Farm income last year was $17.5 billion. A third of the state's land is farmed, providing a third of the state's jobs. At both the state and federal levels, however, officials are looking at ways to overcome physical and legal obstacles that prevent the transfer of water from agricultural to urban users.

The reappearance of the old town vacated, leveled and wiped off the map about 40 years ago when the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Kern River and created Isabella Lake, primarily as a flood control project has created a surge of interest. Tourists are coming for a look, and membership in the local historical society has almost tripled. By Lisa Lapin Knight -FUMer Newspapers SAN JOSE, Calif. When most Santa Clara County residents turn on the tap in the not-so-distant future, they will get recycled water that will have already run through our pipes four, five, even six times before. Plans are under way for San Jose to become the first northern California city to recycle its waste water into drinking water.

And the Santa Clara Valley Water District hopes to reuse half the 110 million gallons of fresh water that is dumped into San Francisco Bay every day from the San Jose water treatment plant "Drought may never be a bad word in the county again," said Pat Ferraro, water district board Continued from Page IF California the leading agricultural state in terms of farm receipts, will be able to offset part of the loss with groundwater supplies. But hundreds of thousands of acres will be left fallow because of the cutbacks, agricultural economists say, and the financial loss could run as high as $2 billion. "There may be some farmers who will be driven to the brink by this," said Bob Krauter, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau, which represents 83,000 farm families. "Some depend exclusively on state water." Most, he said, are scaling down their operations. Since the 1977 drought, he said, the state has added little new storage capacity.

"We should have been better prepared for this," he said. Others say renewed water devel opment is not the answer that there is little in the state left to be dammed and instead favor reducing the share of California's limited water supply that goes to agriculture, which accounts for only 3 percent of the state's economy. "It makes no sense to devote water to growing surplus crops while urban residents are facing catastrophic cutbacks," said U.S. Rep. George Miller, a Democrat who has sponsored several measures to decrease the amount of water used by agriculture and to tighten water subsidies.

Most elected officials representing agricultural areas say that subsidized water farmers pay as little as $3.50 for an acre-foot of water, while some California cities pay up to $200 is necessary to produce affordable fruits and A pilot water-recycling plant is expected to be up and running by 1993. And recycled water could be delivered to households in the Santa Clara Valley Water District by 1999, said Michelle Yesney, San Jose's director of environmental management People can no longer afford to balk at the thought of using reclaimed sewage even in drinking water, officials say. The technology exists to safely purify and reuse water. Cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Washington have been doing it for decades. "We're dinosaurs when it comes to recycling water," said water board member Joe Judge.

"But now we're getting with it, and we're serious as hell." Women justices' legal backgrounds different phrase usually suffices to explain the former governor's politics: "He's an Iron Ranger." Technically, that means he comes from the northeastern part of the state, the area including Hibbing, Chisholm and Ely, where Eastern European miners arrived in the early years of the century. In addition to iron ore and taconite, the area produced a tradition of liberal politics, unionism and intense identification with underdogs. Though Minnesota's population of minority citizens is small, Perpich stocked the lower levels of the state courts with them. And of his four Supreme Court appointments, three went to women. "I wasn't consciously trying to create a majority," Perpich recalled in an interview.

"As governor, I decided that the bench should be more reflective of society, and more than half of society are women." Oddly enough, Perpich, who named many women to other top feel picked upon yet, at least," he said. The seventh justice is John Simonett Perpich appointed Wahl to what was then a nine-member court in 1977, at a time when only four other states had women justices. When she joined the court, its quarters at the time, in the east wing of the state Capitol did not have a women's restroom. "They hadn't thought of it," she recalled. She used the public restroom in the corridor.

Some say Minnesota's first reflects a continuing legacy of Hubert Humphrey and the liberal Democrat-Farmer-Labor coalition he helped build. Still, until recently the state courts here were white male bastions; with names like Knutson, Christianson and Nelson, the roster of justices read like the telephone directory of the fictional Lake Woebegon. More attribute the development to Perpich. In Minnesota, one Rudy, who is a lawyer and an adviser to his father. "Over and over, I heard, 'But governor, only 15 percent of the lawyers in the state are But no one has expressed such sentiments publicly.

"To hear those comments, you'd have to go to the men's locker room at the athletic club," said Wahl. D. Gerald Wilhelm, the county prosecutor in Fairmont, doubted that critics could be found even in there. "I cannot recall a rational person being terribly upset over this," he said. "There are always some people who are going to gripe, but that's antediluvian thinking." The men on the court seem unperturbed by the change.

"It just all of a sudden happened, and I don't think anyone has thought of it yet," said Chief Justice A.M. (Sandy) Keith, 62. Justice Lawrence Yetka, 66, the court's senior member, appeared equally nonchalant "I don't Continued from Page JF are varied. Wahl, 66, is the divorced mother of five; Coyne, 64, never married; Tomljanovich, 59, has been married for many years; and Gardebring, at 43 the court's youngest member, married only recently. Public reaction to the historic change has been muted.

Still, it appears to have occasioned a quiet pride in the state's political tradition. "To the extent that we elected Rudy Perpich governor, it reflects a part of us: the part that feels liberal, likes the unconventional, likes to think of ourselves as socially advanced," said Eric Magnuson, a Minneapolis lawyer who often argues before the Supreme Court Privately, several male lawyers pleaded with Perpich not to appoint another woman. "With the white male establishment, one woman was OK and two women were not bad, but when it came to a majority, they were dead set against it," recalled Perpich's son, also named earlier this month at William Mitchell Law School, the alma mater of the former Chief Justice Warren Berger. Half of the students in the audience were women. So, too, were three of the four lawyers sitting at the counsel's table.

The women on the improvised bench questioned the lawyers, particularly the woman advocate, far more aggressively than did their male counterparts. The most barbed questions came from Coyne, who proved that in an increasingly egalitarian age, women judges, too, can be called "crusty." Later, a student asked the justices to assess the significance of the new balance on the court. The women justices disagreed even on that. "I don't think men are going to have to run for the hills, but there is definitely a woman's perspective," said Tomljanovich, recalling past humiliations she had experienced as a woman in her personal life. Coyne dissented, saying she was "not going to get very excited" over the change.

"A wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion," she said. "In the vast majority of cases, it will have no impact whatever." positions in his administration and championed women's rights, lost his re-election bid largely due to the votes of women offended by his anti-abortion stand. Undeterred, he named Gardebring, who favors a woman's right to choose abortion. She, like Tomljanovich, was a longtime protegee of the governor's, proving that new-fangled sexual politics can combine with old-fangled politics of loyalty from the Iron Range. Whether women behave differently from men on the bench is unclear.

Based on her analysis of the opinions of Justices William Rehn-quist and Sandra Day O'Connor, Su-zanna Sherry of the University of Minnesota Law School suggested that rather than devise abstract rules, women jurists are more likely to scrutinize the facts in particular cases, and might place a higher premium on what she called "fostering community" that is, they try to decide cases in ways that leave losing parties feeling less alienated or disenfranchised. The divergent personal styles and philosophies of the four women, as well as the changing complexion of the legal profession, were apparent during oral arguments the court held here in a special appearance R0CKP0RTS Over 100 styles Mens Womens Stocking Best 12,000 pairs (Save18to70) Selection in the Midwest! Most prices '55 to WHY PAY MORE? SHOE IJ0X Tues, Thurs 8 30-6 Wed 8 30-6 Fh 8 30-9 Sat 8 30-5 Closed Sunday IE Long-term care costs: who knows what tomorrow will bring? Come to a free seminar from Merrill Lynch and find out how affordable long-term health care insurance can help protect your assets. Unfortunately, the cost of long-term health care Is escalating. You need to protect yourself and your family from this expense while you're healthy and can still afford it. Merrill Lynch introduces Future Care Comprehensive plan, issued by John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company and offered through Merrill Lynch Life Agency Inc.

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