Dear Editor: Every week there is another article, letter to the editor, or another plea from state and local officals for all of us to conserve more water.

My family has been cutting back on water usage over the years until our water usage is a small fraction of what it was, while the city has raised meter rates and water rates and my water bill is twice the amount that it used to be. We can’t cut back any more.

At the same time, it would appear that everyone has forgotten that Caltrans pumps millions of gallons of drinking water from the aquifer under Downey at the 105 Freeway and Bellflower Boulevard because a highly-paid Caltrans engineer didn’t know that it’s not good to build a highway below the water table. So, to keep the freeway roadbed from washing away, Caltrans sucks out Downey drinking water every day for eternity and just dumps it into the San Gabriel River where it flows to the ocean. We pay for that water!

Caltrans needs to capture that water and put it to good use and ultimately repair the freeway so increasingly valuable drinking water is no longer wasted. We can’t save any more water while the state wastes millions of gallons of water on an ongoing basis.

Jeff Sorensen

Downey

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Published: May 14, 2015 - Volume 14 - Issue 05