Fun_People Archive
24 Oct
Only in California...

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 97 13:44:43 -0700
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Subject: Only in California...

Forwarded-by: Nev Dull <nev@bostic.com>
Forwarded-by: Jeff Moore <jbm@instinet.com>

"Los Angeles to Siphon Water from Minorities' Bodies"
	The Onion, October 8.

LOS ANGELES--After 12 years of political controversy, legal delays and
statewide referendums, California legislative officials and Los Angeles
municipal authorities finally greenlighted a proposal Monday to allow
water-poor Los Angeles to begin drawing water for public use from the bodies
of the metro area's estimated seven million minority residents.

"With its rich tapestry of black, Asian and Hispanic cultures, Los Angeles'
diversity is one of its greatest strengths," said L.A. mayor Richard
Riordan, announcing the plan. "And with some 15 gallons of water contained
within the body of an average 170-pound L.A. minority resident, these people
also represent one of our city's great untapped natural resources."

Initially proposed by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation in 1938 and revived
by the L.A. Department of Water & Power in 1985, the $10 billion
minority-drainage system will draw nearly 100 million gallons of water a
year from non-Caucasian residents via an elaborate network of pipelines
individually inserted into their bodies. The water will then be pumped to
various aquifers and reservoirs throughout the city, where it will be
processed and made available for public consumption.

According to Department of Water & Power officials, much of the critically
needed water will be used to help fill Los Angeles' estimated 1.5 million
glamorous in-ground swimming pools.

"Did you know that Mexicans are 65 percent water?" DWP chairman Kurt
McFadden said. "According to our estimates, under the new system, the water
from a mere 300 Mexican immigrants--legal or illegal--is all it will take
to fill the extra-large pool of a studio executive or agent."

McFadden said the minority-drainage plan will have numerous other benefits,
as well. "No longer will the good citizens of places like Santa Monica,
Hermosa Beach and Glendale be forced to limit their lawn-watering time to
seven hours per day: Soon, they will be able to leave their sprinklers on
for literally weeks on end," he said. "And with the new system providing up
to 350,000 extra gallons of water per day, the city will finally be able to
construct those 14 new luxury waterpark tourist facilities it has been
planning for so long."

Sustaining an adequate water supply has long been among the paramount
challenges facing Los Angeles.  Located within an arid region that, prior
to this century, was incapable of sustaining more than a few tiny outposts
of settlers, over the past 100 years the sprawling megalopolis has drained
countless lakes and rivers--many of them hundreds of miles away--to meet
its ever-growing water needs.

The new minority-drainage technology, said to be excruciatingly painful to
those being drained, passed in a statewide referendum last April by a
considerable margin.

"There was a small group that stood strongly opposed to Proposition M," Los
Angeles municipal media-relations liaison Allan Bruford said. "But it was
not enough to constitute a majority rule. It is clear that most Angelenos
want this system, regardless of a small, vocal minority."

Despite winning at the polling booth, the new water system had been delayed
since April, largely due to unresolved questions regarding which
municipalities should receive most of the water; the means by which the
individuals to be siphoned will be selected; and what disposal method will
be used for the thousands of withered, shrunken human corpses the system
produces as waste per hour.

With a majority of the questions finally resolved, initial testing of the
pipeline will commence next week. African-American males over the age of 65
have been selected as the first group to be siphoned, with different ethnic
and age groups slated to be added over the next nine months as the system
is raised to full-flow capacity.

"By this time next week," McFadden said, "there will be more than 50,000
Watts residents of hydroelectric power coursing through this city."

Despite its many benefits, the project is not without its detractors.  "What
the city of Los Angeles is doing is nothing less than an inhuman, criminal
violation of the public interest," Fifth District Councilman Marv Salerno
said. "Under the current plan, the city would need to siphon over 12,000
minority citizens a day just to meet its estimated minimum needs.  At that
rate, L.A. will have completely exhausted its available supply of minorities
by the year 2002. What we need is a sensible long-term minority-conservation
policy that will ensure the annual regrowth of enough new minority residents
to provide us with an indefinite supply of renewable human water sources."

Responding to Salerno, McFadden said that by the time Los Angeles depletes
its own minority supply, the system will be upgraded and augmented to reach
minorities in neighboring states.

"Phoenix, AZ, a city rich in Hispanics and blacks, is only 350 miles away,"
McFadden said. "Pipelines many times that length have sent oil from Alaska
to the mainland U.S. for decades, so there's no reason to think we can't do
it here. L.A. has the technology."

© 1997 Peter Langston