Our City Council has voted to waste hundreds of millions of our scarce dollars on a grandiose and unnecessary water project. They have acted in haste and under the influnce of a self-aggrandizing water bureaucracy, without taking the time to consider viable alternatives that would cost the city less than 10 percent of the cost of the proposed water project.

The main real driver of this project is the need to meet state and federal water quality standards that come into effect in 2017. However, this newspaper recently reported that Davis could gain up to 10 years extension to meet these criteria — that is, we really have until 2027.

The other reason cited is “reliability of water supply,” meaning that Davis would have to drill more and deeper wells — still far cheaper than the massive project proposed.

One viable alternative was described in an article in The Economist, in February of this year (http://www.economist.com/node/17956927). The purification process is an old one, using an iron compound known as a ferrate. The problem was that ferrates did not last long. Now a way has been found to make them last.

Ferrates cause all the impurities in water to precipitate out of solution. The new process makes ferrates cheap and easy to use, and would provide water that easily meets all state and federal requirements. In addition, this process has now been certified for use in North America (http://www.ferratetreatment.com/drinkingwater.htm).

This solution would allow us to save the hundreds of millions of dollars that otherwise would more than triple our water rates. I plan to protest, but perhaps we really need a referendum.

Shneor Sherman

Davis

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