Proponents of the new push hoped to capitalize on the bad publicity hitting the bottled water industry, where several suppliers have come under scrutiny for drawing their water from California. This month, “Starbucks announced that it would begin a process to move the bottling operations for its Ethos water brand to Pennsylvania,” NBC News reported. Nestle, meanwhile, refused to stop sourcing its water from public lands in the Golden State, although its pumping permit expired decades ago, and activists have petitioned the California Water Resources Control Board to halt the practice.

“The attention on Nestlé’s permit bumped it to the front of the pile for renewal review. The process will take at least 18 months, Heil said. Meanwhile, Nestlé can continue to operate in the forest as long as the company continues to pay the annual fee of $524 on the expired permit and operate under its provisions.”

Feeling the heat, Nestle Waters North America’s Tim Brown took to the San Bernardino Sun to vouch that California bottling operations should not be considered water-wasting culprits. “Our latest conservation measures include a waste-water recovery project expected to save annually 25 million gallons of water,” he wrote. “We supported the recent water bond to improve infrastructure and protect and restore watersheds and ecosystems and we believe that California’s new groundwater management legislation is a step in the right direction.”

Public skepticism

Yet, “despite the extensive science that goes into cleansing recycled water down to its molecular construction, in a recent study, 13 percent of adults said they would point-blank refuse to try it,” according to The Week. “Similar efforts in the past to jumpstart the recycled water trend in the state have failed.”

California’s long history with recycled water projects has lent credence to those who expect the pattern to continue. “Enticing people to drink recycled water […] requires getting past what experts call the ‘yuck’ factor,” as the New York Times observed. “Efforts in the 1990s to develop water reuse in San Diego and Los Angeles were beaten back by activists who denounced what they called, devastatingly, ‘toilet to tap.’ Los Angeles built a $55 million purification plant in the 1990s, but never used it to produce drinking water; the water goes to irrigation instead.”

Orange County officials, however, have brightened hopes for the recycled water movement. As Southern California Public Radio suggested, the O.C.’s successful recycling program has underscored why “calling it ‘toilet to tap’ isn’t fair.”

“The recycled sewage water makes quite a journey on its path to purification before it comes out of faucets at home. About 2.4 million Orange County residents get their water from a massive underground aquifer, which, since 2008, has been steadily recharged with billions of gallons of purified wastewater.”

According to SCPR, Orange County Water District officials overcame the yuck factor “with a massive public relations campaign that involved more than 2,000 community presentations.”

In Santa Clara County, where recycled water has been steadily employed for non-drinking uses, San Jose’s public figures have kicked off a similar effort. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews, and others held a recent press conference around their own consumption of recycled water, the Contra Costa Times reported. “‘Delicious,’ said Liccardo, as cameras clicked. ‘Good stuff!’ said Matthews, as video rolled.”

Nudging state law

At the statewide level, fans of recycled water had a bit more news to cheer as well. In Sacramento, the author of a string of recycled water-use bills stretching across the several years, Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, recently secured committee support for Assembly Bill 1463, another proposal pushing the approach to conservation. “Gatto’s legislation to help reduce the barriers for onsite-water recycling and allow more Californians to participate in safe and sustainable recycled-water practices was approved by the Assembly’s Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee on a 15-0 vote,” according to California Newswire.

Farmer Bros., founded in Los Angeles in 1912, notified Torrance officials on Feb. 5 of its plans in coming months to lay off about 350 workers, in compliance with a state law requiring advance notice of significant workforce cuts. The company’s 49,000-square-foot headquarters is on South Normandie Avenue in Harbor Gateway in southwest Los Angeles, but its corporate mailing address is in nearby Torrance.

Farmer Bros. stock has yo-yoed in NASDAQ trading in recent years, but it is considered a durable, well-positioned survivor in its primary business of providing coffee to national restaurant chains, convenience stores, Las Vegas casinos and corporate break rooms.

In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2014, the company reported net sales of $528 million and gross profits of $196 million.

It got a big boost in 2012 when it added McDonald’s to its client list. But its 2009 moves to buy the Coffee Bean chain and the restaurant-delivery branch of the Sara Lee company proved a drag on Farmer Bros. for years as it struggled to integrate its new resources and streamline operations. Coffee Bean also suffered because of Farmer Bros. slowness to offer specialty and exotic coffees that drive up profit margins at Starbucks, Peet’s Coffee and other competitors.

The company plans to maintain a distribution center in California while building “new state-of-the-art manufacturing, distribution and corporate headquarters facility designed to make the company more competitive and better positioned to capitalize on growth opportunities” in a less expensive state.

The estimated operational savings are $12 million to $15 million a year, according to a Farmer Bros. statement.

The cost of relocation is expected to be mostly covered by the sale of the Normandie Avenue site purchased in 1961 that is now home to corporate headquarters and production facilities. The county’s estimate of the property’s value is $22 million, but a Farmers Bros. spokesman told South Bay reporters that the company believes it can get $28 million to $35 million for the site.

By John Seiler

When my work is done today, I’m heading off to Starbucks to patronize their fine coffee. Three of their ships are half a mile of where I live.

That’s because today is the day gun-rights advocates are saying “Thank you!” to Starbucks for not buckling before immense pressure from Second Amendment fanatics. The fanatics demanded that Starbucks ban all guns from their shops.

Feb. 22 was chosen because it often is written 2-22 — the 2’s standing for the Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms,” the foundation of all our sacred American liberties. If you can’t defend yourself against tyranny, what good are all the other rights, such as for speech, religion, assembly, etc.?

Starbucks’ position is simple: It follows local gun laws.

So in Arizona, a civilized place where any law-abiding citizen can carry a concealed weapon without even getting a permit from the state, Starbucks says it’s OK to bring your gun into their store. That also means the stores are safer, especially today, because any potential terrorist or robber knows he immediately would be aerated by the patrons.

California cronyism

Things are different in the California autocracy. Last year, “open carry” of firearms, which are displayed for all to see, was banned by the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown. The state keeps sliding toward a North Korean level of abuse of citizens’ liberties.

“Conceal-carry” — where the gun is hidden — long has been allowed only by permit. And permits in most places are give out only to the sheriff’s cronies and campaign donors. The L.A. Weekly just reported:

“The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is known in gun-rights circles for being stingy with concealed-weapons permits. Sheriff Lee Baca has total discretion over who is allowed to get a permit, and he hasn’t given out many.

“As of May 2012, only 341 people had been granted them, according to sheriff’s records. Compare that with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which had 1,754 permit holders in 2011, despite a population of just 2 million people to L.A.’s 10 million. The Kern County Sheriff granted even more, with 3,564 permit holders in a population of 800,000 people.

“In L.A. County, records show, most of the permits go to judges and reserve deputies. But there is another group that seems to have better luck than most in obtaining permits: friends of Lee Baca. Those who’ve given the sheriff gifts or donated to his campaign are disproportionately represented on the roster of permit holders.

“Chuck Michel, a gun-rights attorney who has pushed for greater access to concealed-weapons permits, says practices in many ‘anti-gun’ jurisdictions are ‘corrupted by favoritism and cronyism.'”

That pretty much sums up California government in most respects: “favoritism and cronyism.”

But a least today I will strike a blow for honesty and freedom by sipping a coffee (Tall, black) at Starbucks.