"Small is Beautiful," a book by E.F. Schumacher, rebukes modern economic thinkers for relying too much on abstract theory and purely quantitative data. Whatever virtues the book has — and it has many — its most memorable contribution to popular culture is its title: "Small is Beautiful." The title is catchy, even warmly satisfying, prompting ready agreement and a nod of approval. Small is beautiful.

The Bottled Water Solution

That title again came to mind when reading a guest comment piece by Cornelius Steelink, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Arizona, printed in The Arizona Daily Star. Tucson Water officials per Proposition 200 cannot deliver CAP water for drinking unless treated to ensure its quality is equal to or better than present groundwater.

City officials seek The Big Solution to The Big Problem. Big Solutions include recharging CAP water. This would involve building a $60-million recharge facility. Other Big Solutions include filtration and de-mineralization of CAP water, involving capital costs ranging up to $300 million and annual operating costs up to $30 million.

Steelink offers a suggestion. He asks readers to consider other figures. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average citizen of the Southwest consumes 1.3 quarts of tap water per day for drinking and cooking. This means that Tucson's service area population of 600,000 consumes about 70 million gallons annually of drinking and cooking water. If Tucson Water subsidized its customers ten cents a gallon to purchase bottled water, the cost would be about $7 million a year, a bargain price compared to Big Solution costs.

According to Steelink, "The costs of this proposal are no more daunting than many of the current multimillion dollar CAP scenarios.... The benefits are considerably more attractive. There is no massive capital outlay, implementation is fairly straightforward and the consumers have a choice over the type of drinking water used in their homes."

The Bottled Water Cure

Whether bottled water will solve Tucson's CAP woes is debatable, but for some bottled water sellers, their product holds answers to many of life's other problems. For example, promotional material for Catalyst Altered Willard Water (XLR-8 and XLR Plus) — Willard Water for short — claims it is a beauty aid, has farm and garden use, cures animals of assorted afflictions, not to mention its beneficial effects on humans, curing various ills from pink eye to stress, while breaking down waste materials and toxins.

A South Dakota kennel used Willard Water to cure some of its dogs of a virus. The results: "Not only did the virus appear to be cured but the kennel showed a significant increase in victories the first week the greyhounds started drinking the water."

Willard Water's secret is to use Micelle (tiny electrically-charged particles) to cause "unusual characteristics" to occur in water. As described in the literature: "The molecular structure is changed from the very stable tetrahedron structure into chains of water molecules attracted to the colloidal micelle by strong electrostatic bonds." A gallon of Clear Willard Water XLR-8 Concentrate is $190. It is added to regular water.

The Bottled Water Boost

If Willard Water does not do the job, there's Aqua Resonance. According to the Aqua Resonance literature, our bodies' water, critical to the health of our approximately ten trillion cells, is called biowater. Unlike tap water, rain or mineral water, biowater has a particular "clustered" characteristic, with water molecules held together in small bunches by shared hydrogen atoms. This allows the water to freely pass through cell walls, delivering nutrients and removing toxins.

Problems develop as we age and the characteristics of our biowater changes. Instead of free-flowing in small clusters, the water becomes bound to other cell material and is less able to move nutrients and waste. The result: sluggish cell metabolism.

The good news is that "using sophisticated magnetic resonance, laser and ceramatic technology, researchers have succeeded in producing clustered water, with the same properties as youthful biowater." Called Aqua Resonance, this water will "improve metabolic efficiency and nutrient absorption back into our cells."

Aqua Resonance is concentrated; two tablespoons converts a gallon of distilled water. A four-ounce bottle costs $34.95, plus postage.

Correction

March-April AWR: the last sentence of the first full paragraph, col. 3, pg.5 should read "The fees collected subsequent to July 11 are protected under the agreement."