Community Commentary:

Councilman David Gordon is playing a shell game with his water facts and figures (“Remarks were off the mark,” May 27).

Gordon listed the status of three reservoirs in the State Water Project — Oroville, Folsom and Millerton. The last two are currently in good shape, but the first one isn’t. However, when you take the time to actually look up the capacities of the three you’ll find out that Millerton is a small reservoir, Folsom is medium-sized and Oroville, at 3,537,600 acre feet, is the second largest in the system with a capacity of more than double that of the other two combined.

So, when Oroville is 64% full, even with the other two maxed out, we’re still 1.5 million acre feet shy of capacity for all three together — hardly anything to celebrate. Nor is the news that Shasta, the state’s largest reservoir, is at 69% of capacity and Trinity, the third largest, is at 52%. David failed to mention those frightening figures.

Next, he waved his magic wand and informed us “last week the State Water Project allocation to Metropolitan Water District of Southern California was boosted a full 10% to 40% of normal.”

Now, seriously, read that statement over again and think about what is really being said, that the water allocation was “boosted a full 10% to” — take a deep breath — “40% of normal.” Here again, he’s pretending the figure of “40% of normal” is somehow a marvelous, thrilling prospect — it isn’t!

Further on, he gives us the wondrous story of Lake Powell miraculously rising “8 feet from May 1 through May 19” and forecasted “an 8.23 million acre-foot release headed our way in water year 2009.”

Wow, it sure sounds good, doesn’t it? An allotment of 8.23 million acre-feet of water coming directly into Burbank? Gosh, what on earth are we going to do with it all? But, in truth, we may have to share a few buckets worth with, say, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Bernardino, Riverside and the big ugly 800-pound gorilla next door, Los Angeles!