Bottled Water

Valley View Elementary School students hula-hooped, hop-scotched and crawled their way to raising funds for the school's Education Foundation Friday. All students had the opportunity to participate in the Valley View Sixth Annual March Obstacle Course, a fund-raising event that generates money to be used for materials for ongoing programs including orchestra, Accelerated Reader and Meet the Masters. Proceeds also fund future grant proposals submitted by teachers, staff and parents, and to sponsor an end-of-year celebration with a school-wide assembly and special lunch for all students.

As if things weren't hard enough already, what with the economy slipping into a mild recession over the previous nine months, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 dealt a stunning blow to the business of business. The effects have been felt locally. Across the board, sales of everything from shoelaces to lattes has declined the past three weeks, with the most precipitous drops being recorded in big-ticket areas -- cars, appliances, furniture, etc. People are scared, and consequently have been holding on to money and avoiding places where a lot of people gather -- like shopping malls.

Tim Willert MONTEBELLO -- Visitors to the Armenian Martyrs Monument on Tuesday milled around Bicknell Park, taking pictures of colorful memorial wreaths, swapping stories and saying prayers. Elderly Armenian men wearing baseball caps huddled together at the monument's base, sipping bottled water. Women, most dressed in black, shielded their children from the heat with umbrellas. "It's important for us to reaffirm that they could not exterminate us," said Michael Minasian, president of the monument council.

As residents of Glendale and parents of a 10-month-old baby girl and a 4-year-old boy, we are very concerned over the proposed usage of the water from the Flower Street plant. Apparently the City Council is considering pumping water from this plant, previously determined by the EPA to be unfit for dumping in the Pacific Ocean, into our homes starting within three to six months. This water has been tested as containing 9 parts per billion of chromium 6, the hexavalent chromium villainized in the film "Erin Brockovich."

Paul M. Anderson GLENDALE -- It felt more like April 1. All the hype over the so-called Y2K computer bug felt like a big April Fool's joke. And that's appropriate since April 1 used to be the beginning of the New Year before the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1564. You know how I know that? I got that nugget of information off the Encyclopedia Britannica's Web site just after midnight Jan. 1. I didn't turn off my personal computer before the countdown, and the Y2K bug didn't bite me. Just weeks before we all said goodbye to the 1900s, some enterprising computer geek evidently trying to cash in on the hysteria, left fliers on everyone's windshield in Frank's Garage on Orange Street.

Four Crescenta Valley Town Council members joined water district administrators in learning about how water makes it from the various areas in California to the tap. Grace Andrus, Danette Erickson, Sharon Hales and Krista Smiley spent the past weekend at the California Aqueduct, known as Rolling College of Water Knowledge. The Crescenta Valley Water District made arrangements for the CVTC members to visit the aqueduct as guests of the Metropolitan Water District, Erickson said.

Sales for Switzerland-based Nestle SA grew 4.4% in the first quarter of 2010 compared with the same period a year ago, fueled by growth in all its business segments, the company announced Thursday. Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage corporation, employs about 1,600 workers at its U.S. headquarters in Glendale and about 23,000 workers at plants and offices nationwide. Sales for the company’s existing global businesses, which includes an array of confectionery goods, prepared foods, bottled water and infant formula, grew about $1.1 billion, to about $24.6 billion, although some of the increases were a result of pricing boosts, the company said.

Darleene Barrientos Donning tennis shoes instead of hiking boots and trading bottled water for cantaloupe, several members of the Crescenta Valley group of the Sierra Club gathered Thursday evening for its annual picnic. The group's annual July picnic brought the members and their families together at Dunsmore Park, in full view of the dusky Verdugo Mountains, a favorite haunt for local hikers. The group meets about once a month, except in July, August and December.

Charles Rich Talk about the continuance of an alarming pattern that lacked zip. Crescenta Valley High girls' soccer Coach Cesar Hildago saw the act continue to unfold while sipping bottled water on the bench. There wasn't much communication or zip amongst his players despite playing one of the elite teams of the past decade. If the Falcons end their spin remains to be seen, but their inexperience showed in large doses during a 4-1 nonleague road loss to Harvard-Westlake on Thursday.

Pet food sales in North America and revenue growth in the developing world were bright spots in 2010 for Nestle, S.A., with U.S. headquarters in Glendale, company officials reported Thursday. Leaders of the Swiss company said that despite a rise in the cost of raw materials, such as coffee and cocoa, they anticipate revenue growth of between 5% and 6% in 2011. “The times of today is like a Rubik’s cube,” Chief Executive Paul Bulcke said in a meeting with the press in Vevey, Switzerland.