Would you rather drink a cup of recycled wastewater or advanced purified water?

Actually, that’s a trick question – both terms are often used to talk about the same thing. But when it comes to public acceptance of the practice, the language you use makes a big difference. And so does education about how the process works.

Those are some of the things that have helped shift attitudes in California around potable reuse (drinking wastewater that has been purified for drinking). But it’s been a long road to get there and a few bumps remain.

There were high hopes for a new era in California water. Environmental groups, agriculture, the state, the feds and big urban districts like Metropolitan all signed on the dotted line. They all agreed to plan for a new and comprehensive way to manage the water system and ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The effort was to be known as the Bay Delta Conservation Plan. Until, of course, it later became known as California WaterFix and California EcoRestore. Ten years. A quarter of a billion dollars in planning.

Californians continued to backslide on water conservation during the hottest summer on record, worrying regulators and frustrating environmentalists critical of a new policy enacted this spring that allows most urban water districts to avoid mandatory cuts in water use.

On Wednesday, the State Water Resources Control Board announced that conservation in urban California in August was still below the baseline year of 2013 – but by a far smaller percentage than in August 2015. In August 2015, Californians saved 27 percent compared with 2013. This year, that savings rate fell to less than 18 percent.

Why does Jerry Brown desire to send Northern California water south? The governor has a seriously poor sense of direction. Sacramento bureaucrats have no right to assume the power to re-direct river water from Northern California farmland, demanding to send the water to the Delta strictly for the survival of fish and, ultimately, out to sea. After all, the fish didn’t elect Brown. Heath Flora, seeking Assembly seat 12, places people, food, jobs and the economy first.