Thank you for your recent series of articles about our water and the way we use it ("Resurrecting buried streams," June 13; "Short supply spurs push to recycle water," June 14; "Should the state cap water exports?" Insight, June 13; "Make saving water a way of life," Insight, June 13).

The catastrophe in the delta should be a warning that our current practice of using water once and throwing it away is too wasteful and environmentally destructive for the 21st century.

Instead of investing in water supplies that further stress our environment (like more dams), we should reuse what we have to the maximum extent. Orange County already injects its highly treated wastewater into the ground for eventual reuse as drinking water, and more and more individuals are retrofitting their homes so that they can collect and reuse both rainwater and gray water (from sinks, showers and laundry) for outdoor irrigation and indoor toilet flushing.

The great thing about all of these options is that they're reliable and they support, rather than destroy, our endangered ecosystems.

Jennifer Clary, Clean Water Action, San Francisco