The overarching water myth in our part of our state is one of massive entities — MWD, LADWP — controlled by criminally wealthy Kings of California with unholy power straight out of a film noir plot.

Ordinary people who dare question the way that water works need to be told, once again, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” and move on to fairer fights with organizations that aren’t so rich and gigantic that they are unassailable.

When you live in Altadena, the water with which you irrigate your yard and brush your teeth does not come from anyone living very large. It comes from one of three tiny, ancient-for-California water companies that have so few resources that when disaster strikes, there is no bucks-up bureaucracy to bankroll a big fix.

Disaster has struck.

As staffer and Altadena resident David Wilson reports, “The mammoth Eaton fire has rekindled a long-running debate over whether to consolidate Altadena’s decades-old cluster of water companies. Three mutual water companies, Las Flores, Lincoln Avenue and Rubio Cañon Land and Water Association serve customers who are also shareholders in the companies.”

Not exactly deep-pocketed firms along the lines of, let us say, Southern California Edison. And when the rate-payers are also the owners ...

Twenty-five years ago, when I was editor of the Pasadena Star-News, I was blessed with two excellent science reporters, Becky Oskin and Elise Freeman, who both took a deep dive into another “natural” disaster caused by a local utility, this time by Rubio Cañon LWA, which dynamited the rock walls of Rubio Canyon above Altadena in an attempt to replace its ancient pipes there, and instead caused a landslide of biblical proportions. In Becky’s story, she called the result 20,000 cubic yards of debris dumped into the canyon. In Elise’s story, she noted that the huge boulders that got knocked down and completely filled the canyon, making it unavailable to hikers for years, would fill a football field 16 feet high.

I had known the water companies were small. What I hadn’t known until I edited Becky’s copy was that Rubio, from which I received water for 20 years during different times of my life, was a nonprofit with all of seven employees serving 3,100 customers.

I also grew up a couple of hundred yards downstream from Rubio Canyon, and hiked to its cool waterfall dozens of times. I was really ticked off that the falls were inaccessible, and that the company had no resources or adequate insurance to fix the problem.

Then, the weirdest thing happened. Six years after the disastrous landslide — it was such a scar on the San

Gabriels that you could see the debris filling the canyon miles away from the crosswalk at Lake and Colorado in downtown Pasadena — the torrential rainstorms of 2004 caused such a flood in the canyon that most of the boulders were washed away, and, to a great degree, Rubio was reborn.

Such a miracle is not going to happen this time in Altadena. The infrastructure of all three companies was fried in the Eaton fire that destroyed almost the entire town. Yes, it’s remarkable that little Rubio Cañon LWA, founded in 1886, has been able to survive all this time on its own. Now the three companies need to merge, and to consult and probably work with Pasadena Water & Power as the efforts to rebuild Altadena’s infrastructure begin.

Wednesday at random

Dear Ann Erdman, who died on April 30 at 74, served as Pasadena’s public information officer for a remarkable 20 years, from 1991 to 2011. She knew everything and everyone, very much including where the bodies were buried. It was a time of turmoil in City Hall — Rick Cole! Isaac Richard! Bill Paparian! — and then a return to Zen-like calm: Bill Bogaard. Ann served them all, and the people, and the press, and was a delight to share a fine piece of gossip with. I will miss her so ... LitFest in the Dena turned 13 over the weekend, and pirouetted with great grace unusual for a teenager into the halls and libraries of the Pasadena Presbyterian Church when its recent home, the Mountain View Mausoleum, was unavailable this year after the fire. Hundreds of book lovers and authors gathered for glorious conversation and literary insights. Many congrats to Lightbringer, to Paddy, Tom and Jervey for keeping the LitFest flame beautifully bright.

Write the public editor at lwilson@scng.com.