For decades, tourists have paid thousands of dollars for the chance to surf, snorkel and splash in the crystalline waters here. Now they're paying $5.50 a bottle to drink it.

In perhaps the most bizarre consequence of a failed municipal electricity experiment, a small Japanese company, the Koyo USA Corporation, has begun bottling desalinated water pumped from 2,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean and marketing it to Japanese consumers as the purest, most nutritious beverage on earth.

Those companies claim deeper seawater contains more nutrients and fewer pollutants than surface water. Kona's water, according to Koyo's chief operating officer, Kozo Kayama, is better because its source is deeper and older.

"The water you're drinking is older than Jesus," Mr. Kayama said of Koyo's Mahalo water.

For decades, tourists have paid thousands of dollars for the chance to surf, snorkel and splash in the crystalline waters here. Now they're paying $5.50 a bottle to drink it.

In perhaps the most bizarre consequence of a failed municipal electricity experiment, a small Japanese company, the Koyo USA Corporation, has begun bottling desalinated water pumped from 2,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean and marketing it to Japanese consumers as the purest, most nutritious beverage on earth.

Those companies claim deeper seawater contains more nutrients and fewer pollutants than surface water. Kona's water, according to Koyo's chief operating officer, Kozo Kayama, is better because its source is deeper and older.

"The water you're drinking is older than Jesus," Mr. Kayama said of Koyo's Mahalo water.

[ Wait, I'm confused. Older than the story of the Lord Jesus Christ's life and resurrection or older than Jesus was when he died (for our sins, etc)? Those are very different numbers, after all, and I don't drink any water that hasn't aged for at *least* one thousand years.

I guess it could be said, though, that the majority of the water on earth is probably hundreds of thousands or millions of years old. Unless something caused it to break down into H2 and O, it could have gone through the cycle of evaporation and rain countless times. How does one guage the oldness of water?

How... oh nevermind, I'm done. Silly snake oil vendors. -k]