Power Agency Board Member Has Green Agenda

In a career spanning more than three decades, Mary Nichols has held nearly every major conservation post in California -- including serving as chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board and as the cabinet-level resources secretary under former Gov. Gray Davis.

Now, Nichols has been chosen by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to serve on the board that oversees the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power -- for the second time in her career. Why does she want to do it again? There is still much to do before the gargantuan municipal utility -- the nation’s largest -- can overcome its checkered environmental legacy, Nichols said in an interview.

Question: Looking at your resume, you have basically done everything. You have even served on this DWP board. Why do you want to serve again?

Answer: On a personal level, I feel there is unfinished business left from when I served on the board before, during the [Tom] Bradley administration. We began some important programs on energy conservation. We began to think about renewable energy. And we began to rethink the city’s water future -- not only to use reclaimed water and improve conservation techniques, but also to try and create a whole new relationship with the counties of Mono and Inyo, whose water we have been taking for many years. These are things I feel are far from completed. I have wanted to get back to it for a long time.

Q: There is certainly some unfinished business. This is what state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said recently after a judge criticized the city for not meeting its obligations under a settlement to restore the Lower Owens River: “This department has a reckless history of stepping on others’ property rights and environmental considerations while trying to stick straws in every available water supply in the region to feed growth in Los Angeles.”

A: There is much we can do to be a better partner to the people we affect with our water-gathering techniques. We do supply electricity and water in the communities we work with. We have many employees that live in those regions. The city has a track record which to some extent can balance the negative effects we have caused with our past activities, and it needs to build on that. We need to get on with the business of restoring water to the Lower Owens River, which has been pending for so many years.

DWP has a culture of going it alone, and being responsible for its own fate. And the upside of that is that our lights stay on when other people’s lights are going off. We have been able to provide secure supplies of water for growth, and the economic success of Los Angeles is heavily dependent on those activities, so there is a lot of pride on the department’s side in what it has been able to accomplish.

But that does not permit you to be arrogant in dealing with people you have an impact on. That’s where things have frequently fallen down. I plan to go to Inyo and Mono counties and personally reintroduce myself. I have worked with a number of groups up there when I was resources secretary.

Q: You brought up an issue that speaks to the criticism one most often hears about the DWP -- from activists, from members of the City Council -- and that is the culture of the DWP. There is a sentiment that the DWP is unresponsive, that it is an insular bureaucracy. But you alluded to the flip side, which is that the lights did not go out in Los Angeles, that L.A. has plenty of water, and that it has very competitively priced utility services. How do you get the agency to be more environmentally responsive without changing the things it has been doing right?

A: I have served in many governmental positions, and one characteristic of all those jobs is that there was a greater need for environmental sensitivity in organizations that were technical- and engineering-oriented. The people of DWP in my experience are responsive to political leadership. They understand that they are a fully owned subsidiary of Los Angeles. What they are looking for is leadership that understands their mission and is consistent.

The thing that drives organizations like the DWP crazy is when they are subjected to regular public buffeting, and then told, ‘This week we are going to focus on tree planting. Next week we are going to focus on renewable power.’ The press-release-of-the-week kind of approach.

Q: In politics, that is the common mentality.

A: That kind of thing is common in politics. The role of the commission is to be the buffer between the political officials, who have their own imperatives -- they need initiatives while they are in office to feel like they have accomplished something for the people that elected them -- and at the same time to allow the department to function for the long term, so that you don’t lose the expertise and competence the department has.

Q: One of the issues the council has voiced an interest in recently is renewable energy such as solar and wind power. The DWP planned to invest in more coal-fired electricity in Utah, but when the press started writing about it, the former mayor put the kibosh on that. Is one of the functions of the board to ensure that the DWP invests in renewable energy?

A: We have to move in the direction of more renewables. The only question is how fast, and at what cost.

I think the major failure of the past decade or so has been the failure to plan. Not that it’s been an easy environment for anyone in the utility industry to plan, with all the deregulation, the changes in regulatory policies, in this state. But the department at this point doesn’t have a coherent plan for how it is going to serve the growth that we expect in electricity usage.

If we were to simply divest ... of our coal tomorrow and try to replace it with an all-green portfolio -- I’m not sure that’s even possible. If you were to plan on doing it over a period of a few years, it would still be extremely expensive.

So what we have to do is put ourselves on some sort of a regimen, move in the right direction as aggressively as we can, and make it clear to the public what we are doing and why.

Having a more diverse energy portfolio is not just something we do to be better citizens of the planet. It would also improve our security.

Q: With roughly half of the city’s power coming from coal, is it time for the DWP to consider its contributions to global warming?

A: My belief is that rather than DWP going it alone on the issue of carbon dioxide, what we need to do is to be part of a citywide effort, to look at the city’s profile. A number of cities have now started discussing how to make themselves environmentally sustainable.

It would be a tremendous contribution to the national and international debate -- and it would be something that would once again reposition Los Angeles as a world leader on the environment -- if we could come up with a plan that would turn our city into a zero-carbon [dioxide] city within a period of time.

Q: Does DWP have a responsibility to other Western states to reduce its environmental footprint?

A: Absolutely. One of the things I helped engineer during my earlier tenure on the DWP board was a resolution to put a [pollution] scrubber on the Navajo power plant [in Arizona], which at that point was helping to create a black cloud over a whole portion of the Western sky.

It took a lot of arm wrestling, but we convinced our partners [at the power plant] that this was something we needed to do. I do think we have a responsibility, wherever we are active.

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DWP data

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power:

* History: Established in 1902 for water, began providing electricity service in 1916

* Customers: More than 3.8 million residents and businesses

* Area served: 464 square miles

* Workforce: 8,450 employees

* Total power-generating capacity: 7,050 megawatts

* Electricity sources: 51% coal, 26% natural gas, 12% nuclear, 8% hydroelectric, 3% renewable energy

* Water sales: Customers purchased 201 billion gallons during the 2003-04 fiscal year

* Water sources: 53% from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California; 33% from the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which carries water 223 miles to the city from the Owens Valley; 14% from local groundwater

* Governing board: a five-member panel appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council for five-year terms

Source: Department of Water and Power website