A switch at the DWP

Boundless optimism was in ready supply Monday outside Department of Water and Power headquarters, where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced that he was recommending attorney H. David Nahai to be the municipal utility’s next top executive. Both the mayor and Nahai spoke effusively of leading the city into an era of clean energy and sufficient water, just as the region is grappling with its driest year on record and new mandates to wean itself from the air-fouling Utah coal plant that produces close to half of L.A.’s electricity. When asked, the two men acknowledged that the DWP is seeking significant -- and perhaps continuing -- rate hikes for both water and power. The department wants a 2.9% increase in electricity rates Jan. 1, followed a mere six months later with an increase of the same size, then an additional 2.7% on July 1, 2009. For water, it is asking for a 3.1% increase July 1, then another 3.1% on July 1, 2009.

Ratepayers can be forgiven if they temper their own enthusiasm with a healthy dose of skepticism. It was just three years ago, after all, that the DWP insisted that it needed an 18% increase in water rates. Surprised by resistance from neighborhood leaders, managers decided that maybe they didn’t need quite so much after all. They tidied up their spending practices, then came back with an 11% increase and put off a request for power rate hikes. The experience was only the most recent in a long history of DWP aloofness and arrogance, and those attitudes explain why many have a hard time trusting the agency.

Still, ratepayers must confront some basic truths about the cost of providing water and electricity. It’s more expensive today than it used to be, in part because of the costs of improvements to make the air cleaner and water safer, and in part because of a historical fact of life about Los Angeles: The city was built in enormous spurts, the two largest of which came in the decades just before and just after World War II. Pipes, power poles, wires and other equipment were erected all at once -- and thus may wear out at once too. They soon must be replaced.

At the same time, the city is taking the necessary but costly steps to extricate itself from generating plants that pollute the air with soot and greenhouse gases. It also must repair some of the environmental damage in the Owens Valley caused by the aqueduct that brings Sierra snowmelt to Los Angeles faucets.

Under the circumstances, the rate increases the department has proposed are measured, and they are warranted. The City Council should approve them.

But residents must remain vigilant. The Board of Water and Power Commissioners was once made up of civic leaders whose job was to keep a wary eye on City Hall. Today, they are insiders, close to the mayor who appointed them and who is now “asking” them to hire Nahai -- their former board president and a man with very little management experience to be running a utility of the complexity of the DWP. We are relieved that Nahai must also face City Council confirmation.

Nahai, for his part, was on the right track when he called Monday for a committee of two Water and Power commissioners to oversee how the increased revenue is spent. But the suggestion doesn’t go far enough. It makes sense that residents even further outside the city structure take that role. Just as citizen oversight panels pick over every penny of bond funds the city spends, a similar panel should oversee DWP spending. The rate hikes would give the agency the money it needs; the panel would ensure it is spent as promised.