Down the Drain : The Average Los Angeles Resident Uses 111 Gallons of Water Each Day but Drinks Hardly Any of It

Los Angeles is flush with excess.

From the founding of the Village of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porciuncula in 1781 until engineer William Mulholland figured out eight decades ago how to drain the Owens River on the eastern side of the Sierra into parched Los Angeles, water has defined Los Angeles.

But in this Infotechnic Age, the problem isn’t so much getting water out of the tap as it is getting it down the drain.

The city is already under court order to make sewage treatment improvements that will cost $2.3 billion. And Mayor Tom Bradley warned in December that the city’s sewage plants may not be able to treat it all in another three years.

To help cut the load, Bradley wants the City Council to give him broad authority to make homeowners and others invest in water-saving technology and landscaping. On Friday, he asked the City Council to implement emergency water-conservation measures: No more hosing down driveways. No more fresh water running through decorative fountains and down the drain. And no more glasses of water automatically appearing on the table when diners sit down in restaurants.

But are the sewers really brimming because of that curious tradition of watering the driveway? Will forgoing ice water with lunch save the city? And just how much water is being used, and who is using it?

Currently, each of the city’s 3-million-plus residents including industry uses 178 gallons of water a day, according to the city Department of Water and Power. Two-thirds of that water is for home and apartment use.

The typical Los Angeles home uses 111 gallons of water per person daily, according to Winston Woo, a DWP water resources planning engineer. Of that, 78 gallons is used indoors, Woo said, almost all of which ends up in the sewers.

Of those 78 gallons, the largest usage is for toilets. Each day 23 gallons per person are flushed and nearly 5 more gallons leak, a federal study of water usage indicates.

That’s enough water each year to cover more than 146 square miles of land one foot deep.

After toilets, the next big indoor water use is washing clothes, which adds 15 soapy gallons per person into the sewer system each day, the federal study indicates.

Showers add another 14 gallons per person daily to the sewer load, and baths 8 more gallons for a total of 22 gallons daily per person, according to the study.

Then comes drinking, cooking and personal hygiene, which consume 11 gallons per person daily.

Washing dishes adds another 2 gallons.

Outdoors, a lot of the 33 gallons per person used each day also ends up adding to the sewer burden. That’s because, strange as it may seem, lawns create sewage.

Bill Maddaus, a managing engineer with Brown & Caldwell consulting engineers in Walnut Creek, said a study found that 25% of the sewer load in Dublin, Calif., in summer 1982 came from just such infiltration, two-thirds of it due to over watering lawns and gardens.

In Los Angeles, various kinds of intrusion, including excess lawn water, account for about 10% of the sewer plant load, according to engineer Frank Grant of the city Bureau of Engineering.

Keeping Our City Green

Bradley’s office estimates that when irrigation of golf courses, parks, school yards and other greensward is added to water needed for home lawns, it takes more than 44 gallons per resident each day to keep this city on the edge of the desert green. That’s 25% of all the water used in Los Angeles.

The mayor has vowed that the city “will adopt whatever reasonable measures are needed to reduce landscape water needs” by 10% in the next five years and 20% by the start of the new millennium.

While the steps Bradley wants to take will cut sewage now, the California Department of Water Resources points to the water agencies in Goleta, next to Santa Barbara, and Novato in Marin County as prime examples of what a water conservation ethic can accomplish.

“People waste a lot of water” said John Nelson, general manager of the North Marin Water District and chairman of the water conservation committee of the American Water Works Assn., the major professional association for water utility managers.

It was North Marin that suffered most through the drought in California in the mid ‘70s. Restaurants were forced to serve meals on paper plates when total consumption had to be cut to 44 gallons per resident each day.

During a crisis, Nelson added, people will endure hardships to conserve water but when things return to normal, people quickly go back to their wasteful old habits. “So we go after programs that use less water automatically.”

Nelson and others said these techniques include water-pricing strategies and other financial incentives to encourage xeriscapes--dry landscapes using plants that require only rainwater--instead of thirsty lawns. Subsidies for installing ultra low flush toilets in existing homes and businesses and for buying clothes washers that load from the front could also help cut water use, Nelson and others said.

Water use in Beverly Hills illustrates how greensward increases water consumption. Per capita daily consumption in that city, where many homes feature expanses of lawn, is 320 gallons per day, according to the state Department of Water Resources. That is 80% higher than the average in Los Angeles and considerably more than double the use in water-conscious North Marin.

Per capita water use is low in North Marin partly because two years ago the water district began offering financial incentives to discourage large lawns.

New single family homes with no more than 800 square feet of lawn get a $150 discount on the water connection fee, which is about $1,050, Nelson said. For condos and town houses, lawns must be no more than 500 square feet per unit to qualify for the discount.

In Los Angeles only about 25,000 new housing units are built each year, of which less than 10% are single family homes, so incentives aimed at new residential construction would have little effect. But incentives could be designed that reward those who already have lawns to replant all or part of them with water-saving plants.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power now charges a modest premium for water in warm months to discourage lawns and water-intensive ornamentals.

In 1985, DWP started charging almost 12% more for residential water in April through September, a premium that jumps to 16.8% for summer 1988. Nelson said he believes seasonal differentials must be about 60% before they seriously cut water use.

Prices Increase With Use

In addition to seasonal pricing differentials, some water districts increase the price per hundred cubic feet of water as use escalates.

DWP now charges a base rate of 61 cents per 100 cubic feet (748 gallons) of water for residential customers in winter regardless of volume.

But in conservation-conscious Goleta, pricing policies discourage large lawns. It costs 69 cents for each of the first 18 100-cubic-foot units bimonthly, rising in three increasingly expensive steps to $1.76 for each unit in excess of 5400 cubic feet.

Computer technology can also help cut water waste. Agriculture consumes 85% of the water in California, most of it bought at prices far below cost, with taxpayers making up the difference.

To encourage optimal water use, the state Department of Water Resources is installing equipment that checks wind, humidity and other factors to measure evapotranspiration--the amount of moisture lost from the soil and plants that must be replaced through irrigation.

The technology can also help homeowners and managers of golf courses, parks and grassy school yards apply only the necessary amount of water.

In Los Angeles, DWP uses financial incentives to encourage water conservation at public schools. Those campuses that cut their water use get the money they saved paid directly to the school.

This program may be expanded to parks and other facilities that irrigate expanses of lawn, according to Larry McReynolds, DWP assistant chief engineer.

Indoors, the usage of large quantities for toilet flushing would in fact be even higher but for a change in the state plumbing code after the Great Drought of 1975-77. Toilets installed since 1980 have been limited to 3.5 gallons per flush, half the seven or eight gallons required by the vast majority of Los Angeles’ toilets. So unless it takes two flushes to make the new toilets work, as many owners claim, the plumbing code change helps save reservoirs full of water each year.

Inexpensive Solution

Low-flow toilets are a cheap way to develop new water supplies, thus allowing more growth, and to reduce sewage flows, according to psychologist Larry Farwell, who runs the water conservation program in Goleta. Potable water supplies are extremely limited in Goleta and the local sewage plant is getting old, creating twin pressures to use water sparingly.

Goleta has cut daily water consumption to 134 gallons per person. In neighboring Santa Barbara, with the same climate and what Farwell claims are smaller residential yards, the figure is 180 gallons or one-third higher, and about the same as the 178 gallons figure in Los Angeles.

To hold down water consumption, Goleta requires that new construction include Swedish IFO or American Eljer toilets engineered to use only 1.6 gallons of water, a fifth of what some old-fashioned ones require. Owners of existing buildings also have incentives to install these toilets.

Max Bruce, who owns a 26-unit Goleta apartment complex, had his teen-age grandson install 28 ultra low-flow IFO toilets last summer.

“My water usage is down 54% and so my sewer bill’s down too,” the retired telephone company manager said.

Buying Toilets Wholesale

Bruce also benefitted from the Goleta Water District’s policy, begun 13 months ago, of buying ultra low-flow toilets wholesale and selling them at cost to local retailers, who agree to mark them up only 25%. On top of that, the district gives its customers a $50 rebate on each ultra low-flow toilet installed.

Bruce said he expects to recover his investment in new toilets in 33 months through lower water bills and then see his cash flow increase by about $100 monthly. He said that after figuring in lower sewer bills and tax benefits his cost recovery may take less than two years.

“We’ve found that to develop more water supply through toilets costs us about $200 per acre-foot,” Farwell said, including the cost of warehousing toilets and giving rebates. He noted this compares favorably “to $500 per acre-foot to build a new reservoir, $900 to connect to the state water system and $2,200 per acre-foot to desalinate ocean water.”

Front-loading washing machines, widely used in other countries because they consume one-third less water (and two-thirds less soap) than top loaders, could also save several billion gallons of water annually in Los Angeles, according to figures compiled by George Amaroli, a state Public Utilities Commission administrative law judge and former PUC rate engineer.

“The next big step, if we want to save on storing and treating water, is front loading washing machines,” said Amaroli, a director of the North Marin Water District who as a young man repaired washing machines for a living.

Family-Size Savings

“A typical family of four does 26 loads of clothes a month and if you save 17 gallons per load, 14 of them hot water gallons, that’s a tremendous savings in water, in energy to heat that water and in the amount of sewage,” he said.

White-Westinghouse, the only American manufacturer of front loading machines for the home, said the front loaders cost about $100 more than comparable top loaders because so few are sold.

Shower heads that restrict the flow of water are a minority in Los Angeles, DWP, Southern California Gas and state Water Resources officials said. But they are the norm in Novato and Goleta.

North Marin Showers

“We think about 25% of the homes in North Marin not only have low-flow shower heads, but also feature levers that allow you to momentarily cut-off the flow of water without affecting the mix of hot and cold,” Nelson said. “There’s no question those (levers) can save a lot of water and energy heating the water too.”

Last Friday, the Los Angeles DWP began a pilot program to determine the most efficient way to get homeowners to install low-flow shower heads and plastic bottles in eight-gallon toilets.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter joined DWP crews who went door-to-door in Westchester distributing water conservation kits.

McReynolds said at one-third of the 1,500 homes in the test area a low-flow shower head will be hung on their door knob. Another third will get the head and a number to call for advice on installation and the other third also will be offered help installing the devices, he said.

In the last decade DWP has given away about 1.25 million water conservation packets including either plastic discs to cut the flow from a shower head or low-flow heads that can reduce shower use from as much as 12 gallons to about 3 gallons per minute.

But McReynolds and other DWP officials said they believe most of them were discarded by people who did not take the trouble to install them. Bradley’s office estimates 30% of homes have installed some sort of device and that without them water consumption would rise 1%.

The proposed ordinance Bradley gave the City Council Friday would eventually require all homeowners to install low-flow shower heads and toilet tank conservation devices.

In addition to getting homeowners to act, the ordinance Bradley proposed would require apartment house, commercial and industrial customers to install similar devices or face, by whatever deadline the City Council sets, escalating water bill surcharges that would begin at 10% and rise 100% after two years.