Dry Years Are Coming Back to Haunt the Southland : Fear Helped Put County in Fair Shape

The billboard staring at freeway drivers in Anaheim depicts a huge cutout of California in two distinct colors. The top half of the state is green. But south of the Tehachapis, the state is pictured as brown, cracked and crumbling like a dry lake bed.

In big block letters, the billboard’s message is clear: “Without Water There Is No Southern California.”

Truth is, however, it is the north that is staring down the barrel of water rationing, courtesy of two straight years of below-average precipitation in California. Orange County, like much of the Southland, is in better shape.

Officials say aggressive efforts to conserve and reclaim water since the last major dry spell in 1976 and 1977 have built a critical buffer for the county should the rains fizzle again next winter and drought become a reality.

The reason for the county’s good fortune is tied to many factors, not the least of which is fear.

Orange County residents live in a semiarid region that sprouts lush ballparks, strawberry fields and front yards because of man’s ability to import millions of gallons of water from faraway sources.

That fact has not been lost on the county’s water agencies, which acknowledge that Orange County--and all its phenomenal growth--would only be a pipe dream if not for water.

The geography lesson, often forgotten in wet years, was never more apparent than during the 1976-77 drought. Orange County was spared the unprecedented rationing that occurred in some Northern California areas, but the county’s vulnerability was evident nonetheless, and most consumers went along with pleas to voluntarily conserve water.

“In California, the urban environment exists by nature’s consent,” said Fred Adjarian of the Municipal Water District of Orange County. “It’s subject to change without notice.”

A change in the winter weather pattern in Southern California has been developing now for two years. Less than half the normal rainfall has occurred in Orange County since the summer of 1986.

At the Santa Ana Civic Center, where the annual rainfall averages 12.96 inches, only 6.57 inches were recorded last year. It has only been slightly better this year, with 8.28 inches of rain at the county seat and the storm season all but over.

Yet county water officials are cautiously optimistic about the coming summer and their ability to meet demand.

“The message is: Use what you want, but use it wisely,” said Ray Merchant, a spokesman for the city of Anaheim’s Public Utilities Department, which operates its own water delivery system. “Another dry year could put pressure on us locally, but for now we won’t go thirsty.”

To understand why is to understand where the county’s water comes from and how it is used.

Seventy-five percent of the water is imported, largely from the Colorado River, where above-average flows have meant plentiful supplies for Orange County water agencies. The rest of the county’s water comes from local wells.

Southern Orange County is entirely dependent on imported water that is stored in a string of reservoirs south of Irvine. Well water in the south county is unfit to drink because of its heavy mineral content, and the cost of making the water drinkable has so far proven prohibitive.

But the bulk of water used by 1.5 million customers in central and northern Orange County comes from the vast aquifer that lies under the county’s midsection. This vast underground geologic vault can hold more than 1 million acre-feet of water. (An acre foot is roughly 325,000 gallons--about what a family of four uses in a year.)

Officials said that if the county’s imported sources went dry tomorrow, there is enough water in the aquifer to quench the county’s domestic, industrial and agricultural thirst for two years. Despite successive dry years, officials say, the aquifer is more than three-quarters full.

“The ground water is our buffer, the key to avoiding rationing,” said Gordon Elser of the Orange County Water District. Elser’s agency manages the aquifer, overseeing the extensive recharging efforts that have drawn national attention.

The district owns about 1,500 acres along the Santa Ana River in the Anaheim area. It diverts water from both the river and imported sources into large ponds, where it percolates into the ground.

Elser said winter rains are crucial to the recharging program because much of the diverted river water is storm runoff. Despite the below-normal rainfall, rapid development in Riverside and San Bernardino counties has helped keep flows on the river at or near normal levels the last two years.

“Because of building upstream, there’s more concrete than ever in those areas and thus more runoff,” Elser said. “The more water that makes it downstream to us, the more we can capture and bank underground for the future.”

To expand its recharging capacity, the agency last year embarked on a $15-million project to build a pump station and delivery system to carry storm runoff on the river to an abandoned 200-acre sand and gravel pit in east Orange.

The county will need it, based on population projections. In 1985, the county’s 2.1 million residents used about 531,375 acre-feet of water. By 1990, when 2.3 million people are expected to live in the county, water consumption is projected to top 590,500 acre-feet. And by the year 2000, nearly 700,000 acre-feet may be needed for the predicted 2.7 million population.

But experts such as Ray Miller, general manager of the South Coast Water District, believe water purveyors can keep pace, even during dry periods, because of conservation practices adopted in recent years.

For example, after the 1976-77 drought, Miller’s district obtained more than $7.5 million in grants and loans from a variety of government sources to build an effluent treatment plant in South Laguna. The reclaimed water is now used to water parks, golf courses and street medians in the district, which extends from South Laguna to Dana Point.

The program has cut the consumption of imported water by 15% to 18%, Miller said. “That could be the difference between voluntary and mandatory rationing,” Miller said.

Such cities as Irvine and Mission Viejo have been using reclaimed water on recreational lands for several years with similar savings.

A growing number of cities and builders have also experimented with using native California plants or drought-tolerant vegetation to landscape. In an average home, nearly half of the water used goes for irrigating lawns, trees and shrubs.

Despite protestations from some politicians that many local residents waste water, Orange County residents use less water per capita than their counterparts in Sacramento, where water is not metered. The average Orange County resident uses about 205 gallons a day, contrasted with 300 in Sacramento, where the average rainfall is three times greater.

Still, local municipal and water officials are worried about the two-year dry spell. The Municipal Water District of Orange County, a large water wholesaler handling water for 60% of the county users, has formed a special committee to review its emergency drought plan drawn up in 1976. The plan calls for a series of graduated measures leading up to mandatory rationing to cut consumption up to 20% or more in a drought.

“There’s no question the local water community is keeping a close eye on the situation,” said Adjarian, the agency’s drought management expert said. “Mother Nature is hard to predict.”

The biggest enemy, said Orange County Supervisor Harriett Wieder, is apathy.

Wieder, chairwoman of the Southern California Water Committee, a coalition of city and county officials seeking regional solutions to water problems, said that in the “short term, we are prepared” for a drought.

“But the time will come when a major three- or four-year drought will hit,” she said. “Unless we continue to push conservation and make people aware of the fragile nature of our water situation, that drought could be an economic disaster for the region.”