Drought in State Already Pinching Bay Area Towns

With California now under a “drought-watch,” water officials throughout the state are instructing their customers to cut consumption to cope with a second consecutive dry year.

In Oakland, Berkeley and 18 other communities on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay, residents already are bickering over how to divide the dwindling water supply when mandatory cutbacks go into effect next month.

Irrigation districts in the agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley are sharply cutting deliveries to farmers, forcing them to pump well water, which entails more expense.

Even vacationers may find such summer occupations as boating and fishing disturbed by shrinking lakes and reservoirs. At Lake Tahoe, the water level is more than 4 feet below normal, exposing a wide beach and leaving a 5-foot gap between boat-launching ramps and the water.

And in Los Angeles, Department of Water and Power officials on Friday announced a voluntary conservation program intended to reduce water use by 10% this year.

California, like much of the West, has experienced a second straight winter of little rain and snowfall. The dry conditions meet drought definitions; only adequate storage supplies in the reservoirs, which were replenished by exceptionally heavy storms in 1986, have spared the state from a formal drought declaration.

Much of the ongoing conservation effort is aimed at preserving a water supply for next year, which, if dry, will probably mean water rationing for most residents of the state.

“At the end of the current season, they (reservoirs) are really going to be drawn down,” said Bill Helms, a state water official. “Next year is the one we’re going to have to worry about.”

Water supplies vary from one community to the next, depending on where the storms hit in the Sierra Nevada and how much water districts had in storage. Southern California, which imports much of its water from the Colorado River, is generally in a better position than the northern part of the state. The voluntary conservation program announced by DWP Friday is intended as a precaution in case of another dry winter.

“The seriousness of it is that this is our second dry year and if we had a third year, I could almost guarantee a mandatory water conservation program,” said Le Val Lund, engineer for the Los Angeles Aqueduct. “We’re just on the border now.

“The real test (for water supply) will be this summer,” Lund said. “If we have a cool summer, there won’t be that much of a demand. But if we have a very hot summer, that could change the picture.”

Bay Area Problem

The problem is much more immediate in the Bay Area. The San Francisco Eastbay Utility District, which provides water to 1.1 million customers, declared a “water shortage emergency” two weeks ago and announced proposals to cut overall water deliveries by 25% this summer. The proposed cutbacks have pitted residents who live in the more urban, bayside communities of Oakland, Emeryville and Berkeley against those in the newer, more suburban developments of Danville, Orinda and San Ramon.

Those communities west of the Oakland-Berkeley hills, where the fog rolls in from the Bay and acts as a natural air conditioner, want all water users to get the same allocation. Dwellers east of the hills, where the weather is hotter and drier and the tract lots larger, want higher allocations to account for those differences.

Susanna Schlendorf, vice mayor of Danville, lived through the 1977 drought, when residents bathed their children only every other day and then emptied the bathtubs with buckets to use the water for their yards. Lawns died, plants shriveled and millions of dollars worth of landscaping was lost.

“We were cut back to 270 gallons a day, and it was grim,” said Schlendorf, a realtor. “It was very grim.”

Hills Turning Brown

Danville is a new community of about 30,000. Half of its housing was built within the last 15 years. Residents live in condominiums or $300,000 homes at the base of the oak-dotted foothills of Mt. Diablo, which are beginning to turn brown unseasonably early this year. Summertime temperatures generally are in the 80s and, at times, exceed 100. Residents fear that their landscaping will die unless they are given water allocations that reflect the warmer climate.

Danville supports an allocation plan--which district officials say is unlikely to be approved--that would give Danville households 800 gallons a day while restricting those communities west of the hills to 400 a day.

“Even 800 gallons a day means that many lawns will die,” said Schlendorf.

“We talk a lot in this area about the quality of life,” she said. “It’s important. . . . Landscaping is a real important part of the quality of life.”

Emeryville Mayor Ken Bukowski, 37, considers landscaping a luxury. He believes that Danville and its suburban neighbors should get no more than 10% more water than bayside communities.

Emeryville, with a population of 4,000, is located just south of Berkeley. Breezes blow in off the bay and low, morning fog keeps summer temperatures comfortable. In summer, a home there typically consumes about one-third the water of a Danville household.

‘Let Landscaping Go’

“What if the drought continues for another couple of years?” Bukowski said, seated in his city office overlooking the sun-sparkled San Francisco Bay. “I say let the landscaping go and let people have enough water to drink and bathe in.

“In the days that gasoline was rationed, you didn’t deserve more gas if you had a Cadillac than if you had a Volkswagen,” he added.

The specter of rationing has made many East Bay residents anxious. Radio disc jockeys in the morning bemoan the warm, clear weather, and residents exchange stories about the horrors of the 1977 drought.

Noel Murphy and her son, Kevin, pored over old water bills and talked about the shortage in their Danville home one morning last week. Kevin, 14, volunteered that their back yard swimming pool contained 32,000 gallons of water.

“Oh shush,” his mother gasped. “Don’t put that in the paper,” she pleaded. “It makes us sound so extravagant.”

A few minutes later, Kevin announced that the hose in the back yard was leaking. “Well, get out there!,” his mother admonished, jumping to her feet and shooing her son out the sliding glass door. “Turn it off!”

The Murphys water their lawns in the evenings, run the dishwasher only when it is full and ask their two children to keep their showers short.

Swimming pool builders and landscapers say they expect to lose lots of money this year because of the water shortage.

“I can tell you right now that people are already so concerned about the water that it’s cutting pool sales 25% minimum,” said Val Toland, owner of Carefree Pools in Concord. “I have customers who we signed up in the winter who now want their pools finished on May 1 or April 1 because they’re afraid they won’t be able to fill them later.”

The Eastbay district, where reservoirs are half full, is expected to decide how to allocate its water after an April 13 public hearing. Without more rain, the district expects that by May 1 this year’s water supply will reach the levels of 1977, its driest year on record.

Communities in the Sierra foothills, which were forced to conserve last year because of water shortages, will again be hurting this year. In Placerville, the El Dorado Irrigation District is considering making excessive water use a crime to enforce a strict water conservation program. If the district’s water supply degenerates further, the agency may also slap a moratorium on new construction.

El Dorado district’s main source of water, Sly Park Reservoir, is less than half full. Officials are going to deny homeowners water for new landscaping, restrict the hours when lawns can be watered and prohibit the washing of driveways and sidewalks.

Reservoirs Down

In a telephone survey of water districts throughout the state, officials reported that reservoirs are down to as much as 65% below normal levels.

California growers say most farmers will be able to compensate for the water cutbacks by pumping from wells and do not predict significant declines in crop yields.

“There will be a lot more pumping, and that will be a lot of added expenses for the farmer, from the 40-acre grape and tree farmer on the east side (of the valley) to the 40,000-acre cotton, tomato, and sugar beet growers on the west side,” said Bill Allison, manager of the Fresno County Farm Bureau.

Stuart Pyle, general manager of the Kern County Water Agency, which supplies water to 13 agricultural districts, said the pumping will strain the underground water supply.

“It will increase the amount of ground-water overdraft, which means that our water table is depleted, just like taking your money out of a savings account,” Pyle said.

Water Cost Rising

In the Turlock Irrigation District, which supplies water to farmers in the northern San Joaquin Valley, farmers will receive only one acre-foot of water this year for their basic water charge of $4.75, which previously bought four times that amount. A second acre-foot will cost $10.

The Metropolitan Water District, which supplies water to 27 agencies throughout Southern California, predicts adequate water supplies this summer without rationing. However, a spokesman for the district said the agencies will be asked to urge their customers to conserve voluntarily, and restaurants may be called upon to serve water only on request.

“We expect our local reservoirs to be filled to capacity on May 1, so we can enter the summer with reservoirs full . . ,” said Jay Malinowski, a district spokesman. “The problem we’re going to have is 1989 if we have a third dry year.”

Less Runoff Estimated

Unlike most Southern California agencies, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power normally purchases only a fraction of its water from the district and draws 75% of the city’s water from the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. City officials estimate that runoff from the eastern Sierra Nevada will be only 50% of normal this year, so the department will have to purchase more from the MWD and rely more heavily on stored supplies.

Los Angeles residents may soon be forced to equip their homes and businesses with water-saving devices, but not due to fears about a water shortage. The mandatory water conservation measures were proposed last fall by Mayor Tom Bradley to reduce the flow of water through the city’s aged and inadequately designed sewer system.

If adopted by the City Council, the mandatory conservation measures, which would include special shower heads and toilet fixtures, would be in effect until a sewage treatment plant is expanded in the early 1990s.

Times staff writer Kevin Roderick in Los Angeles also contributed to this story.