A Bright Sign in Stormy Sky : Despite Rain, Bradley Moves to Impose Water-Saving Steps

Despite heavy snowfall in the eastern Sierra Nevada, Mayor Tom Bradley invoked the city’s mandatory water conservation law Wednesday and also requested that residents voluntarily save water to relieve what threatens to become a serious shortage.

The mayor, following the procedures required to trigger the 1977 drought law, formally asked the City Council to concur in his action. Once the council acts, probably next Tuesday, restaurants could no longer serve water except on request and residents would be required to fix water leaks and refrain from hosing off patios and walks. Fountains that do not recycle water would also have to be shut off.

Bradley dismissed any notion of irony in the city imposing water conservation steps in the same week when Los Angeles was soaked with rain and when the eastern Sierra, where the city gets 75% of its water, was socked with one of the heaviest snowfalls of the year. Instead, he asked that residents disregard the weather and think of ways to cut back water use ever further.

“If you will just resist the temptation to flush after every use, you will help mightily,” Bradley said.

The mayor and city water officials blamed the water crisis on a second straight winter of Sierra snowpack that has been below normal. The snowpack in the Mammoth Pass area this winter was 50% of that in a typical year, said Duane L. Georgeson, deputy general manager of the Department of Water and Power.

Although the latest storms were laying down a blanket of fresh powder thick enough to please skiers, the new snowfall would only increase to 55% of normal the runoff that Los Angeles taps for its water, he said.

“We would need 8 to 10 of these storms” to make the water crisis disappear, Georgeson said at a City Hall news conference with the mayor.

Previous Drought

The last year has been nearly as dry as the drought years that led to water rationing in much of the state in 1976 and 1977, Georgeson said. In the 1970s, the drought wasn’t acknowledged until reservoirs were already low, he said, but this time the drought began with reservoirs relatively full.

But unless there is a dramatic change in conditions, by the end of this summer the major reservoirs in the state will be drawn down almost to the level where they were when heavy rains ended the 1970s drought, Georgeson said.

Officially, Bradley acted Wednesday to invoke Phase 1 of the 1977 water conservation law, passed after outraged demands by Northern California that the south share in the burdens of water rationing. Violations of the Phase 1 limits could lead to installation of a flow-restricting valve on a customer’s water supply to force compliance. The law applies only to DWP customers, not residents of cities that use the Los Angeles sewer system but obtain their water from other agencies.

If the water shortage grows more intense, the city Board of Water and Power Commissioners and the mayor could invoke Phase 2 of the law, which would require all water users to reduce consumption by 10%. The higher restriction would also carry with it stricter penalties.

In practice, city officials don’t plan to enforce the water conservation rules with an iron hand. Inspectors may respond to complaints about flagrant violations, but for the most part officials are relying on voluntary compliance. And there is not likely to be any actual interruptions in water service to DWP customers, Georgeson said.

For the rest of this year, Los Angeles will be allowed to obtain more water than usual from the California Water Project and the Colorado River. It is possible that some residents would detect some difference in the quality of their tap water, but it would only be a minor change, water officials said.

Ordinarily, most Los Angeles homes receive snow melt that flows from Sierra streams into the Los Angeles Aqueduct system. The water is then drawn by gravity through the Owens Valley and Mojave Desert more than 250 miles to Southern California. The nearly pristine mountain water is considered purer than the water from other major sources available to Los Angeles.

But water purchased from the Water Project originates on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada and enters the state aqueducts via a circuitous route through the Sacramento-San Joaquin rivers delta, where it mixes with runoff from farms and towns.

Georgeson said the delta water is tainted by more organic contamination than the city’s usual supply, but that the difference should be unnoticeable to most residents. The water will be mixed into existing supplies in several reservoirs before being treated and delivered to homes.

If residents notice anything different about their drinking it is likely to be the hardness of water from the Colorado River, which Georgeson said has the highest mineral content of all the city’s main water sources.

New Wells Needed

The DWP also plans to try to draw more water out of aquifers in the San Fernando Valley, but first the city must drill new wells to replace those closed in recent years because of chemical contamination. Most of the wells tap water that lies below industrial areas of the valley where the contamination has been heaviest, Georgeson said.

Bradley aides said the mayor’s office began pressuring the DWP to declare that a water crisis existed three months ago, shortly after the mayor proposed a separate set of mandatory water conservation measures to reduce strain on the city sewers.

But the DWP commission refused to act until this week, unconvinced that the water shortage was serious enough to justify the water conservation steps. However, in recent weeks a number of state water agencies have declared the situation serious.

The move toward water conservation measures was also sought to assuage Inyo County officials, who have the power to reduce the amount of water that Los Angeles can draw from Owens Valley wells if the Inyo officials don’t think the city is trying to conserve water.