64% of DWP’s Customers Steer Clear of Tap Water

In a stinging vote of no-confidence, nearly two-thirds of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers use bottled water or water filtration devices instead of drinking straight from the tap, a recent DWP customer survey found.

A companion survey found that DWP employees are almost as likely as customers to use bottled or filtered water.

Southern California has long been the country’s top bottled water market, but the findings show more distrust of tap water than previous surveys, apparently reflecting growing fears of toxic pollution.

Fifty-four percent of the customers who said they used bottled or filtered water said they did so for better taste, but 40% said they did for safety reasons.

“Possibly the most distressing result seen in this survey is the fact that bottled water use is on the rise,” the report said. “Both bottled water and (filtered water) are considered by users to be better tasting and safer than DWP-supplied water.”

DWP officials said they were disturbed but not completely surprised by the findings, given the intense publicity about toxic hazards.

“We’re just fighting an uphill battle to try to get out the correct information about the water supply,” said Dan Waters, DWP assistant general manager for external and organizational services.

The DWP provides water and electric power to the more than 3.3 million residents of the city of Los Angeles.

The survey showed that fewer customers today believe that Los Angeles water meets all state and federal standards than in 1987, when the DWP conducted a similar survey. Sixty-three percent then thought that all standards were being met, but that number has dwindled to 54%, with 24% now believing that the water does not meet standards and the rest saying that they are unsure.

The findings also indicated that customers were nearly three times as likely to believe that contaminated ground water is a problem than to believe that it is not. Fifty-seven percent said contaminated ground water is a problem and 20% said it is not.

The president of a bottled water trade group estimated that one of every two Southern Californians is “into some sort of tap water alternative.” Told of the DWP findings, Douglas Nelson of the International Bottled Water Assn. said they reflect the “highest incidence in the country” of bottled and filtered water use.

The customer survey found that 53% use bottled water, paying an average of $14.40 per month--or about 800 times more per gallon than DWP water costs. Nineteen percent used water filters. Because some use both bottled water and filtration units, the total number who said they rely on alternate drinking water sources was 64%.

Survey of Employees

Among DWP employees, 59% said they use alternate drinking water sources--with 49% using bottled water and 18% using home filter units.

The survey included employees living in Los Angeles and served by the DWP and those living elsewhere and served by different water systems.

But there were no significant differences between employees who were DWP customers and employees who were not in their use of bottled and filtered water, the survey found.

Waters said the trend is understandable in light of publicity about toxic hazards.

“For every person that hears something about the water meeting all the standards . . . they read eight stories about water-contamination problems somewhere in the country,” Waters said.

Some of that publicity has been about chemical contamination of DWP wells in the San Fernando Valley that supply about one-sixth of the city’s water.

Polluted wells have been idled or are being blended with clean supplies, with the result that DWP’s water meets all state and federal health standards, according to officials of the California Department of Health Services and the DWP.

No Safety Guarantee

At the same time, health officials and some consumer and environmental groups say there is no guarantee of greater safety in bottled water.

In a recent report, titled “Bottled Water: Sparkling Hype at a Premium Price,” the Environmental Policy Institute, based in Washington, attacked the “unfounded presumption” that bottled water “is invariably preferable to tap water . . . from a health perspective.”

Such critics point out that bottled and public water supplies typically are drawn from sources that are equally at risk from pollution. Often, bottled water is tap water that is filtered or treated again.

In 1986, California health authorities and bottled water industry officials made the surprising discovery that tiny traces of methylene chloride, a chemical solvent, were leaching into bottled waters from their plastic containers. The state has since imposed a strict limit on methylene chloride in bottled water.

Critics also argue that federal regulations do more to assure the purity of public water supplies than bottled water. That is because the federal Food and Drug Administration--which regulates bottled water--has failed to set standards for some contaminants that the Environmental Protection Agency has set limits for in public supplies.

But in California, new state regulations have nearly reversed the situation. Legislation passed in 1987 requires bottled water--including imported water that is distributed in California--to comply with stiffer standards for some contaminants than public supplies. The law set lower bottled water limits for lead, organic solvents and trihalomethanes--byproducts of water disinfectants that are suspected of causing cancer.

The DWP employee survey showed that workers are almost as nervous as ordinary customers about the safety of public water supplies. Asked why a majority of employees would prefer bottled or filtered water, Waters said the workers are “pretty much typical citizens of the city of Los Angeles.”

In one way, however, the employees are different than other city residents. They are “less responsible” than regular customers “in the area of conservation,” the employee survey found. Specifically, it said, customers are more likely than employees to cut their water use in response to DWP’s higher summer rates.

The DWP should try to educate its workers “on the need to set a better example,” Waters said.

The employees also were more convinced than customers that DWP water diversions from streams feeding Mono Lake are having a negative environmental impact. This is despite the DWP’s unwavering position--enunciated in litigation and public statements--that there is no proof of lasting harm to the lake, whose level has dropped because its feeder streams are tapped for one-seventh of the city’s water.

Among customers, 32% believe that there is a negative impact on Mono Lake, 13% believe there is not and 55% are not sure.

But 46% of the employees believe that there is a negative impact on Mono Lake, compared to 30% who do not and 24% who are unsure. Said Waters: “I don’t think that the bulk of our employees are really aware of all of the facts.”

The surveys did contain some good news for the DWP. Although most customers thought that DWP service was comparable to that of other utilities, 31% perceived a difference--and by a 4-1 margin that group said the DWP does a better job than other utilities.

The surveys were not intended for public release, but were provided in response to a request from The Times. Waters said the studies, which together cost about $120,000, were meant to serve as internal guidelines to improve the utility’s service and image.

For the customer survey, 1,001 water users throughout the city were interviewed last February and March by researchers from Reichman-Karten-Sword Inc. of San Francisco.

For the employee survey, 1,688 of the DWP’s 11,573 employees were interviewed by the Evaluation and Training Institute of Los Angeles, another research organization. Waters said there was a 95% certainty that the margin of error for the two surveys was no greater than 3%.

Last year, California accounted for 35.7% of U.S. bottled water sales, according to the International Bottled Water Assn. Bottled water has always sold more briskly in Southern California than elsewhere, due partly to hot weather, aggressive marketing and objections to the taste of some public water supplies.

The DWP surveys show that demand for bottled and filtered water is continuing to grow.

In September, 1986, The Times reported that its own survey had found that four of 10 Californians and half of Los Angeles County residents were using bottled or filtered water.

The latest DWP survey also shows that more customers use bottled and filtered water now than in 1987, when the utility conducted its earlier poll. In the earlier survey, 47% of customers used bottled water--compared to 53% now--and 16% used filtration devices, compared to 19% now.

The impact of bottled water sales on DWP revenue is nil, since drinking water represents only a fraction of 1% of water consumption.

DWP officials said they will not try to discourage use of alternate supplies by those who can afford them and prefer the taste.

But they bristled at the thought that people buy bottled water as a necessity rather than luxury.

If people would “rather be buying shoes for the kids or something, then I think we have some concerns there,” Waters said. “It’s really not fair to the people . . . because a lot of them are spending money to buy water that they really don’t need to.”

BOTTLED WATER CONSUMPTION

This chart shows the per capita consumption of bottled water in selected states. Data expressed in gallons per year from 1984-88.

STATE 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 California 14.6 16.2 16.9 17.6 19.9 New York 3.4 4.0 4.6 5.3 6.2 Texas 4.8 5.4 5.2 5.2 6.3 Florida 5.8 6.4 6.7 7.1 7.5 Illinois 2.8 3.3 4.4 5.1 5.8 Arizona 7.5 8.8 13.0 15.2 17.1 Massachusetts 4.1 4.6 7.0 8.4 9.9 Maryland/D.C. 5.0 5.8 6.7 7.3 8.4 Pennsylvania 1.7 2.0 2.4 3.1 3.6 NATIONAL AVERAGE 4.0* 4.5* 5.0* 5.7* 6.4*

* Does not include club seltzers.

Sources: Beverage Marketing’s annual industry survey; Bureau of the Census