Mayor to Name Gage, Environmentalist to DWP Board

In a move intended to signal heightened concern about the environment, Mayor Tom Bradley plans to appoint former Deputy Mayor Michael Gage and environmental activist Dorothy Green to the city’s Water and Power Commission, sources said Tuesday.

Gage, who stepped down as Bradley’s chief of staff in November, confirmed Tuesday that he has accepted an appointment to the five-member board that oversees the Department of Water and Power.

Gage has since gone to work for a San Fernando Valley developer, but he has a strong environmental record in the state Legislature, where he served as an assemblyman from 1969 to 1976.

“Just knowing that your immediate governing board has more environmental awareness and sensitivity can lead to different attitudes on the staff,” Gage said Tuesday.

Attempts to reach Green on Tuesday were unsuccessful. Green is president of Heal the Bay, an environmental group formed to push for a cleanup of Santa Monica Bay, where the city has dumped tons of sewage over the years.

Sources said she will remain in her post with the organization.

Bradley is expected to announce the appointments at a news conference this morning.

Mark Fabiani, Bradley’s new chief of staff, would not confirm the appointments, but he said the mayor wants to ensure that DWP officials show increased sensitivity to the environment.

“Tom Bradley is seeking a reinvigorated commitment to the environment by the Department of Water and Power,” Fabiani said. “The DWP has a major impact on the environment, and there is a tremendous opportunity for the department to do a great deal for the environment.”

Gage and Green will fill positions left open in recent months by the resignations of Commissioners Jack W. Leeney and Walter A. Zelman.

Gage, combative and outspoken as deputy mayor, is expected to help shake up both the board and the department.

As one of his priorities, Gage said, he will work to promote the DWP’s new water reclamation office, which he helped create as deputy mayor.

“We’re in the fourth year of a fairly serious drought,” Gage said. “There has to be a conscientious effort to do a far better job of water conservation and reclamation in this coming year.”

Green has headed Heal the Bay since its creation in 1985 and has a long history of environmental activism. She is a past president of the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters, the political action arm of the environmental movement.