Emergency Cutbacks in Water Use Studied : Drought: In response to a MWD request, five cities in eastern Ventura County are planning for rationing.

Ventura County’s eastern cities will consider emergency ordinances to reduce water consumption as a result of the Metropolitan Water District’s decision Tuesday to ask member agencies to prepare for possible cutbacks in their supplies.

Officials of Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Camarillo and Oxnard--which depend on the water district for all or part of their city water supplies--said they will comply with the request to prepare ordinances that would require reductions in residential and commercial water use because of a worsening statewide drought.

“I think it’s prudent for us to enact a contingency plan now,” said Camarillo Councilwoman Sandi Bush. “Water conservation as a way of life is just something we will have to adjust to.”

Thousand Oaks Mayor Alex Fiore said he is eager to review two sample drought ordinances, which MWD said could be used as models. Information on the sample measures was mailed Tuesday to water agencies.

But Fiore added, “We will surely do our part to decrease consumption of water in the city.”

Oxnard Public Works Director Jim Frandsen said he will recommend an ordinance to his council after he sees the samples from other cities. Officials in Simi Valley and Moorpark have said they will discuss drought ordinances at upcoming council meetings.

The water district’s 51-member board of directors passed a resolution Tuesday calling for the water reductions after months of discussion about its two sources of water--Northern California rivers and the Colorado River--being depleted by the drought, which is entering its fourth year.

The state Department of Water Resources, which ships Northern California water south, has told the MWD to expect cuts of 5% to 10%, and the Federal Bureau of Reclamation, which regulates the Colorado River, has said MWD’s water could be cut by 25%, said Tim Skrove, a water district spokesman.

Because of the expected cutbacks, MWD anticipates that it may have to cut water for agricultural uses by 50%, Skrove said. The state told agricultural water users in December that they could suffer 28% reductions but that the degree of cutbacks would depend on the severity of the drought.

Most growers in Ventura County take their water supplies from ground water and are not affected by cuts in state water, officials said.

In any case, MWD would not implement reductions in water for agricultural uses until January to prevent tremendous financial losses to farmers, Skrove said. But reductions in water for residential and commercial uses could begin in April, he said.

The state Department of Water Resources is expected to mail out notices of projected allocations on Friday, said Al Jones, a spokesman for the department in Sacramento.

The state supplies water to the San Francisco Bay Area, the San Joaquin Valley and much of Southern California, and Metropolitan Water District is by far its largest customer, Jones said.

If MWD is forced to cut its water users, the reductions will affect cities and water agencies from the Santa Clara River in Oxnard south along the coast to the Mexican border, including the cities of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego.

In Ventura County, MWD’s largest customer is the Calleguas Water District, which supplies water to the cities in the eastern county.

Calleguas supplies water used by the cities of Simi Valley, Moorpark and Thousand Oaks. It supplies half of Camarillo’s water and about two-thirds of Oxnard’s water. The city draws the final third from ground water beneath the Oxnard Plain.

But Oxnard may be in better shape than other cities because of an experimental project it began last fall, said Frandsen of Oxnard’s public works department.

This winter, when demand for imported water was lower than in dry summer months, the city of Oxnard bought extra water from MWD and pumped it into the ground. The city was able to buy the water at a discounted rate used to encourage the experiment.

This summer, if the proposed reductions are enacted, Oxnard may have enough water to make it through the summer without imposing restrictions, Frandsen said.

“It helps the Met situation, it helps the ground water and it helps us financially,” Frandsen said of the experiment.