MWD Agrees to Send Water to County : Emergency: The plan would supply 12,000 homes for two years. But the first drop isn’t expected until October.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California approved an emergency measure Tuesday to ship enough water north to serve more than 12,000 Ventura County homes for the next two years, but conditioned the agreement on the capacity of its water treatment facilities, which operate at peak during summer months.

At a meeting in Los Angeles, the district agreed to send 6,200 acre-feet to Ventura County and another 3,600 acre-feet to Santa Barbara County each year for the next two years.

“The chances are very good that you would get some of the water,” said Robert Gomperz, a district spokesman. “It’s likely that you would get all of it, but the question is when.”

Gomperz said it is highly unlikely that any water would be available during summer months when the district’s Granada Hills treatment plant, which purifies water from the California Aqueduct, is operating at capacity.

Nevertheless, officials welcomed the possibility of any new water coming into the county, even if it is not the maximum amount that the district has agreed to provide under optimum conditions.

“Every acre-foot we are able to supply from state water is an acre-foot saved from our ground water,” said Don Dorman, assistant general manager of the United Water Conservation District, which would receive up to 5,000 acre-feet of MWD water under the emergency plan.

If United receives its full 5,000 acre-feet, the company would send about 3,000 acre-feet to Port Hueneme, which depends totally on United’s well water for its municipal supplies, Dorman said.

He said United would send another 2,000 acre-feet to the city of Oxnard, which gets one-third of its water from United.

United also supplies water to 800 Ventura County growers on the Oxnard Plain and provides a small amount of the water used by the city of Ventura.

United ground-water supplies, already threatened with seawater intrusion, have been tapped hard as growers pump more water to make up for the lack of rain over the last four years.

The agreement, which could bring up to 1,200 acre-feet per year to the city of Ventura, will help the city meet its water demands during the fourth year of the statewide drought, said Carol Green, assistant to the city manager.

“It’s more than a drop in the bucket for the city, but it’s far from a total solution,” she said.

Additional water for the city of Ventura will prevent the city from overdrawing its allotment from Lake Casitas, said Everett Millais, Ventura’s director of community development. The city uses about 23,500 acre-feet per year, with about one-third coming from the Casitas Municipal Water District.

The 51-member board of the Metropolitan Water District directed its general manager to enter agreements with officials from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in response to requests from area officials.

The drought has caused water rationing in the city of Ventura, and more severe measures in the city of Santa Barbara where residents are not allowed to water lawns.

According to the preliminary agreement with MWD, the water will be shipped north through pipelines owned by several water districts and agencies. To serve Ventura and Santa Barbara, a $200,000 pipeline must be built to carry water across the Santa Clara River between Oxnard and Ventura.

The city of Ventura would pay about $50,000, with Santa Barbara picking up the balance, according to preliminary agreements.

The first drop of water will not likely reach the county until October, MWD spokesman Gomperz said.

The water coming to the county will be shipped to MWD from the state Department of Water Resources, which sends water from Northern California rivers south over the Tehachapi Mountains and into Los Angeles. Ventura County is entitled to the water because it has paid into a fund since the 1960s to help finance the California Aqueduct.

The Metropolitan Water District has announced water cuts of its own for MWD users in Southern California, but those cuts will not affect the agreement with Ventura and Santa Barbara water users because the water to be supplied will not come directly from Metropolitan’s supplies, Gomperz said.

“This is not Metropolitan water; it’s state Water Resources Department Water,” Gomperz said.