Committee Endorses Water Rationing Plan : Drought: Mayor’s call for mandatory 10% cut in usage is met with skepticism from DWP officials. Full council will vote next month.

Mayor Tom Bradley’s bid to impose mandatory water rationing in Los Angeles passed an important test Tuesday as it was endorsed by members of a key City Council committee.

Committee members came to their conclusions even though senior Department of Water and Power officials refused to take a position on rationing during the first day of hearings on the continuing drought and projected water shortages.

Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who chairs the Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said, “There’s enough evidence there to warrant a mandatory (rationing) program to be presented to the City Council.”

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, vice chair of the committee that oversees water issues, said, “We’re beginning to understand that water is finite” and must be conserved. “Most of these things we ought to be doing anyway. It’s the price of living in Southern California.”

Norm Nichols, DWP general manager, was asked four times by the committee whether rationing was justifiable, and each time he ducked the question. “That’s the $64 question,” he joked at one point.

He said there was not enough information available to make a decision on rationing and at another point he asked, “Can we get the same savings from an aggressive voluntary (conservation) program?”

Nichols’ reluctance to back Bradley’s rationing proposal did not play well with the mayor’s office.

Mark Fabiani, Bradley’s chief of staff, said, “The mayor won’t be stymied by Nichols’ peculiar and unexplained philosophical objection to water conservation. The guy’s up there giving some very strange answers to some very straight questions.”

Fabiani added that Nichols “is talking about voluntary programs, but where is the department’s program? There wasn’t one until the mayor imposed it.”

Mike Gage, a member of the DWP Board of Commissioners, said he felt the decision on rationing should be made by the mayor and the City Council and not by the DWP staff.

“Policy-makers make policy, not department heads,” said Gage, who was appointed to the board earlier this year after serving for several years as Bradley’s chief of staff.

Flores agreed that “the final determination should be made by elected officials.” But the councilwoman told DWP commissioners that they will be required to take a stand on rationing before the measure goes to the full council.

Flores and Galanter said they based their decisions to support rationing on reports from the DWP and the Metropolitan Water District that water supplies could be short by 10% to 12% this summer. Runoff from the winter snowpack has been measured at 50% of normal in the Sierra Nevada, where most of the city’s water comes from, officials have reported.

At the same time, DWP engineers also reported that city residents cut their water use through voluntary conservation by an estimated 8% in April and during the first week of May.

James Wickser, assistant general manager of the DWP, did not say how the cutbacks were measured, but traditionally the DWP measures sewer flows as its primary means of gauging water usage.

Bradley has asked that city residents be required to reduce their consumption by 10% from 1986 levels.

Water rationing was endorsed by the Sierra Club and other environmental groups whose representatives testified at the hearing Tuesday.

Flores questioned whether voluntary conservation measures have been given enough of a chance, but she said the city cannot wait much longer as the summer months approach. She said she still has questions on how rationing will be implemented.

“I don’t want to just throw something together, not just a patchwork. . . . we need something permanent,” she said, adding that the committee should be able to present a program to the council by June 15.

Meanwhile, Councilwoman Joy Picus said residents with large lawns or who live in the hotter areas of the city--such as the San Fernando Valley--should be able to appeal for larger water allotments under a conservation plan. She noted that the West Valley was 25 degrees warmer than Venice Beach during the recent heat wave.

In a press release, Picus said, “We need to be fair to people who have larger lawns, lusher vegetation and warmer weather.”

Picus did not say how many extra gallons her proposed dispensation would make available to Valley water users.

Her idea did not float well with Fabiani or DWP staff.

The cutback mechanism “already automatically adjusts for weather,” Fabiani said. Presumably, Valley residents were using more water in 1986 than homeowners elsewhere due to the weather factor, he said. Thus, a 10% cut for a Valley resident is as equitable as a similar cut for a Westside user.

In another development, Bradley’s office said that it overstated how much the city’s summer pool program will be cut back as a water savings device.

On Monday, the mayor said the program would be cut from 12 weeks to nine weeks. But on Tuesday, the mayor’s office said that it would actually be reduced to 12 weeks from an earlier planned 15 weeks. In most years, the program runs for 12 weeks, but council members had favored expanding the program this year to 15 weeks.

Bradley said Tuesday that “due to budgetary and water conservation considerations” he was restoring the program to 12 weeks. The city’s outdoor pools will open June 23 and close Sept. 9.