DWP Commissioners Endorse Bradley’s Plan for Water Rationing

Bringing water rationing a step closer, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power commissioners Thursday unanimously endorsed Mayor Tom Bradley’s call for mandatory 10% cuts in water usage this summer.

“I think this board is fully convinced that going to . . . mandatory water rationing is the appropriate thing to be doing, and management concurs with that,” said Rick Caruso, president of the board of commissioners, which approved its resolution without discussion.

While the vote will not ensure that rationing will become law, City Council members who make the final decision have said that the board’s support will be a key factor in their deliberations.

Some council members--including Joan Milke Flores, who chairs the council committee that oversees water matters--have been skeptical about the need for rationing. Their skepticism was based in part on the DWP’s own reluctance to take a stand on the issue until Thursday.

“I had some concerns in the beginning,” Caruso acknowledged. “But I think in light of everything I’ve seen . . . I think it’s the right thing to do.”

DWP General Manager Norm Nichols, who has studiously avoided taking a public position on rationing, said Thursday that “the board and management are in complete accord” in wanting to implement rationing as soon as possible.

The mayor has called for a mandatory 10% cut in every resident’s water use from the pre-drought consumption level in 1986. The Metropolitan Water District, which supplies water to 300 communities in Southern California and provides Los Angeles with about 60% of its water, has projected that its supplies will fall short of demand by about 10% to 12% this year.

The shortage results from the cumulative effects of four consecutive years of drought conditions in California and much of the West.

The rationing proposal will be considered by the City Council’s Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources Committee for the second time on May 29. Flores said she anticipates taking the matter to the full council for a vote in mid-June.

Nichols said he became convinced of the need for rationing after examining the most recent figures on water storage and snowpack runoff and after studying Los Angeles’ tangled legal claims to water rights in the Owens Valley. Los Angeles, which historically has drawn 60% of its water supplies from the valley east of the Sierra Nevada, has lost some important legal challenges in recent years, restricting its ability to pump ground water from the valley and divert water from nearby Mono Lake.

But even as they voted for rationing, DWP officials were told that Los Angeles residents already have been fairly successful at conserving water voluntarily.

Jim Wickser, assistant general manager for water, said total water use was down 14% in April from the same month last year. He attributed 8% of the reduction to water conservation efforts. So far this month, preliminary figures showed total water usage down about 9%, though Wickser said he is unsure how much is due to conservation and how much was due to changes in weather conditions from year to year.

Caruso said those figures show that “it should be fairly easy for (residents) to comply” with the rationing plan. And he defended the decision to seek rationing even though residents have almost reached the same level of savings through voluntary conservation.

The law, he said, is necessary “to ensure we get it.”