Water Loggers : Drought: A small group of city employees is spreading the word on conservation, as well as taking to the streets to look for waste.

Paul Cooper shook his head in disgust as he kicked at a piece of moss growing in a sidewalk puddle in Normal Heights.

The yard of the adjacent home was thoroughly soaked with water leaking from somewhere under the house. A steady trickle ran down the street’s gutter for several blocks.

Ron Villa, Cooper’s co-worker, checked the water meter and found that, although nobody was home, the house had gulped 3 1/2 gallons of water in about five minutes.

Villa shut off a dripping outdoor faucet that was adding even more water to the swampy front yard, and Cooper left a packet of information on the doorstep of the home. He had little confidence that it would change the ways of the chronic water waster who lived there--two previous visits had had no effect.

“I have a feeling he won’t be paying much attention to the water-conservation kit,” Cooper said.

They hopped in Villa’s truck and headed to the next trouble spot.

Cooper and Villa are among a small group of employees in the San Diego Water Utilities Department who are on the front lines of the city’s effort to encourage voluntary conservation.

Nine people, many of them temporary interns from local universities, are working in the department’s Water Conservation Program to educate people on how to use less water, usually without significantly altering their lifestyles.

The department has always had an information line, 533-4111, but this summer it has been formally designated a hot line, said Marsi Steirer, coordinator of the program.

The interns answer about 150 calls a day, most of them from people seeking information, she said. The workers send out packets of information and small conservation kits containing toilet leak-testing dye, shower flow-rate testers and flow restrictors.

But about 30 calls a day are from people reporting water wasters, Steirer said. These calls are often handled with a phone call or dismissed as nit-picking episodes in neighbor disputes, she said.

Field representatives such as Villa and Cooper take calls in the utilities office at 401 B St., then hit the streets to deal with legitimate complaints.

They also look for unreported problems. Nothing wet seems to escape Cooper’s and Villa’s detection as they prowl city streets in Villa’s Toyota Land Cruiser.

Villa caught a glimpse of a trickle of water in a gutter, and his gaze quickly followed it several hundred feet down a side street to where a man had soaked his driveway and the street while hosing out his garbage cans. A few miles later, Cooper spotted a man hosing out a broom into a gutter drain--possibly flushing toxic materials from the broom into the sewer system.

They grumbled about the waste, but didn’t have time to stop and talk.

The field representatives also keep an eye on city operations, and a cruise through Balboa Park indicated that gardeners are responding to their suggestions. Basic violations such as watering during the midday heat and broken sprinkler heads have been problems in the past.

“It looks like they’re finally coming around,” Cooper said. “We put the screws to Park and Recreation, the port authority and General Services. . . . It’s hard to tell people to save water if the city is wasting it.”

Cooper said people are usually cooperative when he talks to them about saving. Many are grateful when alerted to problems they didn’t know about, such as broken sprinkler heads or leaky irrigation equipment.

“We try to be as subtle and non-confrontational as possible,” Cooper said. “For the most part, we get positive responses in the field.”

A few people, however, have been annoyed by the visits. Cooper said one woman turned her hose on him and soaked his shoes when he politely suggested that she use a broom instead of water to clean her driveway.

Although they are impressed by most residents’ response to the City Council’s call for voluntary water frugality, Cooper and Villa said they are also frustrated by a minority of people who refuse to do their share.

“Some feel that, as long as they are paying their water bills, they can do whatever they want,” Villa said.

And they can.

The city of San Diego is one of only three municipalities in the county that has not adopted a mandatory water-conservation program. Instead, the council has asked residents to voluntarily reduce their water use, and the program has been successful, according to Water Utilities Director Milon Mills. He said Thursday that water use is down by about 14% over last year, allowing for new hookups in the past year as a result of growth.

The city had hoped for a reduction of at least 10%. If that has not been met by the end of a 60-day trial period, mandatory conservation measures will be automatically introduced.

Cooper and Villa said they worry that San Diegans may stop conserving after the trial period, which ends in August as the hottest weather of the year kicks in. They said they wish they had the authority now to issue tickets to water wasters, even though it would be done rarely and only as a last resort.

Despite their lack of enforcement power, Villa and Cooper approach their task with optimism and zest. They can spot a telltale water stain on a sidewalk from 30 feet away, or a mushy piece of earth from a car traveling 35 m.p.h.

They have learned that moss growing in a puddle means there has been a steady leak for at least a couple of weeks. A mailman was one of several people who called to complain about the home in Normal Heights, because the slippery moss made it treacherous for him to walk up the sidewalk.

Just before lunch, Cooper and Villa surveyed a lush, green hillside at a housing development near Santo Road in Tierrasanta. The landscapers had made good use of drought-resistant plants to prevent erosion, Villa said, but a quick check of the area revealed that gardeners were not aware of that fact. The sidewalk was stained from water runoff and the soil was unnecessarily damp.

“They usually over-water,” Cooper said, “because they are afraid they will lose their jobs if things get too brown.”