Nichols OKd for DWP Board : Politics: Two black City Council members oppose environmentalist. But she is approved on 10-3 vote.

Over angry objections from two black members, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday confirmed attorney Mary Nichols as the new Department of Water and Power commissioner, a move expected to create an environmentalist majority on the influential commission.

“It is time we had activists on this board that are not going to treat it as a public monopoly but as a public utility,” said Councilwoman Gloria Molina shortly before the council voted 10 to 3 to approve Mayor Tom Bradley’s nominee.

Nichols, 45, a senior staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, is the third environmentalist to be appointed to the five-member commission in a dramatic shake-up that began in January with the appointment of Dorothy Green, founder of Heal the Bay.

The DWP commission sets rates for electric and water users in Los Angeles and oversees policies such as for dealing with the current drought.

But Nichols’ nomination divided the City Council along racial lines Tuesday, as council members Nate Holden and Robert Farrell lashed out at the environmental movement.

Farrell claimed that by replacing outgoing black DWP Commissioner Carol Wheeler with a white environmentalist, the City Council is sending a message “that the green (ecological-political) movement and the environmental movement . . . is a racist constituency that is (trying to) speak for all people.”

Holden added that with Wheeler gone, none of the five DWP board members represent the underprivileged or low-income groups. With its current majority of three environmentalists, Holden cautioned, the board will say: “Let’s hold water hostage and raise the rates.”

But Nichols, a highly regarded environmental strategist and longtime ally of Bradley’s, said later that the NRDC has made a point of reaching out to low-income and minority groups on a wide range of environmental issues. The NRDC is one of the most effective environmental litigation groups in the country, perhaps best known for its successful fight to remove the chemical Alar from apples.

She noted that the NRDC co-sponsored a conference at USC recently to teach nonprofit community groups and churches how to run for-profit recycling programs. The seminar was jammed with 350 attendees, many of them black and Latino church and community leaders from South-Central Los Angeles.

“There is tremendous concern among low-income and minority communities about their environment and their quality of life, and to suggest otherwise as Mr. Farrell did is not only wrong, it is insulting,” Nichols said.