New DWP Leader Stresses Conservation : Utilities: Daniel W. Waters says an incentive and rebate program will cut energy consumption and residents can be educated to reduce water use.

If the new manager of the Department of Water and Power gets his way, Angelenos will voluntarily adopt water conservation as a lifestyle, new technologies and rebates will help users dramatically cut energy waste, and the controversy over whether a city-owned power plant in the Grand Canyon is creating smog will finally be put to rest.

Daniel W. Waters, a career DWP bureaucrat whose appointment to the city’s top-salaried job took effect Monday, has entered the high-pressure position with seeming calm.

Unlike his predecessor, Norman E. Nichols, who abruptly left the nation’s largest municipal utility after angrily accusing city leaders of treating the DWP like a “political playpen,” Waters said he does not think Mayor Tom Bradley has put undue political pressure on his department.

Nichols openly criticized Bradley’s appointment of environmental activists to the board that oversees the DWP. He also resisted the city controller’s efforts to trim back seemingly lavish travel by DWP executives and fought with Bradley over the mayor’s plan for water rationing.

In a clear departure from Nichols’ sometimes arrogant style, Waters said Monday, “I see what goes on in other cities and what goes on in major corporations, and I really don’t think we have an undue amount of political pressure in Los Angeles.

“When we screw up, we hear about it,” Waters said, “but we have not had more than our share by any means. . . . I don’t think it’s been inappropriate and I don’t think anyone has asked us to do anything not in the best interest of customers.”

Waters said he strongly believes that Los Angeles residents can be educated to permanently reduce their water use year-round as California grapples with a water shortage.

While he opposes mandatory water rationing, Waters said that if Los Angeles endures another drought this winter, “I think everyone will agree that rationing becomes a must next summer.”

Waters enters the $157,000-a-year position at a turbulent time in the 11,000-person department’s history.

DWP executives have come under repeated fire from city Controller Rick Tuttle and Bradley for excessive travel and entertainment spending.

Over the summer, Tuttle accused Nichols and other executives of forgetting their proper roles as public servants when they chartered $700,000 worth of flights in private jets and created a $1-million tour program for VIPs to visit the city’s power plants near the Grand Canyon and other remote locations.

Waters said that while expensive charter flights made good business sense at the time, “We kind of forgot that we live in a fishbowl as a public agency and maybe we were being too much of a business and not enough of a public agency.

“When you think like (a business), you may do things that do not look too good,” Waters said.

As a result, he said, department policy has been altered, and officials must get approval from the DWP board for unusual travel requests or charter flights involving fewer than four employees.

Waters also appears to differ from Nichols on environmental issues. When Nichols left office in June, he accused Bradley of “loading up the (DWP) board” with environmentalists, including Dorothy Green, the founder of Heal the Bay, and Michael Gage, a longtime environmentalist and former deputy mayor under Bradley.

At that time, some City Council members called Nichols a political scapegoat. Others said he was too slow in addressing environmental concerns. Said Councilman Michael Woo, “What Mr. Nichols is calling political pressure we call accountability.”

Waters said that under his leadership, the DWP will push an aggressive new program to get residents and commercial users to cut back on their energy usage--not by demanding that people turn down the lights or shiver through the winter, but through incentives and rebates.

“If people have two refrigerators or two freezers, for instance, we will buy one of them just to get them to stop using one,” Waters said. “To build a power plant today might cost us $1,000 to $1,500 per kilowatt. If we can go out and invest money with our customers and get them to conserve through incentives, and it costs us only $200 or $300 per kilowatt, we save, then everyone wins.”

However, Waters said, one environmental controversy still has not been put to rest--the question of whether a faraway power plant that supplies Los Angeles is polluting the Grand Canyon.

“The canyon has some serious visibility problems and we know some of it is from cars in L.A.,” Waters said. “The question is, how much of it does our plant cause? If we go in and spend $1 billion to clean up the plant, will we notice any improvement in the Grand Canyon?”

Waters said private and public studies are under way to answer that question and added, “We will do whatever is right for our customers and the environment.”