MWD Officials Seek 31% Cut in Southern California Water Use : Drought: The reduction would be the most severe such measure in the district’s history. Local officials predict there will be difficulties.

Threatening the most severe drought measures in its history, officials of the Metropolitan Water District said Wednesday that they will ask their board in mid-February to order Southern California water agencies to cut consumption by 31%.

Officials throughout Southern California expressed surprise at the MWD’s announcement and predicted severe problems in making the cuts.

Stanley Sprague, general manager of the Municipal Water District of Orange County, urged the MWD to keep its original lower cuts in place until about March or April.

“I understand the urgency. I’ve seen the reservoirs, and we are in a bad situation statewide, but we haven’t even had a chance to get the program to work yet to see if we can conserve,” Sprague said. “I don’t think the public is ready for this yet. I don’t believe they are convinced that the problem is as serious as it truly is.”

“We obviously were thinking in terms of the 10% cutback for residential, and we haven’t thought about the 20% yet,” said Keith Coolidge, a spokesman for the Municipal Water District of Orange County. “For some districts, it would take some drastic measures, and they are not in place yet.”

The threatened cutback, coupled with the “dismal” level of snowfall in the Sierra, has convinced Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and key members of the City Council that mandatory rationing is necessary, sources in City Hall said. They plan to announce Friday that they will seek council authority to enact the rationing plan.

Bradley is said to want a “fair and reasonable” mandatory plan that will at first require a 10% reduction in water use from 1986 levels. But if the water supply situation continues to worsen or the MWD approves a drastic cut, Bradley will push for more severe conservation measures, the sources said.

If the plan is approved by the City Council, it would be the first time since 1977 that mandatory rationing has been imposed in Los Angeles.

The city of Los Angeles is one of the water district’s largest customers, and this year it is relying on the district for 60% of its water supply.

Officials in San Diego County, which receives 95% of its water from the district, said the cuts would be particularly painful.

MWD Manager Carl Boronkay said the district will begin making contingency plans for even more drastic reductions in the event that rainfall continues to be abnormally low through the spring. He said that probably would mean phased reductions of 38% and then 45%.

“As we’ve seen conditions worsen, we expect to go to the (district) board on Feb. 12 and ask it to consider (further) rationing,” Boronkay told the state Water Resources Control Board.

With 1991 precipitation at 28% of normal, the state is entering its fifth year of drought. If rainfall increases and is above normal for the winter and spring, many of the cuts could be avoided.

The new 31% reduction, which cannot be imposed without MWD board approval, would take effect about March 1. It would be the third time in three months that MWD has ordered cuts in deliveries to the 27 water agencies it serves.

The district supplies Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. Most of its water comes from the State Water Project and the Colorado River.

In December, the district ordered agencies to reduce consumption by 10%, and in early January increased the cutbacks to 17%, effective Feb. 1.

Although the district can limit the water it supplies, it leaves it to cities and counties to decide how and whether to ration water to their customers. Some governments are considering mandatory water rationing to make up for the supply cuts.

The MWD’s proposal would cut 31% from the amount of water requested this year by its member agencies.

To reach the 31%, officials said, a 20% cut in deliveries for residential use and a 50% cut in deliveries for agricultural use would be required.

Water authorities have said that 15% is about as much as residential users can easily conserve. Los Angeles officials said the 10% rationing plan would probably result in a 15% reduction in water use for residential customers.

Boronkay said the latest measures were prompted by an announcement Tuesday by state officials that the State Water Project would cut the amount of water it is supplying to the MWD by 85% if drought conditions continue to be critical.

“That was flabbergasting,” he said.

Even if rainfall is normal through the spring, he said, officials had promised to give the district only half of the water it has requested. The MWD usually gets about 60% of its supplies from the state project.

Boronkay said he considered moving to a water conservation plan that would require a 24% reduction in consumption--the fourth phase of a five-phase plan. But he then decided it would probably be better to require the 31% cut.

When the plan was devised last year, he said officials never expected to have to resort to the 31% cut, much less plan for further cuts.

He predicted, however, that cuts beyond 45% would be “too painful” and that before the district would consider such measures it would try first to buy water from other sources, particularly irrigation districts north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

“You can’t cut 50%,” he said. “We’re already into fear of losing landscaping and a lot of tourism depends on water. We’re going to have to do better than just cut or the board will get a new general manager, I fear.”

In Los Angeles, the persistence of the drought and the low snowfall level have swayed City Council members who had said that they are not convinced that rationing was necessary.

Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who was instrumental in defeating Bradley’s mandatory plan last summer, plans to join Bradley and Council President John Ferraro at a press conference Friday to urge passage of the mandatory plan, sources said.

Bradley had hoped to have a mandatory rationing program in place last spring, before the hot summer months when most of the city’s water is consumed.

But the City Council rejected Bradley’s plea and instead approved a voluntary conservation program. Under the voluntary plan, if the city fails to cut water use by 10% in any month, the council may vote to impose a mandatory program. It would impose financial penalties on households and businesses that fail to cut their water use by 10% from 1986 levels.

Last October, conservation fell to only 5.2%, a level low enough to prompt mandatory rationing, but the council and Bradley chose to wait for winter snowpack figures before invoking the mandatory measures.

In San Diego, the proposed MWD cut brought a grim reaction from local water officials.

“It’s going to pose an extreme hardship on the people of San Diego,” said James R. Melton, spokesman for the San Diego County Water Authority. “We rely almost entirely on their supplies.”

Simi Valley in Ventura County cannot pump ground water to make up deficits and will have to pass along any further cuts in MWD supplies to its residents, said Michael Kleinbrodt, deputy director of public works.

“All our water comes from MWD,” he said. “We have no other source.” The city approved an ordinance on Monday that fines excessive water users.

Ellis reported from Sacramento and Fritsch from Los Angeles. Contributing to this story were staff writers Marla Cone in Orange County, Michael Granberry in San Diego and Joanna Miller in Ventura County.