Countywide Water Limit Appeals to Many Area Leaders at Meeting : Drought: Representatives of 10 local cities will gather Thursday to further discuss a unified approach to rationing.

A proposal calling for standard limits of household water use across Ventura County was supported Monday by many city and water-agency officials at a meeting in Ventura.

“Water connects every one of us in Ventura County,” said County Supervisor John Flynn, who assembled representatives of the county’s 10 cities and its three largest water districts at the County Government Center.

Flynn asked the group to consider forming a countywide plan that would ensure a future water supply if the drought continues.

Representatives of the 10 cities have scheduled a meeting Thursday to further discuss such a countywide approach to rationing, and the group assembled by Flynn is expected to meet again Feb. 19.

Although no formal vote was taken, most of those present Monday seemed to favor the countywide approach, which Flynn said is essential to meet the demands of the worsening drought, now in its fifth year.

“Sometimes it’s a hard-sell when one city does something to cut back and others don’t,” Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi said. “I think it’s a good idea to set up a standardized program.”

The meeting preceded by hours a recommendation by an advisory committee of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to cut back state aqueduct water for the county.

The full 51-member board of the MWD is expected to vote in Los Angeles today to cut deliveries to cities by 20% and to growers by 50% from 1990 levels. The MWD, which supplies 450,000 residents and 500 farmers in the county, announced cuts last month of 10% to cities and 30% to growers.

The Calleguas Municipal Water District, which distributes MWD water in Ventura County, has said it will pass along the cutbacks and assess penalties of $394 per acre-foot for excess use. An acre-foot is enough water to supply two families with water for a year, MWD officials say.

Flynn cautioned that cities and growers cannot depend on ground water to make up for cutbacks in imported water.

“We have to treat our aquifers like a bank account,” he said. “Once you take the water out of them, it’s like taking money out of a bank. It’s hard to get it back in.”

Camarillo Mayor David Smith also endorsed the idea of a county-wide rationing plan.

“It’s possible that may be necessary,” he said. “It would frustrate me if we had a limit and the city next door could use twice that much.”

But Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton, whose city allows 624 gallons a day per household before penalties are assessed, opposed countywide water-use limits. His city’s limits on daily residential water consumption are 224 gallons higher than Oxnard’s and more than twice Ventura’s.

“There is no way we can accept that,” he said of Flynn’s proposal. “Why should we? If you pick an approach that works in Oxnard, it may not be fair in Simi Valley.”

Oxnard uses less water per person than Simi Valley because its residential lots are smaller and because its proximity to the ocean makes it less arid, he said.

However, Stratton said Simi Valley would consider a countywide approach to limiting new construction.