Hawthorne Passes Mandatory Water Cutback Program : Conservation: Residents served by Hawthorne Water Department must cut usage by 10% starting next month.

Beginning March 1, about half of Hawthorne’s residents and businesses will be required to conserve water by 10% under mandatory water cutbacks unanimously approved by the City Council on Monday night.

Just minutes before the council began to debate the cutbacks, city water authorities said they would ask for further water savings of 20% in the next few weeks.

The cutbacks apply to all water customers served by the Hawthorne Water Department, whose service boundaries are generally defined by Rosecrans Avenue, Imperial Highway, Prairie Avenue and Inglewood Avenue.

The Southern California Water Co., which supplies water to Hawthorne customers east of Prairie Avenue and south of Rosecrans Avenue, has yet to adopt a mandatory conservation plan but expects to come before the Public Utilities Commission with a proposal by the end of the month.

Hawthorne’s conservation program is the third mandatory water plan approved in the South Bay to combat what one local water official called “the worst drought in the history of Southern California.”

The city of Manhattan Beach and the California Water Service Co., which supplies water to Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula, implemented mandatory water savings plans in the last few weeks.

Under the Hawthorne water plan, consumers who fail to meet their conservation targets will receive warnings in their March 1 or April 1 bills. Customers who ignore the warnings will be subject to penalties equaling 20% of their total water bill in the next billing period. The Hawthorne Water Department may clamp flow restrictors on water lines of customers who consistently ignore the restrictions.

The conservation targets will be calculated using June, 1989, through May, 1990, as the base year. In March, for instance, customers will have to use 10% less water than they did in March of last year. But in July, they will be required to use 10% less than they did in July, 1989.

The mandatory reductions will not apply to families who consume less than 1,900 cubic feet of water every two months, or about 237 gallons per day. That ceiling is higher than the one imposed on California Water Service customers, who are subject to the required reductions if they use more than 150 gallons a day.

A family of four should be able to meet the reduction goal by using low-flow shower heads and water displacement bags in the toilet tank, by running dishwashers and washing machines only when full, and by avoiding running water to rinse dishes, said Hawthorne Utilities Supt. Al Rivier.

In addition to the 10% cutback, Hawthorne customers are prohibited from washing their walkways or driveways, running fountains without recycling systems, serving water in restaurants when it is not requested, watering lawns between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and failing to repair water leaks.

Customers found in violation of their water targets can request an administrative hearing. Households that added family members, businesses that added employees and people with medical conditions who cannot restrict their water use are among the groups that may appeal for exemptions.

At the hearing Monday night, several consumers raised complaints about the city’s conservation plan, with many criticizing its failure to offer incentives other than penalties. The California Water Service, for instance, gives credits against future penalties to customers who conserve more water than required.

Several speakers also complained that people who began voluntarily cutting back on their water consumption before June, 1989, when the base year begins, will be unfairly penalized by the reduction formula.

“In my opinion the base line doesn’t go back far enough,” apartment owner Peter Barker said. “I think it would be much fairer to get the base to a time when people would agree that people weren’t conserving heavily.”

Barker also said the plan does not address the problems of multiunit dwellings in which several units share a single water meter. If one of the units on a meter was vacant during part of the base year, for instance, the current consumption target will be unfairly low, he said. Unless a better formula is worked out, the city will be flooded with administrative appeals, he predicted.

And Hawthorne engineer Joe Arby said it seemed unfair that his family, which has been conserving water for the past five years, could be penalized for going over its target while a neighbor who is careless about his water use only has to cut back by 10%.

At the request of several council members, city water officials promised to meet with apartment owners about the problems they face and said they would try to come up with positive incentives for reductions in water use.

Harry Reeves, Hawthorne’s chief of special services, said one incentive council members may consider is looking at the total amount of water that customers use in a year. “If they’re under goal at the end of the year, any penalties could then be reversed.”

Reeves said he would try to come up with some revisions to the city’s conservation plan in the next month, before the council schedules a public hearing for further cutbacks.

In May, 1990, Hawthorne officials adopted a voluntary water reduction plan, which resulted in a 7% savings between June and September. As a result of those efforts, the city earned $4,310 in rebates from the West Basin Municipal Water District, which sells water to the city. The rebate will be used to pay for water conservation literature and some water saving kits, Rivier said.