Steam Likely to Rise With Water Cutbacks

Californians involved in questions of water policy and the current drought like to note that Mark Twain once said, “Whiskey’s for drinking; water’s for fighting over.”

The quote is only partly true. Mark Twain scholars have been unable to find it anywhere in his work. But water does cause fights--farmer against city dweller, neighbor against neighbor.

“If there are floods or drought, people are interested in water,” says Rita Schmidt Sudman, executive director of the nonpartisan Water Education Foundation in Sacramento. “Otherwise, there are other things to get concerned about, and they put water on the back burner.”

Consumers are hardly exempt from the fray. California residents use an average of 100 gallons per person per day, and some local governments are imposing stringent limitations. Marin County will hold its residents to 50 gallons per person per day. In Los Angeles, where the average single-family household uses 450 gallons a day, watering lawns is prohibited from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and sidewalk hosing is forbidden. And, starting March 1, everyone must hold usage to 10% below that of the same period in 1986--15% starting in May.

Such cuts are hardly Draconian, particularly for the single-family household. Outside watering--and often over-watering--can represent more than 50% of total usage, so “if you have a landscape, that’s where you look first,” says Marsha Prillwitz, landscape program manager in California’s Department of Water Resources.

Inside cuts may involve changes of “hardware rather than habits,” says Jerry Gewe, manager of water resources planning at Los Angeles’s Department of Water and Power. Low-flow shower heads use three gallons a minute instead of six; low-flow toilets use 1.6 instead of six gallons a flush. Some involve changing habits--running water continuously, for instance, while brushing teeth or washing dishes.

People fight over such numbers, of course, arguing that low-flow toilets require two flushes or that shallow baths also conserve water. Nevertheless, “there’s a value in having consumers look at figures,” says Richard Soehren, manager of urban water conservation planning at California’s Department of Water Resources, “because people generally underestimate severely the amount of water they use.”

People may also fight their assessments. Los Angeles, which goes back five years for base usage, expects 100,000 appeals (15% of its customers) from householders who have added landscaping or family members, or moved during that time. The city’s 1977 conservation program, which went back one year, drew 72,000 appeals.

In California, consumers are also fighting about having their usage cut at all. It has been pointed out that even a 25% cut in household usage would cut overall water consumption only 2%. Better, they say, to cut agriculture, which uses more than 80% of available water statewide and should, given the semi-arid climate, get more efficient or get rid of water-intensive crops such as rice and cotton. In fact, federal authorities said Thursday they are cutting water to farmers by 75% and reducing supplies to cities by about half.

Similarly, says Sudman, “there are conservation groups saying we should import beef rather than growing it in California.” They say it takes 1,303 gallons of water--pasture to table--to produce one hamburger, and 408 gallons to produce each serving of chicken.

The question is whose use is more “discretionary,” less vital. It may also come up when residential customers are weighed against urban business users whose water consumption isn’t productive but incidental--office buildings, perhaps, where the users aren’t the payers and have little incentive to conserve.

Residents will even fight among themselves. Where incentives are financial (surcharges for excess usage, as in Los Angeles), the antagonism will be between rich and poor: The rich can afford expensive grass. Where some usage is flatly prohibited, neighbors will rat on neighbors. In Santa Barbara, citizens regularly report illegal lawn-watering in their neighborhoods.

Apartments and condominiums can expect outright warfare. Because individual units aren’t metered, excess water usage will be charged to the building as a whole, and landlords will divide equally among tenants whatever amounts they’re allowed to pass on. Those who conserve will become vigilantes, listening at walls for running showers and flushing toilets.

Much residential usage is not just discretionary but unnecessary to health or happiness. “If a lawn just sits there,” says Sudman, “and nobody plays on it, or sits on it, why have it?” Indeed, when Los Angeles residents were asked for a 10% cut in usage in 1977, they easily achieved 19%.

Unfortunately, everyone went right back to former habits and high usage when the rains came. What California really needs, says Sudman, is a permanent “change in a way of looking at things.”