50% Cut in MWD Deliveries Requires Allocation Decision

An emergency meeting of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is scheduled Monday to allocate a 50% cut in water deliveries among its urban and rural customers, including 450,000 residents and 520 farmers in Ventura County.

The MWD is considering three scenarios to achieve the 50% cut: a reduction of 35% to cities and 80% to farmers, 30% to cities and 90% to farmers or 25% to cities and a complete cutoff of imported agricultural water supplies.

The cuts, which take the county beyond the present 20% reductions to cities and 50% to farmers that became effective Friday, are sure to be imposed despite the recent rainstorms, Metropolitan officials said.

“The rain will reduce the demand for water for a few days,” said Bob Gomperz, a district spokesman. “But given the fact that our drought is caused by conditions in the north as well as the south, we will have to press on with our conservation program.”

Whether the cut imposed on cities is 25% or 35%, it will be difficult to meet, officials say. The county failed to meet even the 10% reductions from 1989-1990 levels for cities that were in effect last month, Gomperz said.

The Calleguas Municipal Water District, which supplies MWD water to most of eastern Ventura County, exceeded its allocation by 24% last month. That cost the district $470,000 in fines that it will pass on to the 20 water districts that distribute Calleguas water in the county. The fines could be lowered after the allocations are adjusted for 5% population growth in the district.

However, conservation measures that bring the users below their allocations next month may be used as credit against the fines, said Calleguas General Manager James Hubert.

Figures for water use last month in the five cities that receive Calleguas water were not available because many cities are served by more than one district, and each district often serves areas both within and outside municipal boundaries.

However, the district that serves Moorpark and surrounding areas topped the list of overusers by exceeding its allocation by 80%, or 267 acre-feet. The Ventura County Water Works, which serves the Moorpark area, accumulated a fine of $105,198 for the month of February.

The Camrosa Water District, the county’s largest distributor of imported water to agricultural users and a distributor to residents of eastern Camarillo and the Santa Rosa Valley, exceeded its allocation by 45%, or 175 acre-feet, for a fine of $68,950.

The city of Camarillo, which delivers water to the remainder of the city, exceeded its allocation by 9%, or 23 acre-feet, for a fine of $9,062.

The city of Thousand Oaks, which provides water to about one-third of the city’s residents, was 20%, or 101 acre-feet over its allocation, resulting in a $39,794 fine. The city of Simi Valley, which serves about two-thirds of its residents, exceeded its allocation by 27%, or 222 acre-feet, for a fine of $87,468.

The city of Oxnard, where water use is the lowest per capita in the county, exceeded its allocation by 1.4%, or 15 acre-feet, for a fine of $5,910.

“Oxnard always uses less than the other cities,” said Hubert. “But that city can pump water from the ground to make up the cuts in state water, and the cities of Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley can’t.”

But both of the latter cities will now begin to look at reactivating wells that have been nearly idle since the Calleguas pipeline was hooked up in 1963.

“We will maximize the use of ground water for golf courses and irrigation,” said Donald Nelson, Thousand Oaks utilities director.

Nelson said the city will consider blending ground water with state water to extend the supply, as Camarillo, Oxnard and Moorpark do, only as a last resort.

“But if cuts go deeper, everything becomes more attractive,” he said.

Simi Valley’s water basins are full, but much of the water is brackish and unsuitable for drinking, officials said.

“We’ve got two wells that we started using again to sell water to a nursery to water plants,” Mayor Greg Stratton said. “We could also use it to blend with the state water we get.”

But Stratton said further measures to meet the maximum 35% cut such as allowing lawns to die are hardships the area should not have to endure. Instead, the growers, who get water at a cheaper rate because it is supposed to be the first to be cut, should bear a 100% cut before the city has to go to 35%, he said.

“Twenty-five percent is doable,” he said. “But when you get more than that and people have to tear out their lawns and stop building swimming pools, that’s not California. I’m a Southern California native and I can’t imagine living like that.”

Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, said cutting off state water completely to farmers will harm their operations. But he said most of the growers who take imported water also supplement their supplies with ground water. He said they knew what they were doing when they signed a contract to receive water at a lower rate.

Farmers pay Calleguas $217 per acre-foot, compared to the $271 per acre-foot paid by cities.An acre-foot serves two families for one year.

“We’re not happy about it,” Laird said. “But I don’t think anyone, in their heart of hearts, feels that farming should take precedence over human use of water. You can’t have hospitals cut off while you’re irrigating crops.”

The city of Camarillo would also resist increasing its blend beyond the 50-50 mix it now distributes, Mayor David Smith said.

“If we go beyond 50%, that would have a significant effect on water quality,” he said.

Metropolitan is making the deeper cuts to meet reductions in its own supply. The district will receive only 10% of the 1.7 million acre-feet it requested from the State Water Project. It will supplement the state supply with 1.2 million acre-feet of Colorado River water. District officials also hope to recoup a portion of the loss by buying about 300,000 acre-feet in water rights from Northern California farmers who opt to sell their water in lieu of farming their crops this year.

Gomperz predicted that Calleguas and individual districts will meet their allocations in the months ahead as the cities and districts pass along Metropolitan penalties.

“As the program shakes down to the consumer pocketbook, we’ll see some action,” he said. “It’s that tap in the home and business and farms where the supply has to be turned off. That’s when you’ll achieve the conservation.”