An Early Report Card on Water : High marks to Santa Ana, Anaheim; F’s to Pasadena, San Diego

Every downspout in Pasadena was a gusher Thursday. Streets were flooded. Soggy traffic signals broke down. On top of that, the city was fined $350,000 for wasting water.

The day was full of lessons, for Southern Californians as well as their governments, with two Orange County cities at the head of the class.

One lesson is that where water in California is concerned, appearances not only can be but are deceiving. Even with day after recent day of sometimes torrential downpour, Southern California’s rainy season--with only two months to go--still has yielded only about half of what is considered normal rainfall. The drought is many flooded gutters from being over.

Another is that in a fifth year of drought, the old water rules no longer apply and may never apply again. In normal years, Pasadena, which gets 60% of its supplies from the Metropolitan Water District and the rest from wells, often asks for--and gets--a bigger February allotment than in other months so it can use the MWD water and save its well water for dry summer months.

Where Pasadena went wrong was to miss the message from the MWD in January that nobody could have extra rations in February.

The district had already calculated every drop the MWD itself could hope to get from the state and the Colorado River and then divided it among Pasadena and the district’s 26 other local water agencies. As the old saying goes, that’s all there was--there wasn’t any more.

Pasadena can escape the fine if it makes up its 122% overdraft by saving water, but 20% cuts were not even proposed until last week.

As a percentage, Pasadena’s offense seems to tower over any other, with Orange County’s Coastal Municipal Water District a close second at 90%. But while Pasadena soaked up just 1,617 acre-feet, the city of San Diego was far and away the champion water guzzler, using 43,315 acre-feet more than its fair share.

For that, San Diego faces a penalty of $4 million to $5 million. Its repeated rejection of rationing makes it doubtful it can earn much of that back with conservation.

Santa Ana and Anaheim had the best records and, despite its dithering over rationing, the city of the Los Angeles did fairly well for itself.

The city used 16% less than the MWD limit, good but not as good as Santa Ana and Anaheim, where vigorous conservation, in part, accounted for their taking only about 20% of their MWD allotment.

But if the rest of Southern California hopes to beat the drought, its next report cards must show real improvement.