MWD’s Deliveries to Agencies to Be Cut 50% : Water: The district’s board of directors also votes to cut the allocation for agricultural users by 90%.

Adopting the most drastic conservation measures in its history, the Metropolitan Water District voted Monday to cut by 50% water deliveries to agencies serving 15 million people, a move that officials say will almost certainly lead to mandatory water rationing throughout Southern California.

The district, which provides most of the water for six counties from San Diego to Ventura, also voted to cut water deliveries to agriculture by 90% and to raise agricultural water prices by about 30%. All measures will be effective April 1.

“This is the furthest we’ve ever gone (in cutting back),” said MWD General Manager Carl Boronkay. “I don’t think we can go any further.”

The measures were approved in a contentious four-hour meeting of the 51-member board of directors that pitted representatives of many Los Angeles County cities against those of suburban and rural water districts in Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties.

“I simply submit . . . that we cannot turn our back on a major industry in Southern California, the agriculture industry,” said Carl J. Kymla, a board member representing the Municipal Water District of Orange County. “They have done a yeoman’s job of conservation.”

Kymla and other board members argued that the 90% cutoff to agriculture will seriously damage commercial flower crops and kill thousands of fruit trees.

All five Los Angeles board members who were present voted for the measure. They said that if steps were not taken to protect supplies now, the region would face more serious problems.

“What if the drought goes on six or seven years?” Los Angeles board representative S. Dell Scott asked. “Then the question of keeping those trees alive becomes academic. Then the entire Southern California economy will be in danger.”

Board member Michael Nolan of Burbank added: “We’re punishing the cities for your trees . . . and water for petunias, gladiolus and pussy willows? That’s nuts.”

The cutbacks were adopted 50.7% to 49.3%, one of the closest votes in MWD history. The weight of each board member’s vote is determined by the assessed property values in the member’s district.

Kymla and four other representatives of the Orange County water district voted against cutbacks. Their motion to delay action for a week was defeated.

Under the approved MWD plan, the overall 50% reduction would be achieved by cutting deliveries to agriculture by 90% and deliveries to residential and industrial customers by 30%.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began mandatory water rationing Friday, ordering the city’s 3.5 million residents to cut usage by 10% now and another 5% on May 1. But DWP spokeswoman Stacey Geere said the latest MWD action may force Los Angeles to cut water usage 25% by May.

Los Angeles relies on the MWD for about 70% of its water.

Smaller water districts have not adopted mandatory rationing plans, relying on reserves and on voluntary conservation.

After the plan was announced, local officials throughout the region began considering a variety of water-conservation measures, including restricting outdoor watering and limiting development.

Regina Turney-Murph, manager of the Municipal Water Department of Compton, said the City Council is likely to approve a mandatory rationing next week.

“Right now, I think this is the most equitable way to go,” she said.

Monday’s action was the latest and most drastic in a series of measures taken by MWD as the drought is in its fifth year.

On Thursday, the MWD announced that it will assess nearly $11 million in penalties against cities and water districts that failed to significantly reduce water consumption during February.

Jay Malinowski, assistant chief of operations for MWD, said the conservation plan became necessary after rain and snowfall for February were below normal levels.

“Even though this last storm was pretty good . . ., it doesn’t come close to getting us out of the drought,” he told the board. “We are well over a million acre-feet short of meeting demand.”

An acre-foot of water contains 326,000 gallons, enough to supply a typical Los Angeles family of five for 18 months.

Before the severity of the drought became apparent, MWD officials expected demand to reach 2.6 million acre-feet in 1991. Now, if conservation measures are successful, the officials hope demand will fall to 1.4 million acre-feet.

“A 50% reduction is beyond what anyone would have dreamed of at Metropolitan,” Boronkay said. “Since the early part of the century, water security has been an obsession at Metropolitan. Now, that water security is gone.”

The MWD will attempt to enforce the limits by charging stiff penalties. Malinowski said agencies that exceed the limits imposed Monday will pay a penalty of $394 per acre-foot. The most expensive DWP water costs $230 per acre-foot.

Some board members questioned whether their communities will be able to meet the limits.

“We’re dealing with numbers that are not achievable,” said Richard W. Hansen, general manager of Three Valleys Metropolitan Water District in Claremont. “It’s going to get to the point where the water bills are out of sight. People will go through hardships.”

Under the new plan, the price of agricultural water will rise from $153 to $197 per acre-foot.

The increase, along with the 90% cuts, could devastate some of the estimated 520 Ventura County farms that use MWD water, said Donald Reeder, president of the county Farm Bureau.

Larger growers have wells on their properties to supplement their MWD supplies, he said. But many smaller farmers--including at least 70 lemon and avocado growers in the Moorpark area--depend completely on local water districts that receive the majority of their water from MWD.

“If we’re cut by 90%, any grower that does not have a secondary supply of water is through,” Reeder said.

Even the larger growers with independent wells could be substantially hurt by the cutbacks, he said.

“There’s plenty of water down there. It’s just not very good water”--high in salts and other minerals, which choke trees’ roots, he said.

In Orange County, MWD is the sole provider to Newport Beach. Bob Dixon, city utilities director, said the newest rounds of cutbacks will require residents to reduce consumption by 10% to 30%.

“It will force us to go to another level of cutbacks,” Dixon said. “If the council approves, we may be looking beyond just a surcharge, and (may move) to restricting homeowners to watering their lawn just once a week.”

If things do not improve, Dixon said, water restricters may have to be placed on households that continuously exceed allocations.

Orange County gets about half of its water from imported sources (supplied by Metropolitan Water District) and half from local ground water. Two-thirds of the water is used for residences and the rest goes to industry and public institutions.

“What makes this a little bit scary is how low the water storage levels are right now,” said Keith Coolidge of Orange County’s Municipal Water District. “At the end of the drought in 1977, people said it would not get any worse than that. The levels were higher then than they are right now and we don’t know where the end of this drought is.”

Mike Dunbar of the South Cast Water District that serves Laguna Niguel, South Laguna and Dana Point, said Metropolitan is South Coast’s only source of water so “we just pass the decreases on to our customers.”

“Metropolitan feels that without conservation or without rain--whichever comes first--we will not make it through the summer,” said John Concar, assistant manager of the El Toro Water District. “Further cutbacks will be tough.”

He said a 10% reduction began in February, followed by a 20% cutback in March. “Now, we are looking at another 10% in April.” The first cutback was easy to meet, 20% is difficult and to meet the 30% reduction “we are going to have to pull some tricks out of the hat.”

“Hear that scratching?” Concar asked. “That’s my hand in the bottom of the hat. I’m looking for tricks.”

In response to the MWD’s action, the San Diego County Water Authority--the largest MWD customer--made public a list of proposed prohibitions that its board of directors will consider later this week.

The proposals would ban most outdoor watering and the washing of most cars except in commercial carwashes.

Times staff writers George Frank in Orange County, John H. Lee in Los Angeles, Joanna Miller in Ventura County and Amy Wallace in San Diego County contributed to this story.