Council Hopes High Bills Will Quench Couple’s Thirst : Water: The La Verne husband and wife use more than 7,000 gallons a day. City officials want them to cut down, and new fees could reach $2,600.

Somewhere in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills of La Verne lurks a two-person household using 7,416 gallons of water each day.

That’s enough for at least 296 three-minute showers.

Enough for about 4,944 flushes of an environmentally correct low-flush toilet.

Easily enough for 16 average households in the city of Los Angeles.

And definitely enough to anger La Verne officials, who say that the husband and wife, who live on a 1 1/2-acre lot, are the biggest water hogs in town.

But maybe not for long.

To discourage such profligate water use, the City Council on Monday passed an emergency water conservation ordinance that could boost the couple’s usual $700 bill to more than $2,682--including more than $1,900 in penalties, city officials said.

Brian Bowcock, La Verne public works director, refused to disclose the name and address of the couple, citing privacy concerns. But “La Verne is a small town,” he said, and some of the city’s 30,879 residents probably have an idea who they are.

For one thing, their yard tends to be “very moist,” Bowcock said.

“He waters the holy bejabbers out of the place,” said Councilman Patrick Gatti, who also refused to identify the occupants of the house other than to say the husband is a doctor.

La Verne’s new “California drought surcharge” imposes fines for households using more than 14,000 gallons every two months. To avoid progressively greater fines, the average household--which now uses 36,000 gallons and pays from $43.56 to $57.24 every two months--will have to cut usage by about 60%. But only nominal fines will be imposed for water use up to 24,000 gallons per billing period.

Hardest hit will be the 484 La Verne homes that water officials have identified as using more than 50,000 gallons a month--including the residence of the doctor and his wife.

“It’s very plush, very green,” Gatti said. “It’s over-watered and he doesn’t care. When you walk up the street, the residents there can tell you that blindfolded you know when you’re passing his house because the temperature drops 15 degrees from the water.”

On the average, the home’s water meter ticks off about 225,000 gallons a month, Bowcock said.

“That’s a lot of water,” said Richard W. Hansen, general manager of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District, which supplies water to La Verne.

“If you compared it to growing rice, that might not be so high,” Hansen said. “But it seems very, very high for a residence.”

By comparison, the average Los Angeles household uses 450 gallons each day. State officials recently floated a controversial proposal to limit each California household to 300 gallons a day.

La Verne water officials said they have written two letters to the couple in recent months, asking them to cut back on water use during the drought.

Their water bill for the next full two-month billing cycle, however, might dampen the household’s enthusiasm for watering.

“I would suspect that when he gets his new water bill of about $2,800 he’ll start screaming and yelling. I think that $2,800 might bring him to his senses,” Gatti said.

If all else fails, Bowcock said, the city may have to install a flow-restricting device on the house’s water meter.

And would that do the trick? “Let’s put it this way,” Bowcock said. “It would take him about four hours to fill a bathtub.”