DWP OKs Expanding Rationing Guidelines : Drought: Plan would allow the City Council to order mandatory cuts of up to 50%. ‘We’re preparing for next year,’ says one official.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on Thursday adopted a sweeping expansion of its water conservation program that would allow the City Council to order rationing of up to 50% if necessary to cope with the continuing drought.

“What we did today is a lot more than academic,” said Mike Gage, DWP commission president. “We’re preparing for next year” and the possibility that the drought could persist into a sixth consecutive year, he said.

Despite recent rains in the Southland and the prospect of additional water deliveries, Gage said that it is almost certain that the commission will ask the City Council to adopt 25% mandatory rationing to take effect as early as May 1. That degree of rationing surpasses the agency’s worst-case projections of only one year ago.

And, Gage said, it is possible that rationing could be increased to 30% later this year.

Los Angeles consumers are now required to cut their water consumption by 10% from 1986 levels. The conservation level is scheduled to increase to 15% on May 1.

The program approved Thursday, if accepted by the City Council, would add three more stages to the city’s Emergency Water Conservation Ordinance, which calls for cutbacks of up to 25% of 1986 levels. The program would allow the council to impose rationing at 30%, 40% and 50% levels.

A DWP proposal to ask the council to increase rationing to 25% in May from the scheduled 15% was taken off Thursday’s commission agenda, in part because some staff members believe that a cautious short-term approach makes sense in light of the recent rains.

State officials said the recent series of storms pelting Northern California have made it probable that additional deliveries of water will be made this year to the Metropolitan Water District, which serves the DWP and much of Southern California.

“It’s quite likely the delivery amounts will go up,” said Jim Snow, chief of project operation studies for the state Department of Water Resources. “It may not be much, perhaps just 5%. But the snowpack (water content) has increased significantly and that’s very encouraging.”

The decision, Snow said, depends on several factors: the weather, how much water the state decides to save for next year and an upcoming vote on whether to ease salinity standards in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

George Baumli, executive director of the State Water Contractors Assn., said talk of additional deliveries has sparked “lots of hope” among agencies coping with a fifth year of drought.

MWD General Manager Carl Boronkay said that if water deliveries to Southern California were increased substantially, he would recommend that the district’s board of directors soften the 50% overall cut imposed on the department’s 27 contract agencies.

Gage said the delay in seeking a higher level of mandatory conservation in Los Angeles is to give the department time to compile a more thorough report on the winter snowfalls. The DWP traditionally surveys the Eastern Sierra Nevada snowpack on April 1 to gauge its supplies for the balance of the year.

But department officials said they are sure that additional conservation will be necessary.

“We would have to have an incredibly wet March to get away from 25% rationing,” said Jim Wickser, DWP assistant general manager.

“It’s incumbent upon us to let people know that the drought is not over,” Gage said. “We have a long way to go.”

In an effort to save jobs, the department is continuing to require a lower level of conservation from industrial users than from residential customers. Industrial users have been asked to cut use by 10%. Under the new plan, the industrial rate would continue to lag behind the residential rate. For example, if residents were asked to save 50%, industries would be required to save 30%.