Officials Predict Easing of Water Restrictions : Drought: A Ventura council member calls for fewer limits. Districts worry that users will stop conserving.

Recent heavy rains will probably result in slightly reduced water restrictions this spring to eastern Ventura County residents who rely on Metropolitan Water District supplies, water officials said Wednesday.

The rains have increased the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which may allow the MWD in May or June to back away from the 30% cutbacks to cities in the county and elsewhere in Southern California that become effective April 1.

But MWD officials said they probably will not relax restrictions beyond the 20% cutbacks to municipal users now in effect.

The recent rains and forecasts of more storms to come also increase pressure on Ventura County cities and water agencies that do not use MWD water to relax their water rationing programs, officials said.

They cited concern among water experts that citizens will increasingly lose their desire to conserve as the rains continue.

“We get a couple of good rains and the apathy starts to set in,” said Lee Waddle of the Ventura County Resource Conservation District. “Yet none of the water problems that it took five years of drought and 30 years of overuse to develop are solved. It’s a little scary.”

Officials in Thousand Oaks and Oxnard already have expressed opposition to tougher water rationing plans. They were joined Wednesday by one member of the Ventura City Council, which was the first local agency to impose water rationing in the county.

Councilman James Monahan said the recent rains, which have brought seasonal rainfall to normal or near-normal levels in most areas of the county, are not enough to make up for five dry years.

But he said severe cutbacks in the city of Ventura are no longer warranted.

“We need to ease up on the rationing,” he said. “I think the water is available.” Monahan said he intends to ask his fellow council members to add another 100 gallons to the present allocation of 294 gallons per household per day.

“If six months from now we are back in a heavy drought, then we can cut back again,” he said.

Officials at Casitas Municipal Water District, where Lake Casitas has received nearly 15,000 acre-feet of water since the rainy weather began Feb. 26, said they have already begun to receive calls from customers questioning the necessity of water restrictions. They expect more questions at public hearings planned next week.

The 15,000 acre-feet is about half of what the district distributes in a year, said John Johnson, general manager of the Casitas district that serves about 55,000 people and 280 farmers in western Ventura County. But Casitas bases its deliveries on a 20-year cycle that counts on normal rains in some years.

The district is holding hearings on whether to continue a moratorium on new hookups and impose mandatory allocations of about 425 gallons per household per day.

“The rain helps our situation and brings us close to where we should be in our 20-year model,” Johnson said. “But we are moving ahead.”

More rain and possibly thunder was predicted for Wednesday night and early this morning, which could leave another 1.5 inches in the agricultural areas in the Santa Clara River Valley and the Oxnard Plain, said National Weather Service meteorologist Terry Schaeffer.

Schaeffer predicted cloudy skies today and fair and cool weather Friday, with more rainy weather by Saturday night. The weekend storm, which he said should last through Sunday, could bring up to another three inches of rain to the county.

“We’re still not in a dry pattern,” he said.

The blustery front that blew through the southern half of the county Tuesday night dropped more than an inch of rain in many areas before it moved north, hovering over the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest Wednesday afternoon.

The storm dropped close to three-quarters of an inch of rain in Ventura, bringing the season’s total to 14.17 inches. That is three-quarters of an inch above normal for this time of year and less than two inches below the normal rainfall total of 16.09 inches for the rain year that ends Sept. 30.

Casitas Dam northeast of Ventura picked up another 1.67 inches of rain, and Simi Valley drew nearly an inch.

Tuesday’s rain, the second this week and just two weeks after the largest storm of the year, also increased the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which the state Department of Water Resources will measure on April 1.

Melting snow fills the reservoirs of Northern California, which in a normal year provide the MWD with more than half its water supply for 15 million Southern Californians.

Because of the drought, the state cut back its supply to the MWD by 90%, prompting the agency to announce 30% reductions to urban water users and 90% cutbacks to farmers effective April 1. But the state will probably relent next month, said Jay Malinowski, assistant director of operations for MWD.

But Malinowski said water users should not misinterpret any possible relaxation of the restrictions.

“The drought isn’t over,” he said. “We need to make sure people understand that.”

For Ventura County, it would take another 29 inches above normal rainfall this year to make up for the deficit of the last five years.

But even that would only bring the county up to normal for the five-year period. That would not be enough to push out seawater that has entered freshwater basins beneath the Oxnard Plain, said Donald Dorman, assistant general manager of United Water Conservation District.

Seawater intrusion is the result of nearly 40 years of overpumping wells in the Oxnard Plain and the Santa Clara River Valley, he said. The ground-water basins have a cumulative deficit over 40 years of about 1 million acre-feet, more than 100,000 of that added in the last two years.

“Even if we had all kinds of rain to help us in the short term, in the long term, we have to have conservation plans and water facilities to achieve an ecological balance,” he said.

VENTURA COUNTY RAINFALL

As of 8 a.m. Wednesday

Rainfall Rainfall normal Location Storm total year to date this time of year Ojai 1.45 16.26 17.64 Ventura 0.73 14.17 13.42 Oxnard 0.61 10.49 12.07 Port Hueneme .66 9.15 11.71 Camarillo 0.75 8.42 11.10 Thousand Oaks 0.72 10.05 12.64 Simi Valley 0.92 11.92 11.80 Moorpark 0.87 8.36 12.10 Santa Paula 1.01 15.45 14.81 Fillmore 0.37 14.99 15.80