Drought Stands Tip-Toe at Privacy’s Fence

Comes a crisis, like the California drought, and some normally private consumer affairs become matters of public interest.

First, San Diego’s Water Utilities Department, under pressure, released a list of its 100 biggest residential water users, full of civic leaders awash in water. It was topped by the revelation that Maureen O’Connor, San Diego’s mayor and an advocate of voluntary conservation, would also have made the list, had not just one, but both her water meters been counted.

Beverly Hills also released its top 100, which read like an index to People magazine. And now the local CBS and Fox television stations are suing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for its top 100 users.

Some of this private consumption is titillating stuff. But should it be aired while there’s still considerable disagreement over whether residential usage is a matter of public record or protected by privacy rights?

The California drought has driven us, with gun and tripod, into other people’s back yards. Most are private citizens, not public officials. Most have also broken no laws: They live in communities where there is no rationing or where mandatory conservation, as in Los Angeles, has just started.

Wisely, O’Connor didn’t claim privacy rights. The price of being a public official is disclosure--the idea being that public officials should reveal any significant biases--and those who set water policy should include disclosure of personal water use.

Actually, the issue with O’Connor wasn’t over-consumption but under-disclosure. Most people aren’t shocked that someone with money, two acres and civic obligations to entertain uses nine times the average single-family consumption in San Diego. However ditsy her voluntary conservation policy, she even practiced what she preached, cutting back more than 50% from last year’s usage. But it wasn’t nice to let one meter’s readings stand as her total consumption and then claim that she didn’t know of the second.

One would expect attention to turn to other officials dealing with water issues--water department executives, city council members, other mayors. But some municipal water departments, including San Diego’s, will release details of anyone’s water usage--one address, an entire street, a whole city--if someone’s willing to pay for the compilation. Some of these, while not public officials, make good headlines.

Most popular are department lists of the top 20, or top 100 residential users. After all, big users are probably rich and the rich are often famous, and, says KTTV reporter Bill Ritter, “the public is interested in what famous people are doing.”

The curiosity is understandable. These people use a lot of water--some daily usages exceed 20,000 gallons--on their luxury landscapes.

But mere curiosity doesn’t justify disclosure. Those supporting disclosure believe, says a spokesman for San Diego’s Water Utilities Department, that customer usage figures are public records. And one basis for their belief is California’s Public Records Act, which says that with certain exceptions, the public interest is best served by public disclosure of all government records of how it conducts “the people’s business.”

Thus, some say, if the city is selling water, all available information on individual purchasers should be open to view--name, address, consumption, whatever. Others see beyond the principle a thicket of pitfalls: Can the public also scrutinize all city-collected garbage? County medical records?

Some leap all questions, saying that any information not already a matter of public record becomes so in a crisis. There’s a drought, and when a natural resource is suddenly limited, its apportionment is everyone’s business.

Or so say those who want the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to turn over its residential usage figures. It’s the DWP stance that unlike commercial and industrial accounts, residential customers have a “constitutional right of privacy” that outweighs the “public interest to be served by disclosure.”

The TV stations who have filed suit counter by citing last year’s appellate court decision that said the Goleta Water District in Santa Barbara County had to turn over to a local newspaper its records of residential customers who had exceeded given water allocations. And the DWP counters that its customers, unlike Goleta’s, just came under a rationing ordinance March 1, are only now being given their allocations, and have so far broken no laws--an act that, like all malfeasance, makes private affairs a matter of public record.

The battle has just begun. While some people shriek privacy and others shriek public record--neither necessarily the issue--eyewitness news will probably show us a lot of green swards behind big gates. Crisis always brings out the curious.