Delay of New Water Curbs Is Considered : Drought: Reports of increased shipments could push back the start of 50% restrictions until mid-April, when there will be a clearer picture of availability.

Responding to reports that Southern California will receive increased water shipments from the north, San Diego County Water Authority officials may ask their board of directors this week to delay the imposition of new countywide water use prohibitions now scheduled for April 1.

Byron M. Buck, the authority’s director of water resources planning, said he and his colleagues may recommend to the board this Thursday that it push back the start of the restrictions until at least mid-April.

“There probably won’t be a lessening of restrictions yet,” Buck said of the rules, which ban most lawn watering, sprinkler use and home car washing. But, on Thursday, he said the board is “liable to consider an extension of the time frame. They may wish to delay it for a while.”

By mid-April, he said, state water officials will have measured the Northern California snowpack and will probably have decided how much more water to give the Metropolitan Water District, the region’s water wholesaler that supplies 95% of San Diego County’s water.

Last month, the state announced it was cutting 90% of its deliveries to MWD, prompting the Los Angeles-based agency to cut its deliveries to San Diego County and its other 26 customers by 50%.

Then last week, after much-needed precipitation continued to drench the state, state water officials said they expected to be able to double the amount of water flowing to Southern California some time in April, raising hopes that MWD will be able to sell more to its customers as well.

In anticipation of that, Buck said county water experts are now drafting various “scenarios” to present to the board that would outline how the county’s pending prohibitions could be eased under a 40% or a 30% cut.

“There’s no way we will return to normal, but there is enough water coming into the state system that we’re expecting to get some more,” said Buck, who said the hypothetical scenarios will be intended to “get the discussion started early. . . . We don’t know where it will shake out, but we are expecting to have less than a 50% cut.”

Buck said the staff’s specific suggestions about how to loosen the county’s first-ever mandatory water-restrictions ordinance are not yet drafted. But he predicted they will mainly focus on “easing up on irrigation restrictions, particularly lawns.”

That was welcome news to landscapers, who have complained that they will be among the hardest hit by the ordinance.

“Heck, yeah, if they’ll cut it back to 30% or 40%, then we’re happy campers,” said John Binkele, a marketing manager at Ewing Irrigation Products in El Cajon. “Our position all along has been (that) we understand people have to conserve, but we as an industry seem to have been singled out. A 50% cut pretty much wipes us out.”

Randy Newhard, president of New Way Landscape Maintenance in San Diego, agreed.

“I applaud their rethinking this. They don’t know exactly how we stand on the water yet,” he said, urging that the local ordinance be tabled until officials at the state and MWD make up their mind. But, even if the ordinance is postponed till mid-April, San Diegans should not water their lawns until then anyway, Newhard said--the recent rains have provided all the moisture lawns need.

The County Water Authority staff’s action came in response to a memo from board chairman Mike Madigan in which he requested that they “prepare options for revising the impact of, or provisions of” the ordinance, passed by the board on March 14.

The memo, written over the weekend to Lester A. Snow, the authority’s general manager, reads in part: “The recent heavy precipitation of the last three weeks appears to have improved the outlook for a moderate easing of the severe water delivery restrictions ordered by the (MWD).”

In a statement released Monday, Snow said: “We are in constant contact with Gov. Wilson and state water officials about the water levels in state reservoirs. We are optimistic that we will be able to back off the 50% level to some degree, but we must wait for word from (MWD) before taking any such action. And, before MWD can take that step, the state must increase its delivery of water to MWD.”

In a related development, officials said the water authority has completed the construction of a mini-dam on the San Luis Rey River, where increased rainfall has threatened to expose--and possibly rupture--the underground pipelines through which most of the county’s water is delivered.

John Economides, an engineering manager at the authority, said the $150,000 in emergency repairs that began last week are complete, except for some cleanup. He said he has high hopes that by slowing down the river flow, the dam will cause sediments to settle and help to stem the riverbed erosion.

Last week, officials reported that three of the authority’s pipelines that were once buried 20 feet below the river were less than 3 feet down. Should the pipelines become exposed, the pressure could be great enough to burst one or all of them, which would greatly limit San Diego’s water supply.

“We’ve constructed what we had planned. I think it’s going to accomplish what we want,” Economides said. “It’s difficult for us to tell--if there’s an enormous flood, it might (still) be a problem. But we feel pretty comfortable.”

The San Diego City Council, meanwhile, was scheduled to meet today to consider water-related issues, including a new water-pricing structure that would offer conservation incentives and help pay for capital projects.

In a memo to the council released Monday, City Manager Jack McGrory recommended that the council support an overall 35% water conservation level through April 30. A 50% cutback would have “severe economic impacts,” the memo said, and was unnecessary in light of recent rainfall and runoff collecting in reservoirs.

McGrory also recommended the adoption of a conservation-incentive rate structure that would change the average monthly water bill from $16.80 before 30% conservation to a lesser amount afterward--to reward those who have conserved.