Cities Face Stricter Water Rules If Drought Persists in ’92 : Rationing: State contracts require urban users to begin sharing the burden equally with farmers. So far, rural areas have suffered more severe cuts.

City dwellers, who already have had to cope with rationing, may face even greater hardship if the drought continues next year because of contracts stipulating that farms and cities will have to share the conservation burden equally.

Until now, the hardship of California’s tenacious five-year drought has been eased somewhat for urban customers because contracts require agriculture to take the first and most severe cuts in water deliveries when there is a shortage.

The contracts have a little-noticed provision stipulating that once agriculture’s cuts have reached 100%, both urban and agricultural contractors must share equally in cuts the following year, if necessary.

This year, for the first time, deliveries from the State Water Project to agriculture were cut 100% because of below-normal rainfall and depleted reservoirs. If the drought persists in 1992, provisions will kick in that require municipal customers, including the giant Metropolitan Water District, to shoulder the brunt of the shortages with agriculture on an equal basis.

“Next year there will be equal sharing of deficiencies. If it’s dry, the cities will be suffering right along with the agricultural users,” said George Baumli, general manager of the association of State Water Contractors.

Baumli said the contracts were written with the idea that farms could easily absorb cuts in water deliveries. In practice, it has turned out that their water needs are greater in dry years because there is less “natural irrigation” from rainfall.

The MWD, which in normal years gets half its water supplies from the state, provides about 60% of the water used by 15 million people living in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

District officials have started warning their board members and citizen groups that another year of dry weather could have an even greater impact on their customers than this year’s drought.

“We’ve told our people we want to have more in storage than in the past because next year the state has to cut us at the same level as farmers,” said MWD General Manager Carl Boronkay. “We have to be even more careful than we’ve been because we can’t count on getting water ahead of the farmers.”

Boronkay said the MWD has always looked on the contract requirement that agriculture take the first and most severe cut as a kind of special reservoir that can be tapped for thirsty urban customers in times of emergency.

“The farmers’ share represented a reserve because if things got tough, we in effect got their share,” he said.

Now, with that reserve gone, Boronkay said, the district will have to pull its belt tighter if next year is dry and resort to stricter rationing and greater conservation measures while seeking to buy water from other sources. This year, the district made up for some losses by making purchases from a state water bank, which was supplied in part by water-rich farmers who hold longtime contracts that guarantee them a steady flow even in a drought.

Baumli said the state water contracts were negotiated during the 1960s with the idea that people were more important than plants and that water for people would be “No. 1 in pecking order.”

Using as a guide the only drought then on record--a seven-year period from 1928 through 1934--the contracts were fashioned with the assumption that while there may have to be cuts in deliveries, “the projects would be able to provide a reliable water supply through a repeat of such a dry period,” Baumli said.

To put people first, he said, a formula was worked out for agriculture to take the first hits. Then, to keep farms alive, provisions were made for the resumption of deliveries if the drought were prolonged.

The formula provides that if at any time in a seven-year period the cumulative cuts to agriculture reach 100%, then in the remaining years of that period cities and farms would share equally in reductions, Baumli said. In 1991, agricultural users are being cut 100%--so in 1992, the special provisions of the contract will go into effect.

For the purposes of the contracts, state officials said this year is considered the second year of a seven-year period. Consequently, Baumli said, the equal-sharing provisions of the contract will be in effect for the next five years.

While the majority of the 30 agencies that contract with the state for water are agricultural customers, there are other agencies besides MWD that serve municipalities and will be affected by the provision. Among them are the Santa Clara Valley Water District, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, Coachella Valley Water District, Desert Water Agency and Kern County Water Agency.

When the contracts were written, Baumli said, there were many who never expected the equal-sharing provision to go into effect and certainly not in the first two years of a seven-year period. “Some thought there would never be a repeat of the ‘28-’34 drought . . . much less a drought that may be more severe,” he said.

The contracts with the State Water Project will run until 2035. While some provisions have been modified over the years with the approval of the state and contractors, Baumli said there has never been an effort to change the formula for allocating water.