Crisis Contradictions : WATER WATCH: The on-again, off-again drought

Water experts who see California as one big plumbing system take the seeming contradictions of their waterworks in stride.

But for the average Californian, who usually gets a detailed look at the plumbing only during drought emergencies, the anomalies can range from the merely baffling to the downright outrageous.

WHIPLASH: For example, in recent days, Southern Californians have been told that water supplies will be nearly normal as the state heads into what could be a sixth year of drought. So nearly normal, in fact, that one director of the Metropolitan Water District blurted out the ludicrous notion that the time had come to relax rationing.

Yet in virtually the same breath, Californians are told that unbridled pumping from underground aquifers that hold billions of gallons of water risks turning parts of the state into permanent desert.

Or what is the average householder to make of what seems at first blush an outrageous case of punishing customers who stay within their ration limits? What is a customer to think when authorities say water prices may have to go up because, in effect, the consumer did such a good job conserving water that now the water agency isn’t making enough money?

SOLUTIONS: There is an answer of sorts to the matter of rising prices in the face of responsible behavior among water users, but it is not exactly satisfying and there seems to be nothing that can be done about it--this time at least.

It is difficult to quibble with the higher rates that will accompany lower consumption. A train that just broke even with 100 fare-paying passengers would have to charge more if it lost half of its customers, because operating costs would stay the same. The train would have the option of shutting down. Agencies that deliver less water than their pipes can carry have no such option.

This is not the last time rationing will have to be imposed. Forecasters say that more dry years are inevitable. The MWD expects to be 1 million acre-feet short of Southern California’s needs 20 years from now.

Water agencies should consider putting aside enough money in the form of a small surcharge, perhaps, to pay operating costs when drought next forces rationing.

How to answer the seeming contradiction of ample supplies versus the threat of collapsed aquifers and subsidence of land? The plumbing system leaks millions of acre-feet through what are commonly called wells. The leaks can be plugged if Sacramento summons the nerve to reject tired old claims by rural agencies that ground water is not really part of the plumbing system.

But it is, and the Legislature must give the state more authority over digging of wells and pumping of ground water. Replenishing underground water supplies during wet years may be the key to better management of California’s total water supply in years to come, using aquifers to hold water in reserve instead of costly new dams. But the state would be silly to fill up aquifers without more control of pumping.

GOING PUBLIC: This is another area in which water managers, operating largely out of view, have for years scratched each other’s backs.

During its years as the state’s leading industry, agriculture could turn on and turn off water policy as it chose. Agriculture wanted no restrictions on the use of ground water. Urban agencies went along because their own water projects depended, at least in part, on agriculture’s cooperation in Sacramento.

The situation is changing. Where agriculture produces hundreds of dollars with an acre-foot of water, commerce produces hundreds of thousands. The meaning of those figures for water policy is sinking in.

There’s another way to help the changing politics sink in with more of the public as well. Some water experts on the state Water Commission should be replaced with public representatives to keep water policy in plain view, as the state works its way through changes that will make it more drought-resistant.