MWD Penalizes Beverly Hills for Failing to Meet Water-Saving Goals

Beverly Hills, home to vast lawns and elaborate gardens, has been slapped with penalties over the last two months for not meeting its water conservation goals during the fifth year of drought.

As part of its regionwide effort to cut water usage, the Metropolitan Water District is requiring Beverly Hills to cut its consumption by 20% from last year. But Beverly Hills was able to reduce its water purchases by only 9.1% in April and by 5.6% in May, MWD officials said.

These conservation failures led the MWD to penalize Beverly Hills’ water department $45,152 in April and $70,565 in May--when the city’s conservation ordinance went into effect. The Beverly Hills department was one of four agencies served by the MWD that were penalized in May for using too much water.

Also penalized were the Coastal Municipal Water District, which serves the coastal areas of Orange County; the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District, and the West Basin Municipal Water District, which serves the west and southwest portions of Los Angeles County.

“Given the size of (their housing) lots, they’re doing a pretty good job,” said Jay Malinowski, MWD’s assistant chief of operations. “They could be doing a little better. We would like them to get up to 20% conservation.”

Beverly Hills officials explain the city’s conservation failure by saying that they only recently began informing water users about the need to conserve water by as much as 20%. Dan Webster, superintendent of the city’s public works department, said the city’s businesses have done the poorest job conserving. Some enterprises, such as the city’s trademark hotels and hair salons, might be willing to endure water bill penalties as the cost of doing business.

“We didn’t hit the target and we hoped to be under it,” said Beverly Hills Mayor Vicki Reynolds last week. “We have an education program to launch and alert everybody to the need to conserve water.”

There is little evidence of the usual telltale brown spots that fester during a drought along the rolling lawns that fan out from the city’s hotels and estates.

Part of the reason for the greenery may be that some of the city’s large private water users have simply not begun to make real efforts at cutting back. Under the city’s water rationing plan, all government and private water users--including duplex and apartment residents, businesses and industries--must reduce their water usage by at least 15%.

Although the Beverly Hills city government was able to meet its 15% target, some hotels and other businesses did not meet their goals, Webster said.

Beverly Hills officials will not name the city’s biggest water scofflaws, citing the right to privacy. But they say that the biggest users in the past have been large hotels, filled with hundreds of toilets, showers and sinks, and hair salons, which depend on continuous water flow for shampoos, rinses and tints.

Officials said they want to wait to see how these businesses react to their first penalties for excessive water use--expected to be mailed out in late June and early July--before they jump to conclusions.

“If the original (charge) doesn’t work we will have to raise the penalty,” Reynolds said.

Administrators at the Beverly Rodeo Hotel and Restaurant on Rodeo Drive said the business has already installed devices in the toilets of its 86 rooms and stopped washing guests’ cars to reduce its water consumption.

“We use kitchen water to water our plants once a week,” said hotel manager Lalith James, who thinks the hotel will be able to meet the conservation goals.

At the Vidal Sassoon hair salon, also on Rodeo Drive, workers have started serving customers drinks in disposable cups that don’t need washing, said assistant manager Inkyung Kim. But she said the salon could not skimp on the amount of water it uses for washing hair and other services.

“You can’t cut down on the services, so we have to look for other ways,” Kim said.

In contrast, Beverly Hills’ fabled homeowners appear to be doing their share of water conservation. A city survey of water use in March and April indicated that residential customers--obligated to cut their water use at least 20% from last year--were able to cut back slightly more than their 20% conservation goal.

Working on a lawn in one well-heeled neighborhood, gardener Ruben Haro said that several of his clients have told him to set back the timers on their sprinklers from eight minutes to three minutes. They also were cutting back on planting new trees, he said.

“The people don’t want to plant like before,” said Haro, who estimates that his earnings have declined 25% in the last couple of months. “If I don’t plant, I don’t earn as much money.”

On the same street, though, a 24-year-old resident of a large, white Roman-style house said her family was making no great effort to conserve. Her lawn was emerald green, with a line of red roses in front.

“We’re just going to go on and use the water the same way we always have,” said the woman, who declined to give her name.

If they are fined for excessive water use, Beverly Hills customers would have to pay a surcharge of three times their regular water rate for any excess water they use. That translates into a monthly penalty of about $140 for a large single-family residence that used the same amount of water as last year.

Those penalties are assessed if Beverly Hills homeowners do not cut their water use 20% from the amount they used in 1989, a base year established by the City Council. But in Beverly Hills, where many homes have larger lots, more extensive landscaping and a larger number of pools than do homes in most other cities, that base year figure gives homeowners more water to use.

The city has received about 30 letters and about 100 telephone calls seeking information on the conservation ordinance and asking for exemptions.

City officials are proud of Beverly Hills’ conservation efforts, even if the city has not met MWD goals. And they are resentful of any attempt to portray the city as a collection of spoiled water wasters.

“Beverly Hill keeps being portrayed as the city of excess,” said Betty Harris, a city commissioner who helps oversee the city’s conservation program. “It really makes me angry. We really have responded.”