Water Use Plunges in State as Conservation Catches On : Drought: Skeptics point to unseasonably cool, wet weather. But officials say saving is ‘in.’

In the halcyon years before the drought, Linnea Spellman tended a yard of blooming tropical plants, splashed in a small back-yard pool and routinely indulged in her secret passion--long, hot relaxing showers.

But water shortages and rising rates have changed all that. Now, the pool at Spellman’s Los Angeles home has been dismantled, the tropical plants have died and been replaced by cacti and family showers are rigidly limited to 10 minutes.

For that effort, Spellman can point with pride to a monthly water bill that shows her family is using 20% less than its allotment.

“It was just the right thing to do, along with recycling,” she says firmly. “I saw stories about people in Mexico not having any water. I would make trips to San Francisco and it would be a real eye-opener. It just seemed greedy to use a lot of water.”

Water users throughout the state have come to similar conclusions as cities from San Francisco to San Diego and in between report month after month that residents are exceeding conservation goals.

As the fifth year of drought has pushed water districts to invest millions of dollars promoting conservation, water users have responded by saving more than was ever asked of them.

Brown has become beautiful as thousands of people throughout the state forgo green lawns, allow all but their most prized plants to droop and wither away and change lifelong water habits.

“I’ve been astonished at the significant levels of conservation,” said Joan Anderson, executive director of the Southern California Water Committee. “I think people are realizing we do live in a desert and water is a very precious resource. Every drop is liquid gold.”

Just how precious water is becoming to the residents of California is reflected each month in statistics released by public agencies reporting consumption levels and conservation goals:

* In Los Angeles, mandatory rationing requires that residents reduce their water usage by 15% of 1986 levels. By the end of May, they had responded by cutting 27.5%. In June, they cut back 28.2%. So far in July, they are reducing consumption by 31.5%.

* This spring, the Santa Clara Valley Water District, a wholesaler that supplies drought-stricken Santa Clara County, asked its retailers to cut back by 25%. To date, the district’s water savings are 31.5%.

* On April 1, customers of the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which serves the Oakland area, were directed to reduce water usage by 15%. The savings since then have been 29.5%.

* In San Francisco, where water users were asked to conserve 25% of their 1987 levels, June statistics show they saved 38%.

* At the Marin Municipal Water District, officials asked customers to use 25% less water than they used during the same month in pre-drought 1986. June figures show that customers used 48% less.

* Blessed with a rainy March and a cool, balmy June, the 23 water districts and cities supplied by the San Diego County Water Authority have averaged savings of 25% even though the agency only requested cutbacks of 20%.

In Orange County, conservation in some areas has not exceeded expectations.

From February through June, the Municipal Water District of Orange County reported a 16% reduction in water use over last year by 23 of its member agencies. That ranged from a 10% reduction in Garden Grove to 35% in the Trabuco Canyon District.

But the target had been a 20% cut in water use this year.

Still, Karl Seckol, assistant general manager, said: “If we’re in the range of 15% to 20% I think that’s reasonable.”

In Southern California, the Metropolitan Water District’s monthly reports on water deliveries to the 27 cities and districts it serves have become a barometer of local conservation efforts. In December, the giant wholesaler began setting goals for its customers and offering financial incentives to help them meet them. Agencies that didn’t reach each month’s goal were assessed financial penalties while those that exceeded it were paid a bonus.

Most cities and counties beat the goal so significantly that after a few months MWD officials began worrying where they were going to get the money to pay the bonuses. By the end of June, Metropolitan had shelled out $20 million in credits to customer agencies and total water demands on the wholesaler had been reduced by 38.3%.

“People have adapted to the idea that there is a statewide crisis and they need to pitch in and help,” said Timothy H. Quinn, director of Metropolitan’s state water project and conservation division.

Skeptics point out, however, that the conservation efforts have been aided by an extremely wet March and unseasonably cool weather in many parts of the state during May and June. They question whether the savings fervor will have staying power if the summer turns beastly hot.

But water officials in parts of the state where the drought hit first and hardest insist that their customers have proved that conservation is not a passing fad. “We’ve had a conservation plan in effect for four years . . . and our customers have exceeded our goals from the beginning,” said Ida McClendon, a spokesman for the East Bay MUD.

Juana Guevara, a public information representative for the Santa Clara water agency, said two years of strict rationing have changed so many basic water habits in her district that she sees little chance that residents will ever revert to wasteful practices.

“I think Santa Clara people are just very much aware of the problem,” she said. “It’s been heavily publicized and I think that has really raised people’s consciousness. We have an advertising campaign and our theme is all about adjusting to a lifestyle that probably will be forever.”

Water officials, many of them astonished by the public response to their appeals for conservation, offer several explanations for their success.

Jonas Minton, chief of the California Department of Water Resources’ water conservation office, believes that people have discovered that saving water is not as hard as they thought it would be--that they can conserve significant amounts without either major discomfort or substantial deterioration in the quality of their lives.

At the same time, he said, they have become “extremely concerned about the potential for a sixth year of drought.”

While no scientific data has been gathered to back up his hypothesis, Minton also suspects the psychological timing of the drought was important. He said it came on a wave of environmental consciousness as people were beginning to act on their concerns about vanishing forests, dwindling wetlands and toxic waste. The request to conserve water, he said, was a natural extension of recycling, which was reaching a height in popularity about the same time.

“The public’s general concern with the environment, including conservation, is carrying over,” he said. “We’re becoming as a society much more conscious that our consumptive habits drive the development of resources and that has an adverse impact. The public is much more aware of the value of resources.”

Spellman, a writer, thinks those who are not motivated by environmental concerns may be drawn to conserve simply by “peer pressure.”

“You don’t want to appear to your next door neighbor as if you’re a glutton,” she says. “It’s also fashionable. It’s fashionable to have a brown lawn. But I don’t care what works for people as long as it gets across to them.”

Although water rates have risen sharply in many areas during the drought, most water experts tend to downplay the role price has played in the conservation craze. Price is more likely to be a factor, they say, in the conservation efforts of industries and large living complexes than in individual homes.

“It’s (saving water) becoming something we think about daily,” said Anderson. “Years ago we were always told it was our duty to turn off the lights and close the refrigerator door to save energy. I think we are now embracing the notion that it’s our duty to turn off the faucet when we brush our teeth.”

The Metropolitan Water District’s Quinn said some credit must go to the advertising and education campaigns being conducted by water agencies throughout the state. Districts have spent millions of dollars on billboards, other advertising, workshops and subsidies for customers who install water-saving devices.

He said industries, too, have invested heavily in public service programs that promote conservation as well as new plant equipment that cuts down on their usage. Raging Waters, a water theme park in San Dimas, for example, saved millions of gallons by installing water-saving equipment in restrooms and designing rides--like an enclosed water slide--to be more efficient.

But nobody took the call to conserve water more seriously than Tom Staley, co-owner of the Golden Apartments, a 52-unit low-income complex in Santa Rosa. A self-proclaimed “water nut,” Staley fixed leaks, installed the latest water-saving hardware, including expensive low-flush toilets, and then set about to motivate his tenants to save.

Getting tenants to save was difficult, he said, because the water usage of each apartment was not metered. So in 1990, Staley hit upon the idea of a party, one big blowout that would reward the tenants if they saved water. He sent out notices and tacked up posters promising that the more they conserved the better the party. In a month’s time, his tenants reduced usage from 13,000 gallons a day to 8,800.

Staley spent $2,000 on the affair, including an all-you-can-eat Chinese dinner. Earlier this month, he did the same thing, this time staging a $1,500 barbecue complete with fireworks and a bingo game to celebrate a year of water saving. By then water usage at the complex had dropped to 5,200 gallons a day.

The success stories, however, do little to dispel the lingering fear of many water officials that once the drought is over people will stop conserving.

“I think the public understands there is a genuine crisis in the fifth year of drought and I think the public is quite willing to sacrifice during these times,” said John Fraser, executive director of the Assn. of California Water Agencies. “The question is whether that willingness to sacrifice will continue into the future, in years of so-called normal rainfall.”

Minton said that after the 1976-77 drought, usage did creep up again, but he predicts that it will not happen when this current cycle ends. The drought has lasted so long, he said, that people have had time to make basic “structural changes” in their homes by installing low-flow showers and low-flush toilets and replacing thirsty tropical landscapes with drought-resistant plants.

“I think it will be like my grandmother used to be after the Depression. She never really forgot her saving ways,” said Spellman. “Saving water is just something that’s becoming inbred and you don’t forget it.”