Water Report: Water Conservation : The Drought: 1 1/2 Years Later : Water usage: The city of Ventura leads with overall savings of 38%. Agricultural users cut back an average 19%.

Eighteen months after Ventura County began moving seriously to combat Southern California’s ongoing drought, water experts agree that the county’s conservation efforts are paying off with significant reductions of water use in all cities and most farm areas.

Residential water users throughout the county reduced their consumption an average of 21% this year, with the city of Ventura topping the list at 38% in overall savings, according to figures provided by the cities.

Agricultural water users weren’t far behind residential conservation with an estimated 19% cut in use. Cash penalties initiated by the Metropolitan Water District spurred farmers in the Moorpark area to cut use by a remarkable 37% over last year.

Figures on business and industry were not available for most of the county, but where figures were provided, they showed that the county’s business community also responded with a 13% reduction of water consumption in some areas.

“On a scale of 10, I would give the county a nine,” said Frank Brommenschenkel, president of the Ventura County Assn. of Water Agencies, an industry group representing 140 water districts.

Adds Supervisor John K. Flynn, one of the county’s top water experts:

“The county has done an above-average job in response to the drought. Ventura and Oxnard have done very well . . . farmers are very sensitive to the issue as well.”

Conservation efforts were helped by the coolest summer on record and the “Miracle March” that brought enough drenching rains to stave off the need for agriculture irrigation for weeks while lifting county rain totals to 94% of normal for the year.

But rain, cool weather and temporary cutbacks are not enough, experts say.

Countywide, water experts agree that water conservation will forevermore be a way of life in Southern California, where the uncontrollable growth of population must be measured against a limited, finite water supply.

To catch up with present water shortages and keep step for the future, the county’s water agencies, cities and farmers are laying the groundwork now for long-term projects to reduce waste and increase supply.

Two of the county’s three largest agencies, together with the city of Ventura, have completed a study on how to bring 20,000 acre-feet of imported state water into the county each year from Lake Castaic. That amounts to an additional 5% of the 425,000 acre-feet used countywide last year.

The study also evaluated building a desalination plant to use sea water to satiate the county’s growing population, which surged by 26% throughout the 1980s.

In addition, two other water districts that provide agricultural water are working to reclaim water from the Thousand Oaks sewage treatment plant. The city of Oxnard is studying whether its waste water can be reused as well. Districts throughout the county are looking for innovative low-cost ways to store water underground during wet months to save it for drier times.

And farmers, who account for 70% of the water used each year in the county, are switching from wasteful furrow irrigation to more efficient drip or mini-sprinkler systems.

“We’re all working together on this,” said Brommenschenkel, who manages Santa Paula Water Works. “We can’t afford not to.”

Indeed not. The cost of water to customers has risen by more than 40% in some areas and by nearly 30% for the areas served by Calleguas Municipal Water District, which delivers Metropolitan Water District water in the county.

And experts say it will continue to rise as water becomes more scarce, health regulations require more treatment facilities and both the population and the demand for water continue to balloon in Southern California.

“The cost of water will absolutely continue to go up,” said James Hubert, manager of the Calleguas district, which delivered 110,000 acre-feet of MWD water in Ventura County last year.

Despite a 27% overall savings in water used by Calleguas’ 450,000 customers in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Oxnard, Camarillo and surrounding unincorporated areas, customers saw a 28% rise in the cost of their water this summer, Hubert said.

“The conventional methods of developing water, like damming rivers, are no longer available to us,” he said. “So we have to turn to more expensive methods, like using reclaimed waste water.”

Hubert referred to efforts by water interests to prevent the Sespe Creek in the northern half of the county from being named a wild and scenic river to prevent future dam sites on the river. Environmentalists want the entire river off limits to dam building, and Flynn is proposing a compromise measure to allow only smaller, diversion dams to be built instead.

Hubert, Brommenschenkel and other experts in the county said the need to augment the water supply and eliminate waste has reached a critical point.

Ground water, traditionally the county’s cheapest and most-used water supply, has begun its spiral again toward record low levels, say officials at United Water Conservation District, which is responsible for monitoring pumping and recharging the underground basins of the Santa Clara River Valley and the Oxnard Plain.

The March rains replenished the county’s underground basins, or aquifers, but now the levels have reached pre-March levels again, said United hydrologist James Gross.

“We definitely need a few wet years, “ he said. In order to refill the depleted aquifers, United is releasing 25,000 acre-feet of water over the next six weeks from Lake Piru, the district’s reservoir.

The water gushes from the bottom of the 60-foot Santa Felicia Dam and creates an arch 100 feet long as it splashes into Piru Creek and heads down the Santa Clara River. Once the water reaches United’s Freeman Diversion Dam at Saticoy, it will be shunted off into settling ponds to refill the basins below.

But United should be more aggressive at conservation, Brommenschenkel said.

“On the surface, United wants to look like they are doing something toward conservation,” he said. “But in reality, they will be among the last to impose restrictions on themselves.”

Despite its overall 18% reduction in water use this year, United is the only major water provider in the county that has no mandatory cutback program. Under a program by the county’s Groundwater Management Agency, growers and cities in the Oxnard Plain portion of United’s district will face penalties if they do not reduce pumping by 5% beginning in January under a new ordinance.

The cuts will increase by 5% every five years until they reach a 25% reduction in 2010, but growers can avoid the cuts if they can prove that their water use is at least 80% efficient.

But United’s Santa Clara River Valley is not in the ground water management district and has no restrictions at all on pumping. United could impose restrictions, but opposes doing so.

United General Manager Frederick J. Gientke said his board of directors has declined to place any restrictions on water use other than a call for voluntary conservation.

“We are not in the business of being a regulatory agency and slapping meters on pumpers,” he said.

Nevertheless, Gientke said United has been more progressive than other districts in the county. It completed the Freeman Diversion Dam this year, which captured 37,000 acre-feet of water since its February dedication. The district is also considering adding to the height of the dam to capture more water during storms in future years.

In addition, United has hired an engineer to study how it can use the underground basins to store up to 15,000 acre-feet of water during wet months as an alternative to expensive dams and reservoirs.

“We want to fast-track the gravel basin project,” he said.

Gientke pointed out that United is the only one of three governmental entities with rights to imported state water outside the Calleguas district that has ordered its allocation and taken delivery this year.

United received 5,000 acre-feet of water that was released from Pyramid Lake and flowed down a part of Piru Creek and into Lake Piru.

The city of Ventura and Casitas Municipal Water District also have rights to a combined 15,000 acre-feet of state water, and they could receive their water by the same delivery route.

But Ventura and Casitas officials, who joined with United in studying options to bring in the water, feel too much of the water is lost into the river and that the quality of the pure Northern California water would become too compromised to make that a feasible option for them.

United’s call for its water to come down the river at very little cost could make a proposed $150-million pipeline project a tough sell to the district’s directors, Gientke said.

But the other two districts could still go forward with the project, said Shelly Jones, Ventura’s director of public works. Ventura and Casitas can seek partners in some of the smaller cities that now receive their water from United, such as Santa Paula, Port Hueneme, Fillmore and the community of Piru, he said.

Jones said the city of Ventura, which had the first tough water-rationing plan in the county implemented in April, 1990, will continue to look for new supplies and ways to conserve.

The city will propose a new plan on Monday that would provide rebates for low-flush toilet installations, and provide for the city to adopt so-called “Best Management Practices.”

Those practices, as outlined in a statewide policy statement on water engineered by Flynn, provide that cities implement tiered rate structures that rise with the quantity of water used, public education in schools, water efficiency audits and rebate programs.

Casitas, which registered an overall savings of 21% last year, has already adopted the practices.

Because Casitas provides the city of Ventura with one-third of the water it produces each year, much of the savings was due to the success of Ventura’s conservation program, said John Johnson, Casitas general manager.

But he said agriculture in his district also turned in a savings of 16%. Similar savings were achieved in the Camrosa Water District that serves eastern Camarillo and the Santa Rosa Valley, where growers cut consumption by 18%, and in the Santa Paula area where growers reduced consumption by 13%.

The growers in the county’s east end, which receives its water from MWD through Calleguas, had little choice because of stiff penalties imposed. But growers throughout the county are looking to conserve as well, said Lee Waddle, the county’s top expert on water use efficiency.

Waddle, who heads the mobile irrigation laboratory, a program funded both federally and by the county to help farmers use water more efficiently, said that most of the county’s citrus growers in the Santa Clara River Valley and the Ojai Valley have already converted to efficient mini-sprinklers or drip irrigation systems.

Now, the lab is beginning to spend most of its time with growers on the Oxnard Plain.

“We have hundreds of people on waiting lists to have these water audits done,” said Waddle, who has begun his own private consulting business. “In five to 10 years we will have the best-managed county in the world.”

The County’s Response to the Drought Water use has dropped.: Residential: 21% Agriculture: 19% Reservoir levels have risen. . . Lake Casitas: Acre-feet in thousands Sept. 1990: 138 Sept. 1991: 146 Lake Piru: Acre-feet in thousands Sept. 1990: 20.6 Sept. 1991: 43 And so has the cost of water. Percentage of average water cost increase to residential customers since 1990 Camarillo: 7% Fillmore: 10% Moorpark: 25% Port Hueneme: 42% Ojai: 0 Oxnard: 4% Santa Paula: 3% Simi Valley: 25% Thous. Oaks 0 Ventura: 38%