Ventura, Santa Barbara Drought Declared Over : Weather: U.S. meteorologist says the water crisis has ended. But officials elsewhere remain cautious.

The latest storm front to thunder through Southern California led one official Monday to declare an end to the drought in Ventura and southern Santa Barbara counties, spreading hopes along the drenched California coast that restrictions on water use may soon ease elsewhere.

But state and Los Angeles authorities, while heartened by the first chink in the armor of the six-year drought, said it is too early to pronounce the dry spell over statewide.

In one of the first localized declarations, National Weather Service meteorologist Terry Schaeffer said the recent heavy storms had dropped enough rain in Ventura and southern Santa Barbara counties to call the drought over there.

Parts of the Ventura County region have received as much as 130% of normal rainfall for the year, Schaeffer said. Reservoirs that supply western Ventura County and southern Santa Barbara County are approaching pre-drought levels and ground-water basins are on the rise, he added.

“For all practical purposes, that meets my criteria for the end of the drought,” said Schaeffer, whose Santa Paula office recorded 37 inches of rain during the last 12 months and 22 inches of rain since Oct. 1.

In Santa Barbara, officials said the City Council is expected today to declare the drought emergency over in that city, where a combination of reservoir storage and a new desalination plant now guarantee enough supplies to meet demands for at least three years.

The last of Santa Barbara’s drought restrictions, which had residents cutting back by 45% a year ago, is expected to be rescinded today, city officials said.

“It’s been a progressively improving picture,” said Sandra Lizarraga, deputy city administrator.

Officials in other areas, however, were cautious about the chances of rolling back conservation measures or declaring an end to the drought statewide.

“It’s a hopeful sign,” said Maurice Roos, chief hydrologist for the state Department of Water Resources, referring to the latest series of storms.

“But it took a long time for us to get into the drought and for storage to become so depleted. It will probably take a long time for us to get out of it.”

In Los Angeles County, where rainfall in downtown Los Angeles had reached more than 127% of normal by Monday, residents are still caught in a drought because of the dependence on water from Northern California, officials said.

The largest reservoirs that supply water for Southern California through the State Water Project are at less than 60% of average levels for this time of year, officials said.

And rainfall statewide is 75% of normal, said Dean Thompson, specialist at the State Drought Center in the Department of Water Resources.

“It’s ironic that the area of the state that should be out of the drought isn’t because they depend on an outside water source,” he said of the region including Los Angeles County.

In Northern California, officials were cautious about the impact of the recent heavy rains.

Marin County authorities, who called for drastic cutbacks in water usage last year, said they will wait until April before considering whether to ease up on conservation measures.

February brought precipitation 150% above normal in the Sierra Nevada, which supplies the runoff for the state’s system of reservoirs, pipes and pumps, Roos said.

But the area needed double the normal precipitation for February and double for March to produce normal runoff levels for the year, he said.

“We got about 12 inches of ‘precip’ and we needed 30 inches,” he said. “That did happen last March, but we’re not anticipating it two years in a row.”

The State Water Project is only guaranteeing delivery of 20% of the amount of water requested by cities and water districts throughout the state, Roos said.

March is traditionally one of the wettest months of the year and more storms have been predicted for Southern California. Another is expected to hit the coast later this week, possibly carrying up to an inch of rain, meteorologist Schaeffer said.

But he said the system of storms will not carry as much rainfall or be as closely spaced as the storms last month that caused flooding in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

In Santa Barbara County, water agency manager Robert Almy said the drought emergency is over. All of that county’s supply is in local reservoirs and ground water.

* INCH OF RAIN IN L.A.: The storm created an assortment of headaches in L.A. B1