Voters Face a Flood of Candidates : Elections: Water politics loses that clubby feeling as 19 vie for four seats on the Three Valleys district board.

EAST SAN GABRIEL VALLEY — When an unprecedented 19 candidates filed to run for four seats on the Three Valleys Municipal Water District board, General Manager Richard W. Hansen was surprised to find that “there are a lot of people I don’t even know.”

Local water politics has been an obscure world in which the players know one another, even if they aren’t philosophically aligned. But that changed this year as the diversity of candidates greatly expanded, thrusting the politics of water into more public view.

Nowhere has the change been so dramatic as in the Three Valleys district.

The lineup for the Nov. 3 balloting includes a former mayor of Walnut, a former chairman of the state Republican Party, two Perot for President activists, a former mayor of Glendora, a current Glendora councilwoman, the El Monte city attorney, the general manager of a water company, the Azusa city attorney, a retired financial officer of Cal Poly Pomona and a Sierra Club leader.

The candidates are bidding for four seats on the board that oversees the delivery of imported water to 14 public and private water suppliers of 475,250 residents in the eastern San Gabriel Valley. Incumbents are seeking reelection in three of the races.

At stake is a majority of the seats on the seven-member board, which in recent years has been contentious. Some candidates have accused others of having conflicts of interest. In addition, local officials in several cities, along with some challengers, have blasted the board and incumbents for bickering, for excessive travel expenses and for the $100 per diem paid for meetings.

Public criticism was so strong that in July the board voted to cut back from 10 to seven the maximum number of meetings in a month for which members can be paid. The board also eliminated its benefits program, including medical insurance, for a savings of $15,000, and has cut its travel budget, general manager Hansen said.

Some challengers have also attacked incumbents on the lingering issue of $1.5 million in investments that the district lost as a result of questionable transactions by two traders who eventually were barred for life from the securities business.

Efforts to clean up the severe ground water pollution of the San Gabriel Basin, which underlies the western portion of the district, has also become an issue as it was in 1990 when environmentalists successfully used the topic for campaign leverage.

Here is a summary of the candidates:

DIVISION 2 (covers most of Walnut, parts of Covina, West Covina and San Dimas)

* Joe H. Hahn, 62, a former Walnut councilman, said: “If you’ve ever attended a meeting of the Three Valleys, you know there’s a lot of animosity, finger-pointing and rhetoric.”

Hahn, a manager at Hughes Missile Co. in Pomona, said he blames infighting for the inefficiency that requires the group to meet so often.

* Marshall R. Lane, a 49-year-old Walnut commercial construction contractor, is an activist in the Perot for President campaign. “There is a tremendous lack of long-range planning,” he said. “I see water as being the biggest issue in California right alongside illegal immigration.”

* Maxine Leichter, a 47-year-old water resources analyst from Walnut said, “Environmentally sound solutions are also the least expensive.” She cited conservation, reclamation and water rate pricing that rewards conservation.

Leichter, who was instrumental in organizing a successful slate of environmental candidates in 1990 water board elections, is the only Three Valleys candidate endorsed by the Sierra Club.

* Bruce Newmark, 38, a resident of West Covina and past vice president of the Greater La Puente Valley Chamber of Commerce, said he is troubled by the district’s investment losses. “I’m concerned that (the district) do things that are ecologically sound,” he said.

The district also needs to do more to help local industries, said Newmark, who is a financial office administrator for a group of doctors.

DIVISION 4 (covers Glendora and part of San Dimas)

* Deborah Anderson, 42, is one of three co-chairmen of the Los Angeles County Perot for President campaign. A San Dimas businesswoman who deals in Native American crafts, she said she is upset at the board’s travel expenses.

Acknowledging that she is a novice in water politics, she said that “learning about the water board is a kind of hands-on thing.”

* F. Dale Colby, 55, owns a real estate business with offices in Covina and Glendora. “I don’t see the board operating very cohesively. I just don’t see leadership,” said Colby, who was on Glendora’s Planning Commission for 12 years. Critical of the board’s expense accounts, he said: “I question whether the taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.”

* Len Martyns(cq), 57, is a former Glendora mayor and a college professor of management. He said he did not want to discuss his candidacy in the newspaper.

* Barbara L. Mee, 65, is a community activist in Glendora. During the Three Valleys meeting in February, 1990, when the board voted itself a pay increase, Mee was highly critical of the action.

“I’m running because I see the abuse in the water industry and I’ve been tracking these people for three years. It’s time these people got scrutinized,” said Mee, who has been active in fights over hillside development, landfills and large-scale trash incinerators.

* Bruce R. J. Milne, 40, a regional manager for a company that makes water treatment systems, is the incumbent, first elected in 1988. “I don’t see anybody running against me with any background in water,” said Milne, who is on the Main San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority. “I don’t think politicians should be on water boards. I didn’t go onto the water board looking for higher office.”

Milne, who is the board’s representative to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said he is trying to persuade other members to cut down on expenses, travel and on the number of meetings. In 1990, Milne voted with the majority to increase the maximum number of meetings in a month to 10. However, in July he voted for an unsuccessful motion that would have set the maximum monthly number at two. He later voted with the majority to cut the number to seven.

* Sean T. O’Connor, 28, a field supervisor for Monrovia’s parks, recreation and environmental services department, said he is troubled by the board’s conduct in meetings, its expense budgets and the $1.5-million investment loss. “They need to advance a ground water cleanup plan,” he said. “And they really have not pushed for the use of reclaimed water.”

* Lois M. Shade, 49, a Glendora councilwoman, has dropped out of the race because of conflict-of-interest issues raised by her opponents, who said she could not justifiably serve on both the City Council and the water board. The council oversees the Glendora Water Department, which is a Three Valleys member agency. Shade said she unsuccessfully sought an opinion on the matter from the state Attorney General’s Office and could not afford a legal challenge.

DIVISION 6 (covers northern Pomona and part of San Dimas)

* Robert (RV) Armstrong, 68, a retired telephone company engineer from Pomona, is the incumbent. “I feel I’ve accomplished a lot,” he said, citing his role in developing a board policy manual and mission statement. He said he has helped to bring a “business-thinking” approach to the board.

Armstrong in 1990 voted with the majority to increase the maximum number of meetings to 10 a month. Again in July he voted with the majority to reduce it to seven. He voted against the proposal to set the limit at two.

He criticized opponent Andrew Krueger as having a potential conflict of interest. Krueger serves as a member of the Main San Gabriel Basin Watermaster Board, which oversees pumping rights in the region. Armstrong also criticized opponent David Gondek for living in San Dimas where only a tiny percentage of the division’s constituents reside.

* David F. Gondek, 41, is the city attorney for El Monte, which is in a separate water district and thus, he said, poses no conflict. If elected, he said, he would not participate on any regional boards that might present a conflict.

Gondek said he would bring coherence to the Three Valleys board, which now is filled with “bickering, acrimony and a lack of cooperation.” Gondek disputes the notion that because he lives in San Dimas he cannot adequately represent the entire division.

* Andrew A. Krueger, 56, is a civil engineer and the general manager of the California-American Water Co. division office in San Marino. The office oversees supplying water to a large area of the central San Gabriel Valley.

Krueger, a Pomona resident, said that neither his job nor his post on the Watermaster Board pose a conflict in his being a good board member of Three Valleys. “I have the talent, knowledge and expertise to do the job,” he said.

DIVISION 7 (covers Rowland Heights and parts of the City of Industry and Hacienda Heights)

* Henry S. Barbosa, 44, is a Rowland Heights resident and the city attorney for Azusa, Bell Gardens, Lynwood and Montebello. He said he is running because he “got fed up with the tremendous inertia regarding our water problems . . . and fed up with the lack of leadership.”

Barbosa is part of a political family. His mother was the Irwindale city clerk, his father was an Irwindale city councilman and his brother, Fred, is a current member of the Irwindale council.

* Carol Mauceri, 56, is a Hacienda Heights resident who has been active in environmental fights related to the Puente Hills landfill.

“The water board needs to be more oriented to the community and probably not as much under the influence of the water companies and the water industry,” she said. “There is a need of great reform.”

* Michael B. Montgomery, 56, is a City of Industry attorney who has a long list of powerful credits, including a stint as the chairman of the state Republican Party.

Some of his past and current legal work is related to water issues, he said. He worked with the city of South El Monte in putting together a redevelopment project centered on addressing the ground water contamination problems there. Of the Three Valleys board, he said, “They are going to have to quit fighting among themselves . . . and sit down and address the seven-year-drought.”

* Willard Netzley, 70, is the incumbent and a Rowland Heights resident. For 42 years he has had a law practice in La Puente. For 13 years he was a board member of the Rowland Water District and served as its legal counsel for 15 years until he retired from that post in 1979. He was appointed to the Three Valleys board in April and said that since then he has “tried to make the board less divisive.”

The board, he said, should assist its member agencies with seed money to help find alternative sources of water by drilling wells and cleaning up contamination.

* Robert W. Turner, 55, a Rowland Heights resident, worked as a cost systems analyst for major corporations and for nine years was Cal Poly Pomona’s financial operations administrator. He now teaches economics and computers at Chino High School. “I don’t see anybody with a strong cost and financial systems background,” he said of his competitors. Someone with his expertise is sorely needed, he said, citing both the $1.5-million investments issue and the debate over travel expenses.

Three Valleys Water District

A member of the Metropolitian Water District, the Three Valleys Municipal Water District arrangesfor water to be transported to 475,250 residents in the East San Gabriel, Walnut and Pomona valleys. The seven members represent divisions whose areas were realigned after the 1990 Census. Members will be elected Nov. 3 in divisions 2,4,6 and 7. There are 19 candidates, including incumbents in three divisions.