Storms Cast Cloud on Water Restrictions

As the heavens opened up, streets flooded and water formed puddles in City Hall stairwells, the irony of passing an emergency water-conserving landscape ordinance and reviewing water conservation goals was not lost on the Beverly Hills City Council.

As the Los Angeles area was racking up nearly 12 inches of rain between Jan. 5 and 18, the council was passing an urgency ordinance to regulate plant groupings, erosion and runoff, and irrigation design to beat a state deadline set for Jan. 31.

And as residents began to talk about building arks, the council was also pondering the city’s conservation achievements and a proposal by the city’s water supplier to raise its wholesale water rates. The proposal, which is up for a vote by the Metropolitan Water District directors next month, would translate to an 8% increase in water rates for Beverly Hills residents.

“It just seems to fly in the face of what you see when you look out the window,” Councilman Allan L. Alexander said.

The landscape ordinance was something that couldn’t be put off, City Manager Mark Scott said.

The Legislature passed a model landscape ordinance last year in response to the drought, Scott said. Under the state law, unless cities drew up their own ordinances the model ordinance would take effect by default on Jan. 31.

The state legislation, however, was designed more for developing cities with new subdivisions than for a built-out city like Beverly Hills, Scott said, so the city drafted its own ordinance. The city’s permanent ordinance is due for a second reading Tuesday and is expected to take effect Feb. 26.

The ordinance, which applies only to new developments on residential and commercial lots, regulates water use on any landscape project of more than 2,500 square feet and has sections dealing with pools, spas, ponds and fountains.

Plans for a landscape project must be submitted to the city by a state-licensed landscape architect or certified landscape irrigation auditor. The plans must provide for efficient irrigation, limit erosion and runoff and, where feasible, place plants with similar water needs close together.

The city has already made gains in conservation, Alexander said. Partly because of the rain and also because of conservation, residents and businesses cut water consumption over the past month by 26% compared to the same period in 1989.

But whether the city will be rewarded with lower or even stable water rates by its sole water supplier was a subject that aroused intense interest during the council’s first study session this month.

Public Works Director Dan Webster noted that rain and snowfall figures are above normal in the Sierra and the Colorado River Basin. “These are good numbers for now, but we have to go through the rest of the winter to really make an assessment of it,” he said.

As of the MWD’s last meeting on Jan. 12, the wholesaler was predicting a water shortfall of nearly half a million acre-feet, Webster said. The agency can make it up with a carry-over of water it didn’t use last year from the state water project or it can go back to requiring mandatory water cutbacks.

Even if above-normal precipitation continues, Webster said, much of the runoff will go to fill reservoirs in the state that have been nearly emptied by years of drought.

“So I don’t think there’s going to be a lot more water into the system to sell this year,” he said.

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Councilman Alexander said state water officials and the MWD need to better explain what state residents can expect for a water supply.

“What we get are these (MWD) reports in the paper that say, well, yeah, it’s better than it was, but we still have got to be cautious. They owe us more than that, I think,” he said.

Mayor Robert K. Tanenbaum suggested that the council invite Michael Gage, the new chairman of the MWD Board of Directors, to speak to the council.

“These are important questions, because it is frustrating in explaining the notion of why we’re in this drought situation when you see flooding all over the place,” Tanenbaum said.