DWP Chief Announces Retirement : Utilities: Dan Waters’ three years as general manager were complicated by drought and a labor strike. He says he wants to leave before the agency gets deeply involved in solving financial difficulties.

Dan Waters, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, announced Tuesday that he will retire from the utility at the end of the month, ending a three-year tenure marked by a long drought, a nine-day strike and a much-debated rate restructuring.

Waters, a 32-year DWP employee who took over the utility in fall, 1990, said he decided in August that he would retire sometime this spring. He has been eligible to retire for more than a year.

Waters said he wanted to retire before the utility gets deeply involved in addressing looming financial challenges. Increased competition and Mayor Richard Riordan’s attempt tap into the DWP treasury to pay for police means the utility must become a more efficient operation.

Waters said last September’s strike, and criticism of DWP management spending during the walkout, reinforced his decision to leave. Waters was rebuked by the City Council for spending several hundred thousand dollars on meals for management personnel who filled in for striking workers.

He will probably be replaced by an interim manager from within the DWP while a nationwide search is conducted for a permanent general manager, officials said.

Councilman Joel Wachs, a frequent critic of DWP spending, said he intends to push for a change in the City Charter to eliminate a requirement that the head of the DWP be an engineer. Wachs said the requirement limits the applicant pool.

“The DWP needs to be overhauled from top to bottom,” he said. “It needs to be lean instead of mean.”

Waters earns $165,000 a year. The only city employees earning more are Fire Chief Don Manning and Administrative Officer Keith Comrie.

Waters said he plans to take a couple of months off, go skiing and consider positions in private industry, where he said the compensation is far higher. His DWP pension will pay him about $110,000 a year.

The general manager said he attempted to make customer service a priority and establish an environmental agenda for the Water and Power system. The DWP became the first municipal utility in the country to implement an air-quality program to lower carbon dioxide emissions from its generators.

But throughout his tenure, Waters had to fend off criticism of his agency. He struggled through a drought that led to water rationing at the same time the utility was pushing a rate increase. Then came the longest strike in DWP history and an audit of management’s spending practices.

“Being in the public sector today, you’re in a fishbowl,” Waters said. “Anything you do is subject to criticism.”

One of Riordan’s appointees to the DWP Commission, Dennis Tito, said Waters’ retirement was probably prompted by a variety of factors, ranging from frequent criticism in the media to the difficult financial challenges that will face management in the coming years.

“After a while you just get sick and tired of people criticizing you,” Tito said. “I also think a lot of it had to do with where he was in his life.”