Usually Sedate Water Board Contests Heat Up : Election: Slate of minority candidates challenges policies of low-profile agencies that control lucrative contracts. Some incumbents question the group’s motives.

Is it something in the water?

The normally quiet races for water boards--those contests relegated to the bottom of the ballot--are emerging as a new political battleground for a slate of minority candidates seeking entree to the obscure but financially potent industry that controls billions of dollars in contracts.

These part-time elective posts have traditionally been overshadowed by the big statewide, legislative and local races, but this year a coalition of eight minority candidates is trying to open up the boards that have been dominated for decades by white, male business interests.

The minority candidates, all affiliated with the political machine of former Rep. Mervyn Dymally, are seeking to wrest control of three water boards in bitterly contested elections. Such battles are unusual in the staid and gentlemanly world of water, where holding office is usually guaranteed for life. In all, 30 candidates are vying for eight seats, some of which have never before been contested.

Dymally, a black leader who was one of the first to break the color barrier in statewide politics, likens the battle to the school board fights of the 1960s. “We’re breaking new ground,” Dymally said. “We’re breaking up the old-boy network.”

But some incumbents say the challengers have a hidden agenda. They say their opponents are more interested in financial gain than social justice.

“They smell money,” said Vergil Clyde Haight, director of the Central Basin Municipal Water District and a candidate for reelection.

Up for grabs are the boards of the Central and West Basin municipal water districts and the Water Replenishment District of Southern California, which store and distribute water for a patchwork of more than 70 communities from Malibu to Long Beach and inland to East Los Angeles and Pico Rivera.

The boards have long conducted their business in relative obscurity and with near total autonomy. The small but politically astute group of challengers is questioning the priorities, the policies and the makeup of these agencies.

Dymally’s son, Mark, a candidate for the West Basin Municipal Water District board who organized the slate of African American, Latino and Asian American candidates, says the election is about diversity of representation, access to contracts for minority businesses and the structure of rates that he says fall unfairly on poor and urban communities.

“Everyone should share equally in the resources,” Mark Dymally said. “That is why we are running.”

Still, some incumbents seem mystified by the influx of contenders. “Who ever heard of the West Basin Water District?” asked incumbent Ed Little. “This is no steppingstone in politics.”

Or as candidate John Allen, a deputy district attorney, said: “Nobody knows who we are and nobody cares.”

So the sudden emergence of the Dymally group is leading many in the water industry to question their motives.

“I can’t put my finger on why so many people associated with Congressman Dymally are expressing all this interest in water boards,” said Bob Goldsworthy, a director of the Water Replenishment District. “It’s a nagging question and I don’t have the answer.”

Others say the answer is clear: the tremendous financial clout of the water boards.

“I think the recognition is beginning to dawn on people that there is significance to these seats in terms of political capital,” said West Basin Municipal Water District Director Gary Morse.

The Central and West Basin districts collectively spend about $10 million a month on construction programs.

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Perhaps more important, the Central and West Basin boards send six representatives to the powerful Metropolitan Water District board, where billions of dollars worth of business is at stake.

“That’s the big prize,” acknowledged Mark Dymally.

Dymally, 39, worked as a water resources specialist at the MWD for 10 years before resigning in April to form an independent water institute.

Since 1990, three Dymally affiliates--Kenneth Orduna, Clarence Wong and Albert Robles--have been elected to the board of the Water Replenishment District. After gaining control of the five-member board, they voted to give themselves a $308-per-month car allowance, gave a $42,000-a-year Sacramento lobbying contract to a business partner of Mervyn Dymally and increased the public affairs budget from virtually nothing to $300,000 last year, according to the district’s acting general manager.

Car allowances and six-figure public affairs budgets are unusual for small water agencies, and even some larger and more complex agencies such as the Three Valleys and Upper San Gabriel municipal water districts do not have such expenditures.

Orduna, formerly chief of staff to Rep. Dymally and now president of the Replenishment District, defended the spending.

“One of my campaign pledges was to make the public more aware of water,” said Orduna.

He said the car allowances help directors make the rounds of community meetings and that public affairs expenditures were used largely to fund a series of community festivals.

And as for the Sacramento lobbyist, he said, “that needed to be done. If we don’t have someone up there, we won’t get the dollars that are needed.”

Water Replenishment District board member Goldsworthy, who is not affiliated with the Dymally group, agreed that the lobbyist has helped open doors for the district. But he said the public affairs budget has grown too large and needs to be reined in. Last year, he proposed eliminating the car allowance but was outvoted 4 to 1.

Dymally foes also say the former congressman solicited business from the Central and Western districts last spring, but was turned down.

District administrators say Mervyn Dymally, in a meeting arranged by Orduna, was seeking municipal bond underwriting business. But Dymally said he was not seeking a contract. He said the purpose of the meeting was simply to find out if the district was using minority contractors.

“I have no economic interest in this,” the former congressman said. “I’m just having some fun after politics. No one is trying to make a living out of it. Certainly not me.”

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Mark Dymally said incumbents and other challengers are raising questions about his motives to avoid the real issues in the campaign, including what he says is mismanagement of the districts’ finances and operations.

He has questioned the decision by West and Central Basin boards to build a $150-million water reclamation plant, which will primarily supply water to industrial customers, such as oil refineries.

The younger Dymally said it is not right that all residents in the district are required to subsidize the plant through property tax assessments, although the water is to be used by just a few customers.

And given the visceral response his challenge has elicited from the incumbents, he said: “I suspect there is bigger trouble with the financing of the plant than they want to let on.”

The incumbents say the plant is necessary to guarantee a future supply of water for the district. “This is a fantastic thing,” said Charles Stuart, a director of the West Basin district. “This will be the salvation of the South Bay.”

But the younger Dymally said the plant is a tangible sign of the gap between the needs of the district’s inner-city poor and the actions of the board.

In April, Mark Dymally formed the Robert Smith Water Institute to examine such issues and to “articulate the concerns of the urban poor.”

The institute was named for an African American friend of the Dymally family who repeatedly ran for various water boards--and lost--in the 1960s.

Mark Dymally says the institute, housed in Mervyn Dymally’s Inglewood business office, plans to launch a series of studies, including one to determine if poor areas pay higher water rates than affluent communities.

“It will be tough to get funding” for the study, said Dymally, whose institute has no financial backing. “It’s not something the traditional water community wants to explore.”

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Several candidates have raised questions about the legitimacy of the institute, calling it a front for Dymally candidates. The ballot designations could make a difference in races where most candidates are unknown to the voters.

On the ballot, Mark Dymally lists himself as president of the institute and three other candidates--Charles M. Trevino, Richard Mayer and Joann S. Williams--call themselves institute directors.

Keith McDonald, son of Assemblywoman Juanita M. McDonald (D-Carson), lists himself by his institute job title, water conservation analyst. Michael J. Robbins, a candidate for the Water Replenishment District, lists himself by his institute title, water conservation specialist.

“It’s something to give them a name to run on,” said Little, the incumbent West Basin director seeking reelection. “It’s a highfalutin name.

“They concocted that thing to try to lend an air of respectability for the campaign,” said Stuart. “It’s the biggest bunch of hogwash.”

Grace Romero, a spokeswoman for the county registrar-recorder, said that in response to complaints from some candidates, the elections agency checked on the ballot designations and concluded that they were legitimate.

The extensive political experience of the Dymally group has intimidated some candidates.

“I have no interest in tangling with a legend like Mervyn Dymally,” said Richard Heath, who is running against Mark Dymally for a seat on the West Basin board.

And at least one of the candidates has sought elective office before. Orduna in 1987 ran for Los Angeles City Council, but his bid was unsuccessful and he ended up being fined $187,000 by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for 134 violations of campaign law. At the time, it was the second largest fine ever levied by the watchdog agency.

“They are a very politically astute bunch of people and they are running in an arena of political amateurs,” said Morse, the Central Basin director. “I fully expect opposition when my seat comes up. These seats will likely be forever political.”

Indeed, Mark Dymally said he has received inquiries from minority groups in Ventura and San Diego about launching similar challenges in their districts.

And if Mervyn Dymally has his way, this process won’t stop with the water boards.

His next step? “I’m going to go out and find out how many mosquito control districts there are.”