Slowing the Flow : Habits Learned During Drought Continue to Promote Conservation

Ah, summer. When the garden switches into high gear, the kids play in the sprinkler, the hills turn a dusty brown and thoughts turn to . . . water.

Four years after torrential winter rains brought to an end one of the state’s worst droughts, Southern California families can still feel its lingering impact: in water bills that go up exponentially if they use more water than the city believes is necessary, in a proliferation of drought-tolerant plants, and in the teensy low-flow toilets and shower heads that save the region more than 14 billion gallons of precious water every year.

Water use is slowly creeping up as the drought fades from memory, said George Martin, a water resources and conservation specialist with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), but it’s nowhere near pre-drought levels.

Even Martha Davis, executive director of the fiercely pro-conservation Committee to Save Mono Lake, calls Southern California’s efforts to reduce water use “enormously successful.”

“People are conserving,” said Rob Hallwachs, spokesman for the Metropolitan Water District, which serves 27 Southern California municipalities and communities. “The habits they learned during the drought have for the most part held on.”

Indeed, water use in Los Angeles, which peaked at 713,449 acre-feet in 1989, was down to 628,000 acre-feet in 1995, despite an increase in the city’s population, according to DWP figures. An acre-foot equals 326,000 gallons.

Spurring the drive to conserve are a number of factors, including state laws requiring the sale of only low-flow toilets and shower heads, and a new appreciation, gained during the drought years, for the fact that Southern California is just plain dry--particularly in the summer.

The most significant factor, however, appears to be the high prices implemented throughout the region as a way to force consumers to use less water.

Bob Sherman, who owns the Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, said he has reduced his bimonthly water bill on the 30-acre property by more than three-fourths, from $4,000 to $800. His more drought-tolerant landscape, Sherman concedes, came about not because of any aesthetic preference but “because of price only.”

“My place doesn’t look as good as it did,” he said.

Kizzie Douglas has forgone a water-hungry lawn at her Los Angeles home, deciding instead to plant a ground cover of drought-tolerant succulents.

A primary motivator, she said, has been a city policy to treble water rates if a household’s usage goes above a certain point, usually about 13,000 gallons per month.

“One way or another, you’re going to pay for it,” said Douglas, who maintains a vegetable garden even as she watches her water.

Cathy Young, a landscape designer with Topanga Canyon-based Sassafras Nursery and Landscaping, said she rarely plants lawns made entirely of water-hungry grasses anymore.

“I try to incorporate as many drought-tolerant ground covers and use turf grass in a very limited way,” she said. “That came solely from the drought and has remained with me.”

But, she said, consumers rarely ask for fully drought-tolerant landscaping any more.

“People ask for drought tolerant, but their primary concern is that it’s beautiful,” Young said. “People still want their roses.”

At the Home Depot store in Playa Del Rey, for instance, where the parking lot was full even on a weekday morning, Jill Sperling’s cart was filled with gorgeous flowering plants. But her choice of three types of bougainvillea--a flowering vine and tall lilies to go next to the soft grassy lawn at her new home in the city’s Miracle Mile district--were a conservationist’s nightmare.

Saving water? “I’ve just never really thought about it,” Sperling said.

Indeed, much of the region’s conservation has come about somewhat unintentionally, experts said, through the use of low-flow plumbing.

“People are not so concerned about saving water,” said Eddie Edwards, owner of the Drain Surgeon plumbing company in Van Nuys. “We don’t get a lot of calls from people saying, ‘What can we do to conserve water?’ ”

The big exception has been low-flow fixtures. Most water agencies offer rebates for low-flow toilets, and some community groups have made a bundle for pet projects by distributing them. A church group in Reseda, for instance, raised $227,000 by handing out 9,100 of the frugal flushers.

The MWD estimates there are now about 1 million low-flow fixtures in use in Southern California, saving about 3 1/2 gallons per flush, and 14.3 billion gallons per year. That’s enough, MWD spokesman Hallwachs said, to serve 88,000 families of four in single-family residences for a year. It’s even enough to water their lawns.

David Whitney, plumbing manager at Home Depot in Playa Del Rey, said another way to save water would be to install a pump to recirculate hot water from the tap to the heater, eliminating the need to let it run to heat up.

Low-flow faucets are also on the market now.

Outside the house, plastic swimming pool covers have become popular among owners concerned about evaporation, which in the typical 18-by-36-foot backyard pool can mean a loss of 20,000 gallons a year, said Allen Fogle, manager of Leslie’s Swimming Pool Supplies in Chatsworth.

Fogle said sales of such covers have increased since the drought to about 20 per month at his small retail store.

Added together, these large and small innovations have saved enough water to accommodate some of the increases in water use from what native-plant specialist Steve Dreher calls “the return of the banana tree.”

With the drought behind us, Dreher said, there is renewed interest in water-loving tropical plants, which symbolize to some the image of Los Angeles as a lush paradise.

Dreher, who manages the native plant nursery at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sunland, said he encourages consumers to compromise, and plant water-hungry plants in a small, decorative area near the house.

“As you go farther away from the house,” Dreher said, “the landscape should be more and more drought tolerant.”

Such a balancing act between wet and dry appears to be on the minds of many homeowners as they waver between that thirsty banana tree and a nice dry dusty sage. It’s OK for the back hillside to look like the lone prairie, these consumers say, but not the front lawn.

“My backyard is all drought resistant,” insisted Chatsworth resident Eric Sandifer.

The front, he said, as he loaded water-loving roses into his pickup, is a different matter.

“I think it’s worth it to pay a little bit for water,” Sandifer said. “We have some neighbors who don’t water their front lawns and it looks awful.”

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Fluctuating Water Use

Water use in Los Angeles has increased since 1991, when water was rationed to combat drought, but remains below its peak in 1989.

Los Angles DWP Yearly Water Use (in acre-feet):

1977: 505,827

1995: 628,000

* Source: Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power