Faring Well in Dry Spell

By STEVE HYMON

Sept. 22, 2002 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Long chided by politicians and environmentalists for its water-hogging ways, Southern California is withstanding the current drought better than many other Western cities--partly because people are using less water for everyday tasks.

Though a four-year dry spell has severely shrunk Denver’s once-grand reservoirs and so parched Santa Fe, N.M., that the City Council is debating a prohibition on new development, things here are comparatively rosy.

The last so-called rainy season in Los Angeles was the driest on record. California’s snowpacks--the source of most of the state’s water--were below average for the third straight year. Yet, with few exceptions, residents can use as much water as they please to soak their lawns, wash their cars and hose down anything else in need of a drenching.

Southern California has doubled its water storage capacity in the last decade. Served by a massive plumbing system of vast reservoirs and hundreds of miles of aqueducts, the region is probably two years away from any water rationing even if the current dry spell persists, water officials said.

Whereas most cities have one or two sources of water, Southern California taps local aquifers and three distant locales--the rivers of the San Francisco Bay Delta, the Eastern Sierra and the Colorado River. That water is stored in reservoirs capable of holding four years’ worth of water for the region.

And in the past 30 years, per capita water use in Southern California residences and businesses has dropped steadily. Although Los Angeles has grown by more than 1 million people since 1970, the city still uses the same amount of water as it did then.

According to numbers compiled by the American Water Works Assn., the average resident of Los Angeles uses 140 gallons of water a day. By contrast, Phoenix residents use 184 gallons per day, Denver 228, Salt Lake City 284 and Las Vegas 307.

Near Las Vegas, Lake Mead’s level is 73 feet below capacity, and the Southern Nevada Water Authority is going to toughen its drought restrictions this fall.

Santa Fe, meanwhile, is experiencing the worst drought in the city’s history. “The cupboards are bare,” said Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez after a judge ordered the city to leave water in the Rio Grande for an endangered minnow.

In Colorado, the primary reservoirs serving Denver were 99% filled two years ago. The system is now 52% filled, the lowest it has ever been. In the spring, the area’s water situation went from good to bad to worse in a matter of weeks.

Bad to Worse in Denver

First, a low snowpack in the Rockies produced only a trickle. At the same time, the weather turned warm prematurely, and Denver residents began watering their Kentucky bluegrass lawns two months earlier than usual. Then the largest wildfire in Colorado’s history sent tons of sediment into one of the city’s primary reservoirs, rendering much of its water unusable.

“Denver Water had done such a good job for 80-plus years of providing adequate water at a reasonable price, and there was not ... a compelling reason before this for people to cut back,” said Liz Gardener, manager of the Denver Water Department’s conservation program. “At first it just seemed like another dry year.”

All outdoor watering in Denver will be curtailed as of Tuesday. Things have become so bad that an ad campaign by the Water Department earlier this year implored citizens to wash “only the stinky parts.”

Californians have faced worse, just not recently. Adan Ortega, vice president of external affairs for the Metropolitan Water District, said it is unlikely the region will suffer like Denver anytime soon. That, Ortega said, “is because of forethought and planning.”

In the last 20 years, both of the region’s largest water providers--the MWD and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power--have steadily pushed residents and businesses to install an array of water-saving gadgets. Even those who criticize Southern California for its sprawl and siphoning of water from distant places concede that the two agencies are pioneers in getting customers to conserve and offering them ways to do so.

Flush With Success

The MWD is about to pay its 2-millionth rebate for the installation of an ultra-low-flow toilet, a program the agency credits with saving at least 18 billion gallons of water since the late 1980s. Denver dropped a similar program in the mid-’90s because officials said it wasn’t cost-effective.

The DWP and MWD have asked customers to use low-flow shower heads, and they offer rebates for efficient washing machines; the MWD is even trying to lure businesses to invest in “water brooms” that people can use to conserve water while cleaning sidewalks. The region leads the nation in recycling water for outdoor use--about 68 billion gallons in the 2001-02 fiscal year.

Richard Berk, a professor of statistics and sociology at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment, co-wrote a study in the 1990s that found people in Los Angeles were more likely than San Francisco residents to own water-efficient devices and to be more water conscious.

“To my great surprise, we stacked up as well, if not better, than the Bay Area,” Berk said. “I expected the opposite--we’d be the bad guys, and they’d be wonderfully green.”

Jerry Gewe, the DWP’s assistant general manager for water, said conservation has given Los Angeles the ability to better withstand hits to its water supply. He said that in recent years the city has lost a third of the water it once took from the Owens Valley because of environmental commitments.

“The reason we’ve been able to weather that without the public having to pay much attention to it is because of conservation,” Gewe said.

Hoping to make more gains, the MWD’s next big push is to persuade customers to use drought-resistant native plants in their yards. Part of that campaign, which officials say they will roll out in coming months, will ask residents to stop over-watering lawns and gardens, which Ortega said consumes enough water to supply the city of San Diego for a year.

“They’ve never told people what to plant in their yard before at MWD,” said Mary Ann Dickinson, the executive director of the California Urban Water Conservation Council. “This is a big, bold step for them.... They’re saying let’s try something we haven’t tried before.”

Some experts nevertheless question whether the MWD and DWP are doing enough to persuade their customers to save water. They say the area must prepare for the inevitable prolonged drought and the eventual loss, due to a federal agreement signed in 2001, of vast amounts of surplus water that Southern California has for decades been taking from the Colorado River.

‘A Lot of Work Ahead’

“We have a lot of work ahead of us to change the behavior of users here,” said Malissa Hathaway McKeith, a Los Angeles attorney who served on the Colorado River Board of California for five years. “The Colorado River surplus is like a Band-Aid someone is going to pull off.”

Some, such as McKeith and Berk, argue that the MWD and DWP focus too much on water-saving devices instead of pressuring people to adopt less wasteful habits. Many environmental groups believe the average household could easily cut usage by 10% each year if people simply paid more attention to how long they run the water.

Agencies contend that because changing people’s habits is difficult, it’s best to not ask for the big sacrifices until absolutely necessary. And, there are those who contend that Southern California has been the lucky beneficiary of a number of extraordinarily wet years in the late 20th century that allowed the region to keep growing. The late Marc Reisner, who wrote the book “Cadillac Desert,” contended that farmers and urban areas were living on borrowed time if they didn’t rein in their prolific use of water.

Patricia Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, is not a doomsayer but sees lots of room for improvement in Las Vegas and in Southern California--both of which rose from desert. To her, the real issue is sustainability.

“There is this raw human will that has developed in the West to overcome natural conditions,” she said. “We think we can build our way out of anything, but as we keep growing, we’re going to run up against a wall.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

The average gallons of water used per person per day in each Western city.

Seattle -- 103

San Francisco -- 106

Tucson -- 135

El Paso -- 136

Portland -- 137

Los Angeles -- 140

San Diego -- 150

Santa Cruz -- 155

Boulder, CO -- 157