[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Items for 1/22/08

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

January 22, 2008

 

1.  Top Items

 

Drought plan opens rifts over fairness; Foes say the Metropolitan Water District proposal slights small, older cities with less clout. Backers say it spreads the pain - Los Angeles Times

 

Emergency water plan close to approval; Leaders look for fair way to divvy up water in shortage - North County Times

 

 

Drought plan opens rifts over fairness; Foes say the Metropolitan Water District proposal slights small, older cities with less clout. Backers say it spreads the pain

Los Angeles Times – 1/20/08

By Deborah Schoch, staff writer

 

With a key vote just weeks away, cities and water agencies across the region are scrambling to figure out the ramifications of a first-ever shortage allocation plan that would govern water deliveries to communities stretching from the Santa Monica Mountains to the Inland Empire and south to the Mexican border.

Deep rifts are developing among some of the 26 member agencies of the Metropolitan Water District over allotments under the plan, which will kick in if current water shortages necessitate rationing, possibly as early as spring.

The MWD imports water from Northern California and the Colorado River and sells it to its member agencies to supplement local supplies, such as groundwater.

Some critics say the plan, devised by MWD staff, heavily favors Los Angeles and growing communities while penalizing smaller, less affluent, built-out cities with less clout. Some worry that steep penalties could drive up water bills at a time when the MWD already says it will probably have to raise rates 20% to 30% by 2011.

Under the plan's complex formula, more water would flow to cities and agencies that depend heavily on MWD water as well as those that abruptly lose local supplies, are in growing areas or have installed certain water-conserving devices such as low-flow toilets.

Los Angeles would benefit from the "loss of local supply" feature if a drought sharply reduced the water it imports from the Eastern Sierra through the Los Angeles Aqueduct. San Diego, which gets most of its water from the MWD, would also receive assistance, since it has virtually no groundwater.

The formula would be the first of its kind adopted by the MWD, which cut supplies across the board in the droughts of the late 1970s and early '90s.

The plan drew criticism almost as soon as it was unveiled. More than 80 officials from cities along the 710 and 605 freeway corridors crowded into a Commerce meeting room Jan. 9. Some attacked the plan as disproportionately hurting lower-income, largely minority communities. Cerritos, Downey, Norwalk, Paramount and other cities have written letters asking for more time to study the proposal.

Kevin Wattier, the Long Beach Water Department general manager, said Friday that his agency may sue to block the plan if the MWD board approves it as expected Feb. 12. He believes that the proposal fails to account for how the sheer size of Los Angeles' water consumption could severely squeeze smaller cities' supplies in a major drought.

Last year, for example, low flows in its aqueduct from the Sierra forced the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which supplies water to city residents, to buy 253,000 acre-feet more water from the MWD than it had the previous year.

Los Angeles, Pasadena and several other cities in the region have voiced support for the proposal, calling it a significant move toward equity in a region of cities with vastly different water supplies and needs.

Cities that back the plan say it will "spread the pain" of a shortage.

"We realize if we're all going to go into our corners and fight for our little issue, we're not going to get a solution," said Shan Kwan, director of the Pasadena water services division. "Everyone is going to have to make some sacrifice, some compromise, to make this work for the region."

MWD General Manager Jeff Kightlinger said the proposal gives communities time to plan for possible cuts.

"Once people get past complaining or looking at what they may or may not be cut, they'll say, 'OK, I can start planning,' " Kightlinger said. "That's the goal here, to give people information so that they can go out and do what they can locally."

Others call the plan anything but fair.

"We think it favors big users, like L.A. and San Diego. It subsidizes agricultural water when we are going to be paying very high prices. We're concerned for our ratepayers," said Vince Brar, senior assistant city manager for Cerritos.

"It certainly favors the newer areas over the more established ones," said Jim Glancy, director of water resources for Lakewood.

Peter E. Rodriguez of the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District, which delivers water to communities from South Pasadena to Covina, offered this scenario: "Suddenly, the need based on growth is higher in the Inland Empire -- and suddenly, that means that in some older communities, the water allocation is reduced. That could mean higher rates, higher penalties."

Some older cities are disturbed by what they see as the loss of their preferential rights. Those rights favor the first members of the MWD, which was created in 1928 when local cities banded together to finance the construction of the Colorado River Aqueduct. In return, those cities, including Los Angeles, Pasadena, Compton and Long Beach, were to be first in line in times of shortage.

The new formula would not give the same preferential rights to early MWD members during years of water shortages.

That angers Long Beach water officials, who say their customers will pay more as a result.

Their counterparts in Los Angeles have a different take.

"We're happy with the formula, even though on paper it would look better for Los Angeles with preferential rights," said James McDaniel, chief operating officer for water at the DWP. "We feel you'd have a real disconnect if you went down that road. There would be a lot of inequity among the systems."

Others say lower-income residents would fare poorly under the plan. Those consumers are already "paying very high rates and conserving the most that they can," said Miriam Torres of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water.

Residents in low-income areas may live in homes with older, inefficient appliances that neither they nor their water district can afford to replace, said Heather Cooley, senior research associate at the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Oakland.

"I would urge the Metropolitan Water District to consider providing additional funding for water conservation to these communities so that they can meet the water allocation budget," Cooley wrote in an e-mail.

Even if the plan is approved next month, MWD officials say they may not have to use the allocation this year, or at all. That depends on a number of variables: how much snow falls in the Sierra, how much longer an eight-year drought continues in the Colorado River Basin and how a federal judge rules in a case brought by environmental groups to protect Central Valley salmon.

Critics said that barring an upset, they expect the plan to win approval. The chairwoman of the key committee that will review it Feb. 11 is Nancy Sutley, Los Angeles' deputy mayor for energy and the environment, and the vice chairman is Jim Barrett, director of the San Diego Water Department.

Representation on the 37-member board is determined not by population, but by the assessed property valuations of specific member cities and agencies.

Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County each have four votes, and the Central Basin Municipal Water District, which covers many of the southeast L.A. County cities concerned about the plan, has two. Most other cities and agencies each have one. Then, each vote is weighted according to valuation. #

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-water20jan20,0,5292421,full.story?coll=la-home-center

 

 

Emergency water plan close to approval; Leaders look for fair way to divvy up water in shortage

North County Times – 1/20/08

By Gig Conaughton, staff writer

 

Regional water leaders are poised to approve a new emergency water plan in February that San Diego County officials say would divvy water up more fairly than during the state's last big drought in 1991.

County water leaders have long said that local residents and businesses were hit with harsher water cuts than other Southern California communities because equal "across-the-board" cuts actually affected communities unequally.

 

Longtime San Diego County Water Authority board member Mark Watton said the agency's normally-quiet board room was a madhouse at the drought's peak in 1991, as directors issued 30 percent ---- then 50 percent ---- water cuts.

 

"It was standing room only; we had security guards to keep the crowds out of the street," he said. "People were crying and screaming. Businesses were going down in flames. It was horrible."

With a new water crisis looming, many regional officials think the plan that board members of Southern California's main water supplier ---- the region's main water provider ---- will consider in February is more fair.

There are critics who say the plan would rob water from older, established communities and give it to others whose populations are still growing.

But Metropolitan officials say the plan is designed to be fair to retail water consumers ---- homeowners and businesses ---- in the six counties it serves.

"The hallmark of this plan is to try to create something that is as equitable as possible to our 18 million customers," Metropolitan General Manager Jeff Kightlinger said last week.

If the plan is approved in February, it could actually be used this year.

This year, Southern California is facing a possible a 30 percent cut to its imported water supplies from Northern California because a judge ruled in August that the pumps delivering the water must be cut back to protect an endangered fish, the delta smelt.

When water is short

The new plan is built around a complicated formula that would calculate how much each of Metropolitan's 26 member cities and water agencies would get if Metropolitan had to cut its supplies.

The calculation balances the "base demand" of the agencies and their customers ---- what they've bought from Metropolitan over a recent three-year period ---- against other factors. How much does each agency rely upon Metropolitan for their total water supplies? What have agencies done to conserve water? How much have their populations increased?

The plan would also punish water agencies that can't live within their water means.

It includes big financial penalties for water agencies that want to buy more water than they're allocated.

If an agency uses up to 10 percent more than its allocation, Metropolitan more than doubles the price of its water.

If they surpass the 10 percent figure, the prices shoots up to more than five times Metropolitan's highest rate.

Use more than 10 percent, and the price goes up more than five times Metropolitan's highest rate.

If approved and heeded, the plan would mark a huge departure from how Metropolitan administered water cutbacks in 1991.

At that time, the agency essentially implemented across-the-board percentage cuts. The idea was to spread cuts evenly.

Was it fair then?

But some officials, most vocally those from San Diego County, said across-the-board cuts were extremely unfair ---- because some agencies and cities depended more heavily upon Metropolitan than others for their water supplies.

The example San Diego leaders used most often to illustrate that point was the city of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles built its own aqueduct to Owens Valley early in the 20th century, creating a pipeline that delivers half of the city's water supplies every year. In addition, the city also has significant groundwater supplies.

Consequently, Los Angeles only buys about 34 percent of its water each year from Metropolitan.

In sharp contrast, San Diego County, which has few reservoirs and doesn't have the kind of porous rock needed to store water underground, buys 73 percent of all the water county residents use from Metropolitan. That reliance was even more extreme in 1991, when San Diego County got nearly 90 percent of its water from Metropolitan.

Metropolitan's across-the-board cuts meant that San Diego lost more of its overall water supply than Los Angeles, Water Authority officials say.

"They were on a 15 percent (overall supply) cut and we were going to 30 percent," Watton said.

The new plan evens out that disparity, though some argue it would create new ones.

If Metropolitan's water supplies decreased by 10 percent, no agency would get more than a 15 percent cut in what they could buy from Metropolitan. Some would get more water than others ---- again, depending on how much they rely upon Metropolitan for their total water supplies.

San Diego residents, through the Water Authority, would get about a 14 percent cut from Metropolitan. Los Angeles would get about a 9 percent cut.

Since 1991, the San Diego County Water Authority has reduced its reliance on Metropolitan. In 2003, after eight years of negotiations, the Water Authority reached a historic deal to buy billions of gallons of water a year from Imperial Valley farmers for the next 45 years to 75 years.

Will it be more fair now?

The new plan has its opponents.

Art Aguilar is general manager of the Central Basin Municipal Water District east of Los Angeles and north of Long Beach, which serves cities including Downey, Bell Gardens, Carson and Pico Rivera.

Aguilar says the new plan would steal water from built out and poorer communities, and unfairly give it to prosperous areas such as San Diego County, with still-growing populations.

"Straight across-the-board cuts are the only fair way," Aguilar said. "Then the people who use the most are going to have to find alternative sources."

Nonetheless, Aguilar said he thinks Metropolitan board members will approve the plan.

San Diego regional water leaders say the new plan is not just better for local residents, but more fair for all.

"I think it is the best, well-thought-out allocation plan I've seen in some time," said Jim Bond, Encinitas councilman that city's representative on the Water Authority board for years.

"There are some issues," he said. "Naturally, you can't have 26 agencies come together and not have some saying 'I'm not getting my share.' But this is probably as evenhanded and equitable as any I've seen." #

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/01/21/news/top_stories/22_04_401_20_08.txt

####