Water Supplies Cut 31% by MWD to Agencies : Drought: Local communities must determine how to cope with cutbacks. Rationing lies ahead for many areas.

Faced with record low rainfall and no prospects for relief, the Metropolitan Water District declared a water emergency Tuesday and imposed a 31% cut in the amount of water it delivers to 27 agencies in Southern California, including those in Orange County.

The 46-1 vote by the MWD’s board of directors--a move widely dreaded but not unexpected--marked the most severe water cutback in the giant agency’s history and signaled the increasing severity of the drought, now in its fifth year.

While conceding that the nearly one-third cut is dramatic and could prompt mandatory water rationing in many areas, MWD officials warned that harsher reductions may lie ahead for Southern California if dry conditions persist.

“This is more than has ever been asked of people in Southern California,” said Robert Dixon, utilities director for Newport Beach, which gets all of its water from MWD. “It’s very, very difficult to achieve. . . . And this isn’t going to go away this year. It will take two good years to fill up the reservoirs.”

The board also agreed to allocate $30 million from the MWD’s reserve fund to buy water from other sources around the state. Rice farmers in the Sacramento area may be willing to take some land out of production this year and sell their water to thirsty cities.

Realizing that public awareness of the drought is vital to the success of conservation programs, the board allocated $3.5 million for an advertising campaign. It agreed to provide its member agencies with $5 million to implement programs urging residents to install water-saving shower heads and other devices.

To achieve the 31% reduction, the MWD will cut deliveries for residential usage by 20% and those for agriculture by 50%. Water agencies will have the discretion to allocate their share as they wish. Some areas with economies that are heavily dependent on agriculture may choose to impose an evenly divided cut on farmers and residential customers.

The board’s vote spurred a chorus of groans from representatives of agencies in six Southern California counties that are supplied by the MWD. Many officials predicted that coping with the cutback, which takes effect March 1, would be a hardship certain to change lives and put a strain on agriculture and other businesses.

“This is a terrible situation,” said City Councilman Carrey Nelson of Brea, which gets 80% of its water from the MWD. “It’s time to start praying.”

The cutbacks in supply have gotten so severe that most local officials and water managers in Orange County, where half of the water comes from MWD, realize that voluntary measures won’t be enough.

The cities of La Habra, Santa Ana and Anaheim have already imposed mandatory rationing on residents and businesses, including bans on wash-downs of driveways and limits on when landscaping can be watered and swimming pools can be filled. Many of the county’s other cities and water districts have been standing by with similar mandatory rationing plans, hoping they won’t have to resort to using them, while many have begun penalizing customers who refuse to cut back by doubling their water rates.

“We better be squirreling away every bit of conservation we can right now, because it’s going to be even more difficult to do it come this summer, when demand peaks,” said Stan Sprague, general manager of the Municipal Water District of Orange County. “We have to get the habits going now.”

Orange County water managers said it will mean lifestyle changes. Eliminating 20% for a household amounts to about 80 gallons daily--”a load of dishes and a shower or a good portion of irrigation,” Dixon said.

Newport Beach already is making households that consume more than 90% of the monthly average they used last year pay double for the extra water. Now the city will strengthen that to 80% by April 1 and will probably invoke rationing rules on outdoor uses.

In affluent areas such as Newport Beach, such price hikes may be a drop in the bucket. But water managers are hoping there will be peer pressure.

“It’s going to have to be the socially acceptable thing not to have a green lawn,” Dixon said. “It’s like fur coats in New York City. Maybe people can afford them, but it’s not considered the socially proper thing to do.

“The people of Southern California are going to have to manage this shortage themselves. We’ll have certain rules in each city, but they still have to save. And that means changing lifestyles.”

In the Irvine area, households are asked to use no more than 26,180 gallons per month or about 900 gallons per day. Anyone who uses more than that will have to pay double the rate.

“We’re going after the high users with the pricing,” said Joyce Gwidt of Irvine Ranch Water District, which also has started sending “auditors” to households to point out water waste when residents request help.

Talk of growth limits came up in San Diego. At the suggestion of Supervisor Susan Golding, the board agreed to convene a meeting of water suppliers and building industry officials to forge a regional water-saving strategy that might include caps on development.

Officials in some cities, such as Brea, remained hopeful that voluntary conservation measures would be sufficient to achieve the savings. Many others, such as in Los Angeles, are expected to quickly develop plans for mandatory water rationing, something uncommon in the Southland since the last drought, in 1977.

The MWD supplies 27 agencies in Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties. Drawing primarily from the State Water Project and Colorado River, the agency provides more than half the water used by 15 million Southern Californians.

Although the cuts become effective March 1, the board delayed until April 1 implementation of the penalty phase. As an incentive to conserve, agencies will be charged triple the cost of any water used in excess of their limits. A 50% rebate will be available for agencies that use less then their allotments, but MWD officials do not expect to be writing many checks.

“In some areas, this is going to be a very tough adjustment to make,” said MWD spokesman Tim Skrove. “Some people won’t get there without sacrificing part or all of their lawns.”

Only one board member, director Michael Nolan from Burbank, opposed the cutback. Nolan said he believed that the district should eliminate deliveries to agriculture before making residents suffer through conservation.

“It’s not fair,” Nolan said in an interview. “This is unfair punishment to the people of Southern California.”

Although the nearly one-third reduction is certain to pinch scores of communities, Boronkay warned that the pain could easily increase. If abnormally low rainfall continues, cuts of 38% or 45% may be necessary, and MWD officials are drafting plans for such reductions, he said.

In the meantime, MWD resources director Don Adams said officials are “brainstorming regularly,” searching for ways to develop additional water sources to help see the Southland through this crisis.

One possibility, Adams said, focuses on the numerous ground-water basins that underlie portions of Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties. Normally, between 1 million and 1.4 million acre-feet of water are pulled from Southern California basins each year, Adams said.

A drawback to that plan is that many basins are depleted by five years of drought. A second problem is that contamination has degraded portions of the basins, particularly in the San Gabriel Valley and the San Bernardino area.

The northern half of Orange County, for instance, is considered more drought-resistant than most of Southern California because of its huge ground-water basin. But rationing is expected now even there.

“The issue is bigger now than do you have a basin or don’t you,” Sprague said. “The more we draw on that basin now, the more we have to replace it later. We have a major water shortage in all of California.”

Times staff writer Shawn Hubler reported from Riverside, Marla Cone from Orange County, Joanna M. Miller from Ventura and Amy Wallace and Mark Platte from San Diego.