MWD Considers Rolling Back Cuts : Rationing: March rains have increased the amount of water available to the district, officials say. If approved, deliveries would be reduced by 31% instead of 50%.

Citing “substantial improvements” in water supplies during the last month, the Metropolitan Water District staff is recommending the giant agency roll back its planned cuts in deliveries this year from 50% to 31%.

In a letter to the Board of Directors, MWD General Manager Carl Boronkay said he estimates that the heavy rains of March, alone, have increased the amount of water available to the district by 300,000 acre feet--enough to serve 600,000 families for a year.

Boronkay said he was seeking to scale back cuts as quickly as possible to maintain public credibility.

“The public knows it has rained, and they expect this,” he said.

The MWD supplies about 60% of all the water consumed in a six-county region of Southern California. It serves more than 15 million people in 300 communities from Ventura to the Mexican border.

The possibility of reduced restrictions has already prompted Thousand Oaks in Ventura County to postpone plans to step up its conservation program until after MWD’s final decision.

If approved, the rollback could quickly be felt by consumers.

In Ventura County, city and water district officials said they would pass along the roll-backs in restrictions, just as they have passed along the deepening cuts.

“Everyone will be happy with that,” said Michael Kleinbrodt, deputy director of public works for Simi Valley. “This doesn’t end conservation,” he said, “but it’s an indication that there is a little more water available.”

Or as Boronkay said, a 31% cut “is still pretty damn significant.”

Less than one month ago, a bitterly divided MWD board held an emergency meeting to consider the drastic 50% cut. After a contentious four-hour session that pitted urban areas against suburban and rural districts, the cutback was adopted 50.7% to 49.3%--one of the closest votes in MWD history.

If the rollback is approved, Boronkay said he will also recommend scaling back from 24% to 16% a rate increase that was scheduled to go into effect this summer.

The additional amount of runoff water anticipated from the March storms “is approximate to the reductions that caused us to go to (50%) cuts” initially, the MWD general manager said.

Boronkay’s latest estimates are based on extraordinary precipitation in areas that feed into the State Water Project and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s aqueduct system in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

Record-setting precipitation in the Eastern Sierra and Owens Valley has left snowpack exceeding normal levels at several reporting stations monitored by the Department of Water and Power.

Snowpack for March was 300% of normal at Mammoth Pass and 560% of normal at Cottonwood Lakes--marking the wettest March in at least 20 years, the DWP reported.

Boronkay also said in his letter to the MWD board that the agency has been notified by the Interior Department that it will receive more than its normal share of water from the Colorado River.

Despite the plentiful rain and snowfall of the last month, some water officials said the MWD’s move may be premature.

“Right now we don’t know how much (water) we’re going to get” from the recent rains, said DWP spokesman Ed Freudenberg.

If Los Angeles gets more water than expected from its private sources in the Eastern Sierra, it could require less from the MWD. That would free additional supplies for the MWD’s 26 other member agencies, Boronkay said in an interview Wednesday.

But Freudenberg said, “It’s premature to say how much we’ll need from the MWD.”

The DWP is scheduled to take a key reading of the Sierra snowpack today and the complete results will not be known until next week, Freudenberg said.

State water officials have cautioned that it must also complete its end-of-the-season snowpack survey before making any decisions on increasing deliveries.

Boronkay said he has been assured by state officials that they will tell him by Friday just how much water the MWD can expect. Initially, the state was planning to cut deliveries to the MWD by 90%, from 1.7 million acre feet to only 170,000 acre feet.

The additional water supplies may save many Southland orchards.

Under the MWD’s existing plan, water supplies to agricultural interests were to be cut 90% and municipal users 30%--for an overall 50% cut.

Under the staff-recommended rollback, agricultural supplies would be cut 50%, and municipal users 20% for an overall 31% reduction.

The Camrosa Water District, east of Camarillo in Ventura County, hopes to be able to increase water allotments to the 200 growers it serves, said General Manager Gina Manchester.

“We’d like to get them some relief,” she said.

Times staff writer Joanna M. Miller in Ventura County contributed to this story.