Drought plan likely to pass despite strong objections

A controversial Southern California drought plan that has divided area cities is expected to win approval today from the Metropolitan Water District board, with strong backing from Los Angeles and San Diego.

The allocation plan, a guide for divvying up water among 26 cities and districts during a severe shortage, won unanimous approval Monday from a key MWD panel. The full board will take up the plan at noon today, although recent rains may forestall its use this year.

An array of smaller southeastern Los Angeles County cities lambasted the plan, saying that it unfairly gives more water to large cities and growing inland communities while leaving lower-income urban residents with less water and expensive penalties for exceeding allotments. Some critics, including Long Beach, have hinted that they may challenge the plan in court.

“It’s about money. It’s going to cost our city additional funds and our water users additional funds,” Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster said Monday. “We calculated the penalty as $10 million to $15 million a year. That for us would be a one-time rate increase of 22%, on top of any MWD rate increase.”

The board received letters in recent days from Commerce, Huntington Park, Norwalk, , Santa Fe Springs and South Gate, as well as from four state legislators, asking that the vote be delayed.

But the plan was passed by 13 board members representing Los Angeles, San Diego, Torrance, San Marino and other cities and the Municipal Water District of Orange County.

Supporters said it spreads the pain of a water shortage more equitably than the across-the-board cuts that MWD used during the droughts of the late 1970s and the early 1990s.

“This plan is the most fair and equitable option I have seen for dealing with a possible water shortage,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement.

“It protects ratepayers across the board and builds on Southern California’s history of cooperation, while encouraging people to conserve water and save money.”

Its approval is expected today because of the MWD’s complex, weighted voting system based on property valuation. The system gives Los Angeles 37,539 votes, San Diego 36,606 and the Orange County district 33,589. All three have voiced support for the plan. Critics, mainly smaller cities, represent fewer than 15,000 votes together.

MWD is a public agency that imports water from the Colorado River and Northern California, selling it to member water agencies that serve 18 million people in six counties.

The eight-year drought in the Colorado River Basin, reduced Sierra Nevada snowpack and a judicial order limiting water deliveries from the north prompted the MWD to draw up the plan.

It would be the first drought plan adopted by the Metropolitan Water District since its 13 founding cities came together in 1928 to fund the building of the Colorado River Aqueduct that ignited Southern California development.

The state law creating the MWD gave “preferential rights” to its first member agencies, including Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Compton, since they financed the aqueduct.

Some cities said the plan ignores their preferential rights because it benefits newer cities. Older communities such as Long Beach will receive less water and be more likely to charged higher rates, critics said. The new formula would aid cities heavily dependent on MWD water, such as San Diego.

It is also designed to protect cities that suffer an unexpected loss in local supplies. That helps Los Angeles, which gets roughly half its water from the Eastern Sierra through its own aqueduct. Record dry weather in 2007 sharply reduced aqueduct water, forcing the city to buy 70% of its water from MWD, and, in turn, squeezing supplies to other cities.

Opponents claim that the agency is moving hastily, and has not responded to requests for more analysis.

Several state legislators, including Assemblyman Hector de la Torre (D-South Gate) and Sens. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) and Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), wrote to request a 60-day delay. But MWD staff and several board members said they wanted to have a plan in place well before it was needed.

“This is the right time to do this,” said Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Nancy Sutley, who chairs the board committee that met Monday.

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deborah.schoch@latimes.com