REGION: Paying more for less

Drought-induced conservation could trigger higher water rates

By DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer | Saturday, June 21, 2008 5:10 PM PDT ∞

If a whole lot of people do their civic duty and slash their water consumption this summer, they soon could find themselves paying more for using less.

"That's the dichotomy of this thing," said Bill Rucker, general manager of the Vallecitos Water District, which provides water to more than 20,000 homes and businesses in San Marcos, Vista and Escondido.

"If they cut back 30 percent, you've just lost 30 percent of your variable income," Rucker said. "The bottom line is, you're going to pay more for less."

Customers clearly are not happy at the specter of increased prices.

Just the thought of paying more for less makes Martha Westman angry.

"It's a total rip-off," said the 60-year-old film makeup artist who lives in Temecula.

Still, Westman said she wouldn't stop conserving even if it meant paying more later. She said that is because conservation is a lifestyle for her.

"I'm from the old country ---- I'm from South America," she said. "There, you learn to conserve everything."

Westman runs her dishwasher only on Thanksgiving and Christmas ---- "when I have a huge amount of guests" ---- and dries her clothes on a line. And more recently, she installed a drip irrigation system to water the sweet-scented jasmine flowers and shrubs that grace her front patio.

The region's water suppliers are scrambling to get people to conserve because a string of dry years has sapped Southern California's two major water sources.

"We've lost 40 percent of our Colorado River supplies over the last five years," said Jeff Kightlinger, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, the region's primary water supplier.

Likewise, there is less water available from Northern California. And a court-ordered restriction on pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that aims to save an imperiled fish has further reduced the amount that is shipped south.

"We're under siege in all of our systems," Kightlinger said.

Consequently, officials say they are hoping to avoid cutting deeply into dwindling regional reserves this summer.

20-20 hindsight

Residents of San Diego and Riverside counties need not look back far in history to get a glimpse of what a future paying-more-for-less scenario might look like.

During the last major drought, Metropolitan Water District pleaded with customers to voluntarily conserve ---- as it is doing now ---- then rationed the imported water it delivers to millions of people in six counties stretching from San Diego to Ventura.

As a result, consumption plunged 30 percent in 1991, Kightlinger said, and Metropolitan's revenue from water sales dropped by a similar amount. He said the agency responded almost immediately by raising water rates 18 percent to make up for the lost cash.

A similar rate hike may be lurking around the corner. But this time Kightlinger said Metropolitan probably won't raise rates so quickly, if at all.

If rationing were to be required next year, it likely would be 2011 before rates would be raised to compensate for falling water-sale revenue, Kightlinger said. Unlike in 1991, he said, the giant wholesaler now has a big cash reserve that can absorb a short-term decline in revenue.

Metropolitan also has large water reserves in reservoirs such as Diamond Valley Lake near Temecula that it didn't have during the last go-round.

"We're not completely ration-proof. We're not completely rate-shock proof," Kightlinger said. "But we have given ourselves a lot of flexibility so that we can ease into either situation."

The rates Metropolitan sets are charged to cities and water districts who in turn sell to homeowners and farmers. Those smaller agencies typically pass on rate hikes to their customers.

Still, Peter Moote, assistant director of administrative services for one of those local providers, the city of Poway, said it would take a significant reduction in water use ---- on the order of 15 percent or more ---- to trigger the need for a conservation-driven rate hike.

Already hit by rate hikes

The conservation twist of 1991 came near the end of a six-year dry period that ended with the dramatic "March miracle," a particularly wet month that busted the drought and overnight erased the need for Draconian conservation measures.

Fundamentally, a drought refers to an extended period of below-normal rainfall. But water officials tend to define it in a broader sense, taking into account the amount in reservoirs.

It was the combination of low rain and snow totals this year, and declining reservoir storage, that prompted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a statewide drought earlier this month.

While conservation-driven rate hikes have yet to occur, this latest drought already is having an impact on consumers' pocketbooks.

Metropolitan plans to hike rates 14.3 percent in January, and another 20 percent over the two following years, to upgrade equipment and buy farm water.

And the San Diego County Water Authority, which distributes Metropolitan water to San Diego-area cities and districts, is going to raise its rates 11.9 percent at the first of the year.

John Liarakos, a spokesman for the county water authority, said a significant chunk of the increase will go for buying 30,000 acre-feet of water from Northern California farmers and storing it in the ground for emergency use ---- possibly as early as 2009, if rationing is ordered.

The water will be stored in the ground just south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where its use won't be affected by the delta pumping restrictions, he said.

The authority, area cities and Metropolitan have been teaming up on a media blitz to persuade area residents to cut back, particularly when it comes to the lawn and garden sprinkling that accounts for more than half of all consumption around the house.

Water agencies throughout the region are asking for a voluntary 10 percent cutback in water use this summer to ease the pain of the drought.

But Ken Weinberg, water resources director for the authority, said that target won't be easy to hit because a drought means drier and hotter weather, and people tend to want to water plants more in such times, not less.

And Rucker, of the Vallecitos district, said conditions are vastly different from the last drought.

"In those days, we had a lot of soft demand," Rucker said. "When we called for 10 percent conservation, we got 20 percent."

But now, after widespread conversion to low-flow showerheads, toilets and washing machines, and high-tech sprinkler systems, there are fewer ways to conserve, he said, and additional savings will be harder to come by.

Indeed, said Roy Brown of Temecula, who lives in a two-story home on a 6,800-square-foot lot, "there's not many more places I can cut back on my water, other than not use it."

Brown added that his homeowners association is quick to scold members if even a tiny section of one's lawn turns brown.

Acknowledging the easier conservation measures that have been adopted, water officials are now stressing that people sprinkle their lawns fewer times a week and convert lush tropical landscaping into native plants.

In another ironic twist of the times, Brown said, the economy is making a positive contribution to the cause of saving water.

Pointing to the dead lawn a few doors down on a foreclosed property, he said, "That's water conservation at its finest."

Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 745-6611, Ext. 2623, or ddowney@nctimes.com.

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