California Coast & Ocean

The biggest and best source of new water, the most cost-effective, cheapest, most readily available, and most secure method of supplying the Los Angeles area and the state with water to meet the needs of our growing population, is the water now wasted locally through inefficient use.

The California Constitution, Article X, Section 2, requires that all uses of the state's water be both reasonable and beneficial. It prohibits the waste and unreasonable use, method of use, or method of diversion of water. Thus the constitution, as well as common sense, require that we use our local water resources as efficiently as possible.

Efficiencies include: conservation, reclamation and reuse (which is considered a new water supply by some), conjunctive use of surface and ground water, watershed management that includes better utilization of stormwater, the development of a landscape ethic, and better management of our dams and spreading grounds. In these pages we focus on urban residential conservation, touching briefly on the others, which are described in my forthcoming book, Managing Water: Avoiding Crisis in California, from which this article is adapted.

Many studies have concluded that we can greatly reduce our dependence on imported water, and accommodate growth both within the region and statewide by fully implementing these efficiencies. Some are already being implemented, with outstanding results.

However, almost all efficiency programs are voluntary at this time. If weare to achieve the maximum possible savings, more carrots and some sticks will need to be added to the programs now available. Without the carrots provided by Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District (MWD), most of the smaller agencies in the Los Angeles area would be unlikely to take on any of the efficiency programs offered. When each agency is dependent on water sales for its income, they do not find it in their self-interest to spend money so as to have less product to sell.

Drought Was a Catalyst
Most efforts to conserve water in California were initiated as a result of the drought of 1987-92, which for the first time caused water shortages in both the agricultural and urban sectors. Until then there had always been some "surplus," as then defined, in the system--water was thought to be "wasted" if it flowed to the sea. Neither the Endangered Species Act nor the Clean Water Act's water quality standards were yet being implemented on a major scale.

Since that six-year drought, some cities and water districts in southern California have made water conservation a high priority by seeking to eliminate wasteful practices. To assist in this goal, urban water agencies throughout California joined with environmental groups and other water professionals to form the nonprofit California Urban Water Conservation Council. In 1991 they signed a memorandum of understanding that details 14 best management practices (BMPs) designed to conserve water. Each signatory promised to implement them. This Council acts as the conservation clearinghouse for the state and as a brain trust of sorts for the signatory agencies. It also works to identify additional BMPs and to quantify the savings that can be obtained from each. Participation is voluntary. Some of the BMPs are system-wide, some are residential, industrial, or commercial.

Implementing these BMPs has already led to measurable successes. Despite a population increase of slightly over 35 percent (or nearly one million people) since 1970, current water use in the City of Los Angeles has grown by only seven percent, and per capita usage has been reduced by 15 percent. The entire MWD service territory now uses about the same amount of water it did 20 years ago, despite a comparable increase in population.

There is also great room for improvement in the industrial sector, as well as in agriculture, which consumes some 80 percent of the state's developed water. MWD's experience in offering a subsidy to those industries that can become more efficient in their water use has been amazing. All the money set aside for this subsidy is immediately spoken for.

Dorothy Green, a water activist for decades in Los Angeles, is among the founders of the California Water Impact Network. This article has been adapted from her forthcoming book, Managing Water, Avoiding Crisis in California, which will be published in autumn this year by the University of California Press.

This article is greatly abridged. For the complete story, see the print edition of Coast & Ocean.