The late William Mulholland might have choked on his cigar if he had been here last month to witness a half dozen of the nation’s most powerful water bureaucrats climb out of a helicopter.
Mulholland, the turn-of-the-century Los Angeles water baron, would have been astounded by the reason they traveled to a grassy dale outside this town some 100 miles east of Los Angeles.
They came not in search of water for the thirsty millions back in the big city. Rather, they came to tour a nature preserve bought by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to protect, among other things, an endangered rat.
The purchase, intended to offset the loss of rat habitat when the district builds a new reservoir, is just one of the many little hoops that California officials have to jump through these days to quench their state’s big thirst.
Gone are the days of Mulholland, the legendary water superintendent who in 1910 had a glorious future for Los Angeles in mind when he and others secretly plotted to drain an entire Sierra Nevada valley and leave its farmers in the lurch.
As Los Angeles heads toward the next century, city and regional water officials now are praised for storing water instead of accused of stealing it.
They routinely plead with constituents to use less, brag about using the same water two or three times and preach about the necessity of a healthy environment.
If Los Angeles residents didn’t notice before, they knew it was a new era when former Mayor Tom Bradley suggested during the drought that perhaps they should flush the toilet only after every other use.
“To do business today, this is the kind of thing we’re going to have to do,” said John Wodraska, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District, which provides water for Los Angeles and 26 other communities.
“There always has been this image of Southern California sucking all the water out of northern California to fill swimming pools. Now, we are a leader in the nation in conservation programs.”
Among such efforts in the Los Angeles area are distribution of 400,000 low-flow toilets and 1.5 million low-flow shower heads. With conservation measures in place, officials brag that the city now uses the same amount of water as in 1970 though the population has grown by 25 percent. Overall, water use across the state is down 30 percent since 1989.
Local officials are paying farmers not to plant crops and are building reclamation plants to clean water for reuse. They also are sealing the walls of canals carrying water from the Colorado River to limit the amount leaking into the ground.
The planned $1.8 billion Domenigoni reservoir near Hemet will double the water storage capacity in Southern California and allow the state to capture more spring runoff.
Officials have sidestepped the troubles of other proposed water projects by planning ahead to protect endangered species and staying away from flowing rivers. The reservoir will be filled from existing pipelines.
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Elizabeth Rieke, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science, said other areas of the West need to learn from Southern California’s example. “We have to make sure we squeeze every molecule out of the water we have before we go look for other sources,” she said.
Still, all the skimping may not be enough to cover California’s looming water shortage, and officials warn they may need to try again to win voter approval of a new canal from the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin delta.
One thing Californians are not ready to do is try to halt the state’s economic growth.
That was clear this spring when the legislature rejected a bill to require builders to prove they have sufficient water before erecting new housing projects. The debate began after a $4.5 billion, 11,000-home project was approved near Oakland despite warnings the development lacked sufficient water.