Can California Be Drought-Proof by 2020?

California lawmakers are working on a historic plan -- the first of its kind in the United States -- to require a 20 percent reduction in per-capita urban water use by the year 2020. It signals the end of cheap water for water wasters, a change that's bound to come as a shock to some residents in the Golden State.

This spring, more than 2,000 people living in and around the populous High Desert community of Palmdale -- 60 miles north of Los Angeles -- wrote letters of protest after their water district, teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, dramatically raised hikes in rates and service charges. Residents are just now getting their bills, and the district's phone is ringing off the hook with customers asking for waivers.

The city of Palmdale announced drastic cuts to irrigating local parks in response to what it said were "extreme hikes in water rates." And it filed suit against the Palmdale Water District, arguing that the increases were illegal and the formula for computing customers' bills was incomprehensible.

"They perceive that they're being the champions of the people," district General Manager Randy Hill said of city officials, "but we don't have sufficient water supplies. We're at the point that our demand is dangerously close to our supply. We should have been raising rates all along, and we didn't."

It's a conservation rule of thumb that if a resource is underpriced, it will be overused. And California needs every drop, experts say, to cope with recurring droughts, serve the growing population and restore the fragile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the source of much of the state's fresh water, including Palmdale's.

"Sooner or later, California will be hit with the same kind of prolonged, severe drought that Australia is facing now," said Rick Soehren, assistant deputy director for water use efficiency at the state Department of Water Resources and co-chair of the "20x2020" planning team. "Either we're going to be ready, or the economy takes a terrible hit and people lose a huge investment in landscaping."

The draft plan was made public this year by a state and federal team under a directive from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It opens with the statement that California's "overall demand for water has exceeded our reliable developed supply." In just over a decade, it proposes to reduce California's urban water use -- residential, commercial and industrial -- from an average 192 gallons per person per day to 154 gallons. That would be an annual savings of about 1.7 million acre-feet, equivalent to more than a two-year supply for Los Angeles. (The national urban per-capita use is 101 gallons per day, reflecting the higher average rainfall in many states.)

Palmdale residents use 200 gallons per capita daily. John Mlynar, a city spokesman, said the city has been trying hard to cut water use on its own property, reducing it 27 percent in recent years, even installing artificial grass in front of city hall.

"We have gone to great lengths to conserve water," Mlynar said. "The district needs to look at cutting some expenses before passing on costs."

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge declined to temporarily halt Palmdale's water rate increases this month, but the city's lawsuit is going forward. In the meantime, the water district is spending tens of thousands of dollars on legal costs -- money that Hill, the general manager, said he could be using to pay residents to put in low-flow toilets and take out grass.

Statewide, experts say, water districts like Palmdale will have to change the way they do business to meet the proposed 20 percent reduction in urban water use. It's an average: State Assembly bill AB 49 would allow water districts to use different formulas for meeting the goal, taking into account differences in climate and levels of conservation already achieved.