DWP'S PAST FEATS FORGOTTEN.

Byline: KIMIT MUSTON Local View

I have noticed that you never see the name Ezra F. Scattergood on any public buildings or statues around town, and we ought to. Because without Ezra, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power would be just the Department of Water.

Every schoolchild knows that William Mulholland brought water to L.A., but whenever Mulholland's aqueduct ran downhill, Scattergood stuck a turbine at the bottom. It was Ezra's electricity that powered Mulholland's construction project.

In 1909, Scattergood was named the chief electrical engineer for L.A. and designed the city's power grid. His first power pole went up in 1916, and the San Francisquito Power Plant Number One went on line the very next year. Today, Scattergood's creation has 290,239 power poles, and Plant Number One is still whirring away.

The modern DWP has 8,100 employees, and each and every one of them projects a quiet, confident ``We can handle it'' professionalism. They are very comforting to talk to. And for a century they have always ``handled it'' - through earthquake, fire, flood and even during the artificial generating famine of deregulation.

While the rest of the state was groaning, L.A. suffered no blackouts, no brownouts and no skyrocketing rates. Los Angeles was an island of sanity and security in an electric grid gone mad, thanks to the organization Scattergood designed. It does its job so well that most of the time you can forget it's even there.

And, last year, the DWP even put $213 million into the city's general fund - taxes you didn't have to pay. These folks are so good even snooty San Francisco wanted to clone them for a while.

But that was in the past. And if there is one field of human endeavor with no memory, it's politics. This year, the DWP contributed only $179 million to the city's income. The recession, you know.

On top of that, the DWP announced it wants a water-rate surcharge next year of 11 percent. And then an additional 7 percent surcharge the year after that. That could add $50 a year to your water bill.

Oh, sure, they're calling it a surcharge, because they want you to think it's a one-time bill, but we both know that once they've got your money they're not going to give it back.

Suddenly yesterday's heroes are today's spendthrifts. Ratepayers and politicians want to know why the DWP is spending $175,000 for a float in the Rose Parade and why it hired a public relations firm for $3 million when it already has an in-house department filled with people doing PR full time.

If those employees are incompetent, why did the DWP hire them in the first place? And if they're competent, why does the DWP need an outside firm?

These DWP geniuses have spent four years and $1 million to design an electric leaf blower and so far the only thing they've blown is the million bucks.

They invested $2 million in electric scooters for Hawaiians - or by Hawaiians or something.

The DWP just gave employees a 6 percent pay raise. And its bigwigs seem to be throwing a lot of lavish parties and eating a lot of caviar on expensive crackers.

Maybe if they were a little more careful with the money they've got, they wouldn't need this rate increase.

And do you know what they want to spend the $132 million raised by these surcharges on? Extra security for our drinking water and electricity.

Ha!

What's next? Covers for our aqueducts? Lids on our open reservoirs? Fences and alarms around our high-tension transmission lines?

Well, yeah, all of that, and more.

Does the DWP waste money? Of course it wastes money, its officials are human. GM throws lavish parties. Disney hires outside consultants. But with a $3 billion annual budget, has the DWP actually wasted that much? Better oversight is required, but that's City Hall's job.

Remember: It is a fundamental principle of engineering that the failure of a building or a system is always many times more expensive than the cost of simple reconstruction.

A few hundred million spent on airport security before Sept. 11, 2001, could have saved hundreds of billions of dollars and 3,000-plus lives lost so far. L.A. with undrinkable water would be a trillion-dollar disaster.

Similar DWP safety programs have worked so well over the last century that we tend to ignore and forget them, the same way we forgot Ezra Scattergood. But without him, modern L.A. would not be possible.