Development, not drought, sends water rates rising.

Hook-up fee bill faces another legislative go-round

Imported water and economic expansion are eternal, and sometimes notorious, bed-fellows in the semi-arid Southland. Without imported water, the region never would have become a metropolis. Two-thirds of the Southland's supplies today originate elsewhere.

But the Metropolitan Water District's longtime policy to charge existing customers to build water-delivery systems benefitting new home tracts and industrial parks could be debated more than ever this decade as prices rise, according to some MWD officials.

"As long as we keep trying to push grass out into the desert, we're not going to have enough water," said MWD Director Timothy F. Brick, who has called MWD's $5.7 billion capital project plan a "bloated" effort to supply almost any new growth, while spreading the costs among existing customers. Brick represents Pasadena, a 107-year-old city with slow population growth.

Others on the 51-member board are doubtful of big changes.

"The Met's policy always has been, and always will be, to provide for the growth -- not to be a regional planning agency," said Director Robert Goldsworthy, representing South Bay cities.

Funding the capital plan from 1992 to 2001 is the biggest, single new cost to MWD. Roughly one-half of it accommodates new customers, estimated MWD Assistant General Manager F. Wiley Horne.

"The overall equity issue will have to be aired out," Horne predicted. "In the long run, we're going to have to review our rate structure to make sure that new growth is paying its fair share."

Currently, new developments are not charged a hook-up fee in the MWD's 5,143-square-mile service area. MWD Board Chairman Mike Gage said a bill to allow such a fee will be re-introduced in Sacramento, where it failed last year under pressure from building contractors. "I believe the cost to newcomers must more clearly reflect the additional costs," he said.

Also, many Southland businesses are quite aware they essentially are surviving the drought. Amid the tug-of-war over dry-years supplies, consumer conservation and a fair 1992 rainfall prodded the MWD last year to curtail its mandatory water cutbacks imposed on its 27 public agency customers. Many, like L.A.'s Department of Water & Power, in turn ended their mandatory programs for homes and businesses.

The cornerstone of MWD's capital plan is the proposed 4,410-acre Domenigoni Valley Reservoir in Riverside County south of Hemet. That $1.5 billion project to create the Southland's largest man-made lake would double the MWD's local storage capacity -- drought insurance. The utility is already buying potato and onion fields there, surrounded on two sides by hills, so that dams may be built to harbor 260 billion gallons of reserve water.

Some of the plan's projects are clearly devoted to development, like a $300 million project to build a sixth pipeline to San Diego County, split 50-50 between MWD and the San Diego County Water Authority. Others are needed, regardless of growth. They concern better water-treatment technology and seismic-safety.

Another project, the "Inland Feeder," would link the Colorado River Aqueduct to the State Water Project using a 45-mile-long pipeline and tunnel system. Thus, the MWD's two primary lifelines of imported water would be joined, at a $750 million estimated cost.

The need: to make water deliveries "more reliable," said MWD officials. Brick thinks it primarily serves new growth, which he thinks MWD should start managing.