EDITORIAL : INEXCUSABLE DELAYS; ADDED RISK OF MISCARRIAGES INCREASES THE URGENCY OF IMPROVING DWP FILTRATION PLANTS.

LOS Angeles has been under the gun for years to improve the safety of its tap water. Meanwhile, customers of the Department of Water and Power have been billed an average of $3.24 a month since 1992 to pay for the necessary purification projects.

So what happens?

The answer, as so often is the case with the city's dysfunctional government, is precious little.

All the filtration plants ordered by the state nearly seven years ago aren't expected to be finished until 2004 at the earliest. The deadline for one of them had been last April.

Meanwhile, the DWP continues to treat water stored in open reservoirs in the Santa Monica Mountains with two to three times as much chlorine as usually is necessary to kill bacteria and algae.

There's a serious downside, however, in using so much chlorine to treat drinking water.

It's been known for years that a byproduct of chlorine that reacts with organic material is carcinogenic. Those discoveries ultimately led to the orders mandating safer water treatment procedures that reduce the use of chlorine.

The need for a better purification method has become all the more urgent following the disclosure that state health officials plan to publish a study linking the consumption of water with another chlorine byproduct to an increased risk of miscarriages.

David Freeman, general manager of the DWP, has blamed the filtration plant delays on opposition by hillside homeowners.

That's a cop-out.

Sure, homeowners groups in the Santa Monica Mountains have some influence in City Hall. But that doesn't mean they run the city.

The responsible parties in this matter are the DWP, the Board of Water and Power Commissioners, the City Council, and the mayor. They have, collectively, lacked the intestinal fortitude to stand up for the best interests of the city as a whole and the millions of L.A. residents who rely on the quality of the DWP's tap water.

Freeman complained last week of the failure of state authorities to notify water suppliers of the miscarriage risk in a more timely manner. ``I have to question what we say to women who have had miscarriages in the meantime,'' Freeman told the council Tuesday.

Likewise, Los Angeles officials have an obligation to explain their roles in delaying the filtration plants.

We aren't suggesting that city officials run roughshod over hillside residents or anyone else in order to build these facilities. The city has an obligation to be sensitive to neighborhood concerns.

Those concerns, however, must be weighed against the public health needs of the city as a whole. It's obvious in this instance that the interests of all the people, including pregnant women, received insufficient attention.

The time has come, after soaking the ratepayers for more than five years, for City Hall to expedite the process of improving the safety of its tap water.