EDITORIAL OUTAGE OUTRAGE IT'S NOT THE HEAT THAT'S COOKED CITY'S UTILITY.

NO matter what the folks at the Department of Water and Power may claim, the brutal and seemingly endless heat wave is not why Los Angeles residents are going without power for air conditioning, lights or refrigerators these days.

Sure, temperatures have hit Death Valley levels and the uncommon humidity has made it unbearable. And yes, the demands on the DWP and the state's power grid have set records.

But the breakdowns are not occurring because of insufficient electricity or because of too much demand.

No, the problems in L.A. were local, sometimes a single home or a few hundred in a neighborhood. The DWP could not deliver because it did not properly invest in infrastructure when it was reaping windfall profits from selling power during the statewide energy crisis.

The need to invest more was obvious. First, the nation's second-largest city is growing, adding new homes and new power users virtually every day. Second, it gets hot here in the summer, particularly in the San Fernando Valley.

During the Hahn administration in particular, the DWP poured hundreds of millions of dollars of utility revenue into endless pay raises for workers and to pet projects, with more for cronies.

And then it looted what was left and put it into the city's general fund so that the elected officials, bureaucrats and rank-and-file workers could get huge increases in pay, benefits and perks.

Amazingly, the city's leaders said the windfall electricity revenue could not be used to fund badly needed water supply improvements so they have jacked up water rates sharply and intend to increase them more.

In other words, city salaries, yes; the public, no.

So this is what we have to look forward to as Los Angeles? Higher power rates and a daily gamble that the lights will stay on?

That's not good enough. But where's the outcry from the elected leadership? The City Council howls because the police chief tells members rightly that they don't know what they're talking about, but it remains silent on the DWP.

Or worse, the mayor and other city leaders tell us to ``flex our power,'' as if this energy crisis were our fault. The fault lies not with the people but with their leaders.