EDITORIAL REQUIRED READING DWP WASTES MILLIONS BUT WANTS MORE FROM RATEPAYERS.

IF the Department of Water and Power is looking for easy ways to save money and thus spare Los Angeles residents the burden of its proposed 18 percent rate hike, let us begin with some simple suggestions:

First, stop wasting money on reports that no one reads.

Then, start reading the reports that can reduce waste.

It's really not that complicated.

Fourteen months ago, City Controller Laura Chick gave the DWP a 400-page audit detailing ways management could both improve efficiency and sharply reduce costs. But like other such studies, this million-dollar document went ignored. To this day, the DWP's board of commissioners has yet to give it a look.

Their excuse?

They've been too busy dealing with pressing issues like protecting against terrorism and considering deregulation proposals - not to mention other such important matters like financing electric-scooter development in Hawaii.

But despite their tight schedules, DWP commissioners have remarkably been able to find the time to ask for an 18 percent hike in water rates. The increase would affect every homeowner, renter or business in Los Angeles - just what the city needs at a time when businesses are fleeing and residents struggle to keep up with exorbitant living costs.

The commission has been too busy to figure out how to save the public's money, but not too busy to demand more of it. Go figure.

Chick called the commission's head, Dominick Rubalcava, to task in a blistering letter last week, condemning the DWP for seeking rate hikes without first economizing. Duly humbled and embarrassed, the commission now promises to investigate the long-ignored study in January.

Now it's up to City Hall to decide whether or not to approve of the DWP's proposed rate hike. And business leaders, neighborhood councils and ordinary citizens must pressure their elected officials to stand up for the good of the people and force the DWP to streamline its vast and inefficient bureaucracy before it gets one cent in higher rates.

Unfortunately, Mayor James Hahn, who has never seemed to care much about taxpayers getting their money's worth out of government agencies, has already given his assent to the the DWP's money grab.

That leaves the City Council as the ratepayers' last line of defense.

Councilman Tony Cardenas, who chairs the council's Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources Committee, seems to have the right attitude. ``Conceivably this report could be the blueprint for saving tens of millions of dollars,'' he says.

Exactly. And if the DWP can find the money it needs within its own bloated operations, it can spare the rest of us an unwarranted expense.

If Cardenas and fellow council members are committed to serving DWP ratepayers - which is to say, everyone in Los Angeles - they will stand firm against the utility's excesses. The department has no business asking for more money until its house is in order.