SEPARATE BUT PARCHED: LOS ANGELES COULD DEAL THE VALLEY A DEVASTATING PARTING SHOT.

Byline: Leon Furgatch

VALLEY secessionists are likening the proposed separation from the city to a marital divorce. They believe it will be accomplished by a simple division of the city's assets and liabilities, including important water rights.

They are confident that an agency, LAFCO, will study the feasibility of secession and will support such a separation.

In using divorce as an example, the proponents forget that if a prenuptial agreement is involved, each party will usually retain the assets owned before the marriage.

In the case of the Valley, you might say it signed such an agreement when it annexed to Los Angeles in 1915 to obtain a water supply from the newly completed Los Angeles-Owens River Aqueduct.

Until this historic compact was signed, the Valley had no future. If this agreement is broken, it follows that the Valley would legally lose this water. It would still retain a share in a supply of imported water from the Colorado River and Northern California, but whether this would be an adequate supply is doubtful.

In addition, there is the ``first in time, first in right'' water law that LAFCO will have to examine. This traditional law applies to the city's Owens Valley rights as well as its Los Angeles River rights.

The dry-looking river is capable of supplying up to half a million people. It flows underground through the Valley and is picked up by wells.

The rights to the river were granted to the city by the King of Spain when it was founded in 1781 as a pueblo.

The secessionists imply that LAFCO has the power to invalidate the annexation agreement and traditional water rights law, but this is nonsense. Only the courts can make such a determination, since it could affect water rights everywhere.

There is also the implication that Los Angeles officials will be accommodating and disregard these rights if there is a favorable vote, and, if not, the courts will quickly settle this issue in their favor.

Don't bet on it. Los Angeles spent 23 years in the courts battling the cities of Glendale, Burbank and San Fernando, and such corporate entities as the Southern Pacific Railroad and Forest Lawn, over the waters of the Los Angeles River, and ultimately the city won.

Secessionists are saying there is plenty of water, and one advocate in particular has coined the term ``water terrorist'' for anyone who disputes this belief.

The reality is Los Angeles not only has a limited amount of water, but it has a dwindling supply as a result of lawsuits brought by environmental groups.

For example, the city is under injunction to raise the level of saline Mono Lake. This has resulted in a loss of 15 percent of the Owens Valley-Mono Basin supply. One commentator correctly noted that the Valley has a proportional right to water from the Mono Basin, since residents helped pay for an extension of the aqueduct in the 1960s.

Unfortunately, it may take 20 years to raise the massive lake to its normal level, and then there is no assurance the city will be allowed to redirect the water into the aqueduct.

The city also stands to lose an additional 10 percent of this supply as a result of a recent agreement with the Great Basin Air Pollution Control District to redirect water into dry Owens Lake to curb windblown dust.

In all, the existing and projected deficits amount to a hefty loss of water for about 600,000 people, or a city about the size of San Francisco.

The city's shrinking water supply, coupled with the absence of new supplies on the immediate horizon, are the principal reasons why the city is maintaining standby rationing controls and generously handing out $100 and $300 respectively on the purchase of low-flush toilets and high-efficiency washing machines.

The greatest irony is that the city may be the principal beneficiary of secession, and not the Valley. If the annexation is nullified, Los Angeles could walk away with its entire remaining Owens Valley water supply. This would solve the city's water problem for some time to come.

The irony would be compounded if secessionists go through with their plan to make Mulholland Drive, on the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains, the geographical boundary between the Valley and the city.

This boulevard was named in honor of William Mulholland, who brought the water to Los Angeles and made the Valley prosperous.

When Valley residents become fully aware of the potential water problem, they may have second thoughts about a divorce.

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Photo: no caption (San Fernando Valley)