Las Urbanistas

High Carbon Emission Blamed on Coal Plants

By David A. Fahrenthol Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, September 30, 2007; C01

The Washington area produces more carbon dioxide than several medium-size European countries, according to a new estimate of local emissions, as the region’s crawling traffic and coal-fired power plants give it a pollution “footprint” out of proportion to its size.

The estimate, by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, seems to be the first official attempt to put a number on the region’s contributions to climate change. And the number is big: 65.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide were emitted here in 2005. That was more than in all of Hungary, Finland, Sweden, Denmark or Switzerland, each of which has more people.

Within the region, the estimate shows that the Maryland suburbs — often stereotyped as green-leaning and blue-voting — produce more carbon dioxide than either the Virginia suburbs or the District. One major reason: It is home to three coal-burning power plants.

 

The region is now in a period of changing light bulbs and policies as residents and governments rush to rein in the pollution blamed for climate change.

The estimate shows how big the task really is. The region is polluting on a globally significant scale, it shows, and getting steadily worse.

“It’s not a surprise that we compete with entire countries in Scandinavia,” said Mike Tidwell, who heads the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, an environmental group. “What this data does is point up just how huge America’s contribution to climate change is . . . if our one capital region is emitting on par with other industrialized countries.”

Generally, most anything with a smokestack or tailpipe — anything burning some fossil fuel for energy — emits carbon dioxide, which accounts for about 84 percent of all U.S. greenhouse-gas pollution.

To calculate how much carbon dioxide the area emits, a sum called a carbon footprint, COG staff workers added up emissions from power plants, cars, airplane engines, home heaters and other sources.

Such pollution inventories have been done for states and some U.S. cities in recent years, but this effort seems to be one of the first to look at an entire metropolitan area.

One point of comparison was a study of the San Francisco Bay area. It produces more carbon dioxide than greater Washington, 69.7 million metric tons a year. But it also has more people, 6.8 million, so Washington produces more on a per capita basis.

Calculations were rough: For some emission sources, detailed local data were not available, so COG staff workers extrapolated numbers from state-level figures. They also did not include other pollutants, such as methane, that play a role in climate change.

“It’s not a full-blown inventory” of carbon emissions, said Jeffrey King of COG. “It’s estimates. We’re trying to estimate greenhouse emissions for the region based on available data.”

But, rudimentary as it is, the estimate makes one fact obvious: The Washington region may be only a pixel on the world map, but it is a significant player in its pollution.

“We’re kind of like a country — you know, a small country,” said Judi Greenwald, director of innovative solutions at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a nonprofit group. She saw that as a bad thing and a good thing, in that if Washington cleaned up, the world would notice. “We can take action that is globally significant,” Greenwald said.

For example, greater Washington’s carbon dioxide emissions are 25 percent higher than those of Sweden, which has 9 million people, compared with the Washington region’s 5 million. Emissions are 42 percent higher than in Switzerland, a country of 7.5 million.

The reason that greater Washington pollutes a great deal, scientists say, is that Americans in general pollute a great deal.

In fact, the region’s residents — who can take mass transit and live in pedestrian-friendly urban centers — produce less carbon dioxide per capita than the average American. At last count, the total was 13.2 metric tons a year, compared with close to 20 metric tons a year per person nationally.

But the region still has many of the country’s bad carbon habits. Washington’s cars and trucks, which sit in traffic recently judged to be tied for second-worst in the country, account for 34 percent of area emissions. In total, transportation in the region accounts for 22.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of all of Lithuania’s emissions and roughly five times what Nicaragua emits.

Also, the area is home to several coal-burning power plants, the type of plant that supplies nearly half the country’s electricity. Together, power plants in the region produced about 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2005, or two times the output of Armenia.

“We rely heavily on coal,” said Montgomery County Council member George L. Leventhal (D-At Large), who has been active on environmental issues. “And coal is dirty.”

The impact of coal seems especially evident in the figures for Maryland, which has emissions almost equal to those of the District and Northern Virginia combined.

The main reason, according to King — who worked on the data — is the amount emitted from such coal-fired plants as Dickerson in Montgomery, Chalk Point in Prince George’s and Morgantown in Charles counties. Virginia also has several coal-fired plants, environmentalists said, but they are located mainly in other parts of the state.

Cleaning up the emissions from these coal-fired plants is, for now, a tall order because technology to capture and store carbon dioxide is not in wide use. For the moment, climate activists would like to see states reduce their overall energy use so that less coal needs to be burned. Eventually, they hope that cleaner energy sources will be found.

Governments at various levels are beginning their own cleanups. Arlington, Fairfax and Montgomery counties have joined a “cool counties” program that calls for such changes as more “green” buildings and more hybrid cars in county fleets. The District has mandated energy-saving features in some new buildings.

A new Maryland law will cut auto emissions, and the state has joined a regional pact to reduce emissions from power plants. Virginia recently announced an energy plan that includes a goal to cut emissions by 30 percent by 2025.

Ordinary citizens also seem to be looking for ways to help. A campaign called the Cool Capital Challenge, which asks individuals and companies to promise to reduce their own emissions, has received pledges this year totaling 265 million pounds of carbon dioxide.

In Woodley Park, environmental blogger Joseph Romm made his own changes, remodeling his home to include energy-saving appliances and an energy-generating solar array on the roof. He works from home most days and drives a hybrid Toyota Prius when he does leave.

“If you have come to the view that global warming is the biggest problem facing this country,” said Romm, who writes about climate change, “then I think you have to do something.”

But how much can really be done? Although local officials are promising to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the coming decades, the COG report shows that pollution is actually going the other way: up. At the current pace, it forecasts, emissions will increase 35 percent by 2030.

That’s left a few local officials thinking that the region may need some solution to appear — a new technology, perhaps, that would make it possible to pollute less, even as the area grows.

“We don’t know how we’re going to meet the very, very . . . intense goal” of sharp reductions in the coming decades, said Stuart Freudberg, director of environmental programs for COG. “It’s not going to be something we figure out — you know, six months from now, we have the answer.”

Staff researcher Eddy Palanzo contributed to this report.

Delivering yet another blow to historical preservationists, the Los Angeles Board of Education decided Tuesday to tear down most of the structure of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the former Ambassador Hotel as part of its plans to build a school there. Officials said testing determined that the structure was too weak to withstand an earthquake.

Neighborhood activists, who have been waiting for the K-12 campus for years, applauded after the speedy 7-0 vote, which followed very little discussion by board members.

“It’s been such a long process to get to where we are. We’re talking years and years and years,” said Sherly Chavarria, director of education and technology programs for the Central American Resource Center, who appeared at Tuesday’s meeting to support the changes. “The fear was that perhaps time would be taken to revise the plan, to analyze other options for the Cocoanut Grove.”

But the Los Angeles Conservancy, one of a number of groups that were embroiled in a failed legal battle against the district to block the hotel’s destruction, said the board broke its promise to the community.

“In my mind, this issue is really probably more about accountability for LAUSD — that if you say you’re going to do something, you do it — than the nitty-gritty of what are the issues of preservation of the Cocoanut Grove,” said Linda Dishman, executive director of the conservancy. “We’ll be talking to our lawyers.”

In the meantime, the district will move ahead with its $341-million plan to build an elementary, middle and high school that will house 4,240 students on the 24-acre property. Demolition of the three-quarters of the Cocoanut Grove is slated for next month. Current plans call for completion of the K-3 building in 2009 and the remainder in 2010.

The district bought the site of the fabled 1921 hotel — where presidents and politicians rubbed elbows with Hollywood celebrities — in bankruptcy court in 2001 with grand plans to build a sprawling campus. By then, the hotel was dilapidated, having been closed for more than a decade.

In a state-mandated environmental impact report, the district acknowledged that the property was historically significant. To mitigate the impact of tearing most of it down, L.A. Unified said it would preserve the pantry where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 and keep the Cocoanut Grove, turning it into a high school auditorium.

In public statements and during court proceedings, the district said it would cut out the pantry and preserve it whole. Officials said those plans were based on a review of blueprints and visual inspection of the site.

But under current plans, only the east wall, the circular entry and a portion of the glass west wall of the nightclub and historic Paul Williams cafeteria will not be destroyed, along with some interior features that were removed and will be incorporated into the design. As for the pantry, L.A. Unified decided in 2005 that the district would collect 29 items from it — mostly doors, electrical items and an ice machine — put them in storage, and tear down the rest of it.

“Maybe it’s not the ending everyone would have hoped for, but it’s the ending that we’re at because of the poor structural condition,” said John Kuprenas, a consultant overseeing the construction of the school. “We had to change our plan.”

According to a supplemental environmental impact report approved by the board Tuesday, testing found that the concrete connections were inadequate and the cement content and strength of the concrete were too low in most of the Cocoanut Grove.

Shoring the walls would take up so much space that ceilings would be low and hallways too narrow for the area to be functional, said Jim Cowell, the outgoing head of new construction for the district. Instead, the district will tear down the concrete walls and build new ones in the same place, move the stage and slope the floor, so the nightclub can work as an auditorium. The east wing was stronger than the rest of the building, so the structural elements there will be maintained.

The cost will remain the same, according to the district.

Dishman disputed that the decision was based on significantly new information, arguing that the district knew the concrete was weak years ago and that’s why it said it had to tear down the hotel. She also accused the board of failing to follow state law when it decided not to reopen the environmental review, voting to keep only portions of the pantry, rather than the whole room, as initially promised.

“They’re saying: We don’t want to do this. We want to replicate it. Our concern about replication is that it’s not historic preservation. It’s not a mitigation measure for mitigation of a historic resource,” she said.

Kevin Reed, the district’s general counsel, said that because the pantry was still being preserved, a change in the method of doing so was not enough to trigger further environmental review. As far as the nightclub is concerned, he said that was a deviation from the plan, and the board’s action Tuesday was the proper way to handle it.

“The district adhered to the process,” Reed said.

But one board member, Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, expressed concerns about the accusations.

“Very serious allegations have been made about the district regarding its credibility,” she said, asking Reed to explain whether the district was going back on its promises to preservationists.

Reed replied that keeping the Cocoanut Grove intact was a “hope,” not a promise.

Kuprenas, the project manager, said that not all the news was bad after workers tore open the building during demolition. The original pylon sign was discovered under a 1970s version, allowing the district to re-create the entrance to the hotel.

RIVERSIDE, N.J., Sept. 25 — A little more than a year ago, the Township Committee in this faded factory town became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.

Within months, hundreds, if not thousands, of recent immigrants from Brazil and other Latin American countries had fled. The noise, crowding and traffic that had accompanied their arrival over the past decade abated.

The law had worked. Perhaps, some said, too well.

With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.

Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget. Suddenly, many people — including some who originally favored the law — started having second thoughts.

So last week, the town rescinded the ordinance, joining a small but growing list of municipalities nationwide that have begun rethinking such laws as their legal and economic consequences have become clearer.

“I don’t think people knew there would be such an economic burden,” said Mayor George Conard, who voted for the original ordinance. “A lot of people did not look three years out.”

In the past two years, more than 30 towns nationwide have enacted laws intended to address problems attributed to illegal immigration, from overcrowded housing and schools to overextended police forces. Most of those laws, like Riverside’s, called for fines and even jail sentences for people who knowingly rented apartments to illegal immigrants or who gave them jobs.

In some places, business owners have objected to crackdowns that have driven away immigrant customers. And in many, ordinances have come under legal assault by immigration groups and the American Civil Liberties Union.

In June, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against a housing ordinance in Farmers Branch, Tex., that would have imposed fines against landlords who rented to illegal immigrants. In July, the city of Valley Park, Mo., repealed a similar ordinance, after an earlier version was struck down by a state judge and a revision brought new challenges. A week later, a federal judge struck down ordinances in Hazleton, Pa., the first town to enact laws barring illegal immigrants from working or renting homes there.

Muzaffar A. Chishti, director of the New York office of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonprofit group, said Riverside’s decision to repeal its law — which was never enforced — was clearly influenced by the Hazleton ruling, and he predicted that other towns would follow suit.

“People in many towns are now weighing the social, economic and legal costs of pursuing these ordinances,” he said.

Indeed, Riverside, a town of 8,000 nestled across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, has already spent $82,000 defending its ordinance, and it risked having to pay the plaintiffs’ legal fees if it lost in court. The legal battle forced the town to delay road paving projects, the purchase of a dump truck and repairs to town hall, officials said. But while Riverside’s about-face may repair its budget, it may take years to mend the emotional scars that formed when the ordinance “put us on the national map in a bad way,” Mr. Conard said.

Rival advocacy groups in the immigration debate turned this otherwise sleepy town into a litmus test for their causes. As the television cameras rolled, Riverside was branded, in turns, a racist enclave and a town fighting for American values.

Some residents who backed the ban last year were reluctant to discuss their stance now, though they uniformly blamed outsiders for misrepresenting their motives. By and large, they said the ordinance was a success because it drove out illegal immigrants, even if it hurt the town’s economy.

“It changed the face of Riverside a little bit,” said Charles Hilton, the former mayor who pushed for the ordinance. (He was voted out of office last fall but said it was not because he had supported the law.)

“The business district is fairly vacant now, but it’s not the legitimate businesses that are gone,” he said. “It’s all the ones that were supporting the illegal immigrants, or, as I like to call them, the criminal aliens.”

Many businesses that remain are having a hard time. Angelina Guedes, a Brazilian-born beautician, opened A Touch From Brazil, a hair and nail salon, on Scott Street two years ago to cater to the immigrant population. At one point, she had 10 workers.

Business quickly dried up after the law against illegal immigrants. Last week, on what would usually be a busy Thursday afternoon, Ms. Guedes ate a salad and gave a friend a manicure, while the five black stylist chairs sat empty.

“Now I only have myself,” said Ms. Guedes, 41, speaking a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese. “They all left. I also want to leave but it’s not possible because no one wants to buy my business.”

Numerous storefronts on Scott Street are boarded up or are empty, with For Sale by Owner signs in the windows. Business is down by half at Luis Ordonez’s River Dance Music Store, which sells Western Union wire transfers, cellphones and perfume. Next door, his restaurant, the Scott Street Family Cafe, which has a multiethnic menu in English, Spanish and Portuguese, was empty at lunchtime.

“I came here looking for an opportunity to open a business and I found it, and the people also needed the service,” said Mr. Ordonez, who is from Ecuador. “It was crowded and everybody was trying to do their best to support their families.”

Some have adapted better than others. Bruce Behmke opened the R & B Laundromat in 2003 after he saw immigrants hauling trash bags full of clothing to a laundry a mile away. Sales took off at his small shop, where want ads in Portuguese are pinned to a corkboard and copies of the Brazilian Voice sit near the door.

When sales plummeted last year, Mr. Behmke started a wash-and-fold delivery service for young professionals.

“It became a ghost town here,” he said.

Immigration is not new to Riverside. Once a summer resort for Philadelphians, the town became a magnet a century ago for European immigrants drawn to its factories, including the Philadelphia Watch Case Company, whose empty hulk still looms over town. Until the 1930s, the minutes of the school board meetings were recorded in German and English.

“There’s always got to be some scapegoats,” said Regina Collinsgru, who runs The Positive Press, a local newspaper, and whose husband was among a wave of Portuguese immigrants who came here in the 1960s. “The Germans were first, there were problems when the Italians came, then the Polish came. That’s the nature of a lot of small towns.”

Immigrants from Latin America began arriving around 2000. The majority were Brazilians attracted not only by construction jobs in the booming housing market but also by the presence of Portuguese-speaking businesses in town. Between 2000 and 2006, local business owners and officials estimate, more than 3,000 immigrants arrived. There are no authoritative figures about the number of immigrants who were — or were not — in the country legally.

Like those waves of earlier immigrants, the Brazilians and Latinos triggered conflicting reactions. Some shopkeepers loved the extra dollars spent on Scott and Pavilion Streets, the modest thoroughfares that anchor downtown. Yet some residents steered clear of stores where Portuguese and Spanish were plainly the language of choice. A few contractors benefited from the new pool of cheap labor. Others begrudged being undercut by rivals who hired undocumented workers.

On the town’s leafy side streets, some residents admired the pluck of newcomers who often worked six days a week, and a few even took up Capoeira, the Brazilian martial art. Yet many neighbors loathed the white vans with out-of-state plates and ladders on top parked in spots they had long considered their own. The Brazilian flags that flew at several houses rankled more than a few longtime residents.

It is unclear whether the Brazilian and Latino immigrants who left will now return to Riverside. With the housing market slowing, there may be little reason to come back. But if they do, some residents say they may spark new tensions.

Mr. Hilton, the former mayor, said some of the illegal immigrants have already begun filtering back into town. “It’s not the Wild West like it was,” he said, “but it may return to that.”

RINCON POINT, Calif. — Septic tanks or sewers? The question of how to treat wastewater in this exclusive beachfront community is pitting neighbors, surfers and environmentalists against one another.

Surfers have long complained about getting sick at the world-class surf break here that straddles Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. And blame for the pollution has long been laid on the septic tanks of the multimillion-dollar homes in the gated enclave of Rincon Point.

After nine years of debate and several lawsuits, homeowners are to vote next month on whether to convert from the tanks to a sewer system. While most residents appear to back the conversion, a vocal group of residents is questioning its wisdom, with several saying they feel bullied into paying for an expensive system that would only encourage more development and more pollution.

 

“There is no evidence that our septic tanks are polluting anything,” said a homeowner, Billy Taylor, who with his wife, Brook Harvey-Taylor, is a surfer and an outspoken opponent. “Are we cleaning up the ocean? Or are we just moving our waste into another part of the ocean?”

Tests in 1999 showed signs of human waste in a creek that runs through Rincon Point into the ocean. But no fecal coliform bacteria were found upstream, which proponents of a sewer system say proves the septic tanks are responsible.

Opponents of the change say that since 1999 malfunctioning or old septic tanks have been repaired or replaced. Lauren Orlando, a wastewater expert from Boston University whom they brought in, said that the tests proved nothing and that the bacteria could have come from the diaper of a child swimming in the creek or ocean.

If the sewer vote passes, the owners of Rincon Point’s 72 homes will have to pay about $80,000 each to build the infrastructure to hook up to the waste treatment center in the city of Carpinteria, next to Rincon. The state would contribute about $2.1 million.

In part because Rincon Point property is so valuable — a beachfront cottage considered a “tear down” by at least one agent is now listed for $4.4 million — most residents can afford to pay, either up front or over 30 years.

An environmental advocacy group, Heal the Ocean, has been pushing for sewers for nine years. But Hillary Hauser, who recounts founding the group because surfers asked her to help clean the water off Rincon Point, says “misinformation” could derail the project. Ms. Hauser pointed to what the Carpinteria Sanitary District’s general manager, Craig Murray, said were “absurd” reports that homeowners were being asked to bankroll the project because it is critical to developers of a proposed resort.

Still, Ms. Hauser was optimistic the sewer project would pass because of homeowners like Steve Halsted, who says the “silent majority” of residents support the sewer.

Mr. Halsted said the public perception of Rincon Point was of “ a lot of rich people polluting their ocean.”

“It’s time we do the right thing and get off of our septics and onto sewers and get this cloud away from us,” he said.

Some homeowners also say they want sewers so they can add bathrooms and bedrooms to their homes and not have to worry about litigation or alternative treatment systems that could require permits.

The ballots, which have been mailed to homeowners, will be tallied at a public meeting in Carpinteria on Oct. 16.

If the sewer is turned down and more fecal bacteria is found, enforcement action against individual homeowners is possible, said Harvey Packard of the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. But it is not clear how violators would be identified. Ms. Hauser speculated that homeowners could be required to put dye in their tanks, so polluters could be singled out.

Hugh Kaufman, a senior engineer with the federal Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, said that too often sewers were thought of as the only solution for water pollution.

“In Rincon, it appears to me the biggest problem for the ocean is the discharge from the sanitary district going into the ocean,” Mr. Kaufman said. “If it is a problem with a particular septic tank, that’s easy and cheap to fix, a heck of a lot cheaper than sewering an area.”

But Mr. Murray and Ms. Hauser noted that the district dumps treated water into the ocean 1,000 feet offshore — not into Rincon Point’s creek.

In Southern California, it is common practice for people to stay out of the water for days after rain because of runoff pollution. But surfers often opt to take their chances in places like Rincon Point and Malibu, which has problems similar to Rincon Point’s.

“I don’t think you can blame the septic tanks for the pollution,” said Ray Gann, who has been surfing Rincon since 1962. “We get surfers getting sick up and down the coast.”

Other surfers disagree. Wayne Babcock, a cofounder of Clean Up Rincon Effluent, said that the beach at Rincon Point was “notorious” for making surfers sick and that the homeowners should be forced to stop using septic tanks. When asked why they continue surfing here, Mr. Babcock and other surfers waxed poetic.

“You don’t have a choice,” Mr. Babcock said. “It’s Rincon. There’s nothing like it.”

Long Beach has a population of almost half a million, making it the second largest city in the county of Los Angeles and the fifth most populous in the state.

As you may have read, water officials there recently looked at the prospect of tightening water supplies and decided the outlook was bleak enough to impose restrictions.

The new rules are hardly draconian, but they do have some bite. Lawn watering is now allowed only three days per week, the time that sprinkler systems are allowed to run has been limited and daytime watering has been prohibited.

Long Beach’s decision is intriguing, in part, because the largest city in the county, Los Angeles, has not imposed such rules. Instead, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa asked residents this summer to voluntarily cut their usage by 10%.

Long Beach residents already use less water on average than L.A. residents — 121 gallons per day versus 141 in 2006. Which leads to the question. . .

Is Long Beach jumping the gun, or is Los Angeles sticking its head in the sand?

This is hard to say without the ability to predict the weather. In the winter of 2004-05, for example, the city of Los Angeles had its second-wettest year on record. Last winter was its driest. This year: Who knows? Despite the rainy weekend, forecasters are saying it could be a drier-than-normal year in the Southwest.

In Long Beach, officials insist they’re simply trying to prepare residents for a time when water resources grow more scarce and thus more expensive. Besides the ongoing drought, they also point to projections of a diminishing snowpack in California and the West, courtesy of global warming.

There is also the prospect that the amount of water pumped into the California Aqueduct from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta could be curtailed to protect the endangered delta smelt.

“We are preparing our customers for a water supply emergency,” said Ryan Alsop, spokesman for the Long Beach Water Department. “It may happen, it may not happen. But we think it’s likely, and we wanted our community to be the absolute best-prepared community in Southern California to deal with it.”

Alsop added, “We should be doing these things year-round. Water is a finite resource as it is. . . . We’re owning up to the fact that we’re wasting water.”

Although the city can issue citations to violators, it is not planning to do that, nor is it known if the new rules will become permanent. Alsop said the goal, for now, is to educate residents. He also said he doesn’t believe the watering restrictions will send anyone’s landscaping off to the gallows.

The city is encouraging residents to report those who are wasting water. The Long Beach Water Department has even produced two YouTube videos. One of them shows a man leisurely hosing down a sidewalk — a no-no under the new water restrictions — and provides a phone number ([562] 570-2455) residents can call to rat each other out. A complete list of restrictions is at www.lbwater.org.

And what are Los Angeles officials saying?

“I think there are a number of factors on the horizon and they will come to a head very quickly,” said David Nahai, president of the Department of Water and Power board. “At that point we’ll be able to make a decision. If all of a sudden we get mounds of snow in the Sierra or we get a great deal of rainfall, imposing an additional, onerous burden will be uncalled for.

“And what will we do next time? Will we be taken seriously?”

Nahai said he believes the call for voluntary conservation in L.A. is analogous to what Long Beach is doing, since Long Beach is not fining violators. Nahai said too that the supply situation is different for Los Angeles.

Both cities rely on groundwater wells and water purchased from the Metropolitan Water District, which imports water from Northern California and the Colorado River. But Los Angeles also owns a pair of aqueducts to import water from the Eastern Sierra.

Most provocatively, Nahai said that he’s open in the future to using higher water rates as a way to “encourage” people to stop wasting water. That’s not something you hear often from high-ranking water officials.

As for imposing restrictions, he said that is something the DWP board would do only after consulting with the mayor, who appoints its members.

Attentive readers may recall that when The Times earlier this summer asked Villaraigosa about his big water bills at his Mount Washington home in 2006, the mayor invoked the Caddyshack Doctrine and said that gophers chewed into the sprinkler system and caused leaks.

How bad is the water situation at the moment?

Generally speaking, many of the largest reservoirs in the state are at levels below where they usually are at the end of summer.

Let’s take a look at some numbers: Lake Shasta in Northern California, the state’s largest reservoir, was only 43% filled as of Wednesday — about 72% of its average capacity this time of year.

Oroville and San Luis reservoirs — which serve Southern California via the California Aqueduct — were at 46% and 28% of capacity, respectively, and are both well under their averages for this date. On the Colorado River, Lake Mead and Lake Powell were about half-filled, thanks to eight years of drought in the Rocky Mountains.

The DWP’s Crowley Lake in the Eastern Sierra was at 57% capacity through August, about 81% of its average for that date. On the other hand, the MWD’s massive Diamond Valley Lake was almost at 90% of its capacity.

Still, one reason that the region isn’t in deeper water trouble is, since there are so many reservoirs, the state and region have effectively built a multiyear buffer against drought. Equally important, it also has helped Los Angeles that conservation has taken hold in recent years.

As the accompanying chart illustrates, in 1980 the average Angeleno used 178 gallons of water each day. After rising in the 1980s, that number has fallen and was 141 in 2006, thanks to water-saving technology such as low-flow toilets, officials say. That’s a number that compares favorably with many other cities in the state — residents in the San Diego area used 173 gallons a day last year.

But here’s the problem: Per capita use may be down in L.A., but because of population growth, overall water use is up — from 192.7 billion gallons in 1980 to 193.6 billion in 2005 and 200.7 billion in 2006. If the population is going to keep growing — and if history is an indicator, it will — then per capita usage has to keep falling for total demand to stay flat.

If demand doesn’t, cities will either have to build more dams — ignoring the environmental consequences and that most of the best sites have been taken — or pray that the predictions about global warming are wrong and the snowpack actually increases in the 21st century.

Or, elected officials can draw a line in the sand and say, once and for all, that in a semi-arid climate, wasteful practices simply will not be tolerated.