Water Forecast Has a Thin Silver Lining : Rain: Reservoirs are below last year’s levels, but even a moderately wet winter will avert rationing, experts say.

With some luck as well as some rain, water officials said Thursday, California should make it through the next year without rationing or other Draconian measures to curb consumption.

Virtually all of the state’s water supply arrives in winter storms that blow in off the Pacific between Oct. 1 and April 30, and although this season has gotten off to a drier than normal start, officials are hopeful that the Farmer’s Almanac prediction of a wet winter will come true.

This has been one of the driest years in state history, and reservoir levels are well below normal, according to Gary Hester, chief hydrologist with the state Department of Water Resources. At this time last year, reservoir levels statewide were an estimated 111% of normal. But this year, storage is less than 75% of normal and dropping.

“The cushion we had from a great year in 1993 is now gone,” Hester said. “We’re now down to levels just slightly better than what we had in the drought years.”

But Hester and other officials said that even a moderately dry winter should provide enough water to get through the year.

That is, they said, as long as Californians continue to close the gap between what they need and what nature provides by continuing the voluntary conservation ethic that was embraced during the seven-year drought that ended in 1992.

On Thursday, officials from state, regional and local water agencies asked for the public’s cooperation in maintaining the current high level of voluntary conservation.

“We should be in fairly good shape, providing citizens keep up their good habits,” said Stanley Sprague, general manager of the Municipal Water District of Orange County.

Overall, Southern California water customers have continued to keep their water use about 20% to 30% below the levels of the early 1980s, according to officials from a variety of water agencies, including the Metropolitan Water District, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and the Municipal Water District of Orange County.

Much of that conservation is attributable to changes in plumbing, rather than changes in habits, according to Gerry Gewe, a water resource specialist with the DWP. In Los Angeles alone, nearly 500,000 low-flow toilets have been installed since the seven-year drought began.

“That saves water without changing lifestyles,” Gewe said.

But just in case the winter brings more nice beach weather instead of badly needed precipitation, officials at the Metropolitan Water District have devised a drought contingency plan that includes mandatory cutbacks.

“It’s not a plan we are ready to implement now,” said Jay Malinowski, director of Public Affairs for the MWD. But the plan will be presented to the MWD board of directors for approval next week “as a prudent step in contingency planning,” Malinowski said.

The plan includes a series of steps, with cutbacks to retail agencies that serve residential and business customers as the last step.

If water supplies fail to materialize, the MWD, which supplies about 60% of all the water used in the six-county Southern California region, would first suspend ground water replenishment and storage programs. In turn it would tap emergency underground storage supplies, purchase up to 100,000 acre-feet of water from the state water bank and then reduce deliveries to agricultural customers.

“Our least favorite thing is rationing,” Malinowski said. “We don’t think we’re going to get there.”