DWP

Technically they are called drought busters, but the purpose is to focus on excessive water usage. The DWP is tasked with patrolling the city. LAT:

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Monday that he would reactivate a program of "drought busters" to preach the message of water conservation.

Department of Water and Power employees will roam the nation's second-largest city and issue friendly advice to residents they see wasting water.

Excessive lawn watering and sidewalk spraying are expected to be top targets.

They have a large task in front of them.

The mayor will unveil details of the program, which centers on having five to 10 people patrolling the city, at a news conference today at DWP headquarters. Los Angeles covers about 469 square miles.

That is a heck of a lot of miles per person.

That said, publicizing the effort should help persuade folks to follow the rules, lest they risk a fine.

The Mayor went with a close ally who shares his goals to increase the development of renewable energy sources to head the Department of Water and Power. LAT:

As he stood next to the mayor, Nahai vowed to put the utility at the forefront in the development of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind.

"I see the bright promise of greening this utility . . . and having Los Angeles become the center, and the leader, for renewable energy," he said.

Nahai said he would assemble a DWP management team to specifically focus on renewable energy.

Developing renewable energy sources is critical to our sustainability and it is great to see it getting such a high priority. The key will be:, does the city simply purchase not so green power from out of state and ship it in, or does it develop it locally, emphasizing both good jobs and a clean environment?

Meanwhile, the environmental community is thrilled to see Nahai get the gig.

Nahai's nomination has the backing of several key environmentalists, who have lobbied the mayor's office and at least two council members for his appointment.

Former DWP chief S. David Freeman, a Villaraigosa ally who is considered one of the city's leading environmentalists, said Nahai would restore the utility to its "glory days."

"We finally have got the mayor's vision, and the general manager's ability, on the same page," said Freeman, who is Villaraigosa's president of the city's Harbor Commission.

Today I had the high honor of taking over the Fire Dog Lake weekly labor issues blog post. Here is was was published thanks to Tula over at the AFL-CIO. It is an update to an earlier piece. Go read the comments!

The Daily News is well known for being virulently anti-worker. Basically, the paper takes the position that everyone should be making poor wages and grateful for having a job, no matter how dangerous. The paper supports privatization and job outsourcing and routinely editorializes against workers’ rights issues.

The other week, the paper published a breathless report about the salaries of Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) employees, publishing the name, job title and corresponding salary of all employees in a searchable online database, in tandem with an article about how much they make.

The editor went so far as to put up a note at the head of the article, urging people to read the article and “see how your pay compares with theirs.” This is a divisive attempt to try and depress the salaries of other city employees who are currently in contract negotiations with the city. The Daily News wanted to influence the bargaining process by publicly smearing the LADWP workers. (The paper has since pulled the article, but this link still includes the editor’s note.)

What they ended up doing was putting the workers—and all of us who depend on water and power systems—at risk. Typically when salary information is released for reasons of public transparency, only job titles are listed, not full names. By publishing names, the paper opened up a treasure trove of information for would-be saboteurs. Imagine how much damage someone could do by creating a fake badge, complete with real name and title to get access to our water and power system. Individuals already have attempted to do so in the past. In addition:

The Los Angeles Daily News is virulently anti-worker. They think everyone should be making poor wages and grateful for having a job, no matter how dangerous. This weekend they came out with a breathless report about the salaries of DWP employees, publishing the amount every single employee makes online. The editor went so far as to put up a note at the head of the article, urging people to read the article and "see how your pay compares with theirs". This is a divisive attempt to try and depress the salaries of other city employees who are currently in contract negotiations.

For years the DWP has under-hired workers. There are hundreds of jobs that go unfilled. The end result is an experience and aging workforce that therefor gets paid more than the average city employee. 40% of the workforce is near retirement age. That doesn't even begin to figure in the fact that many of these workers, particularly those who spend their days around electrical lines, work in extremely dangerous conditions.

The DWP also wants to hire another 768 workers to upgrade the power system, and it must compete for those workers against private utilities that can pay even more for skilled workers.

Brian D'Arcy, business manager of IBEW Local 18 that represents 8,080 DWP workers, defended the pay scale and said DWP workers' jobs are unlike any others.

"It's a much more industrial environment, much tougher work, more complicated and more skill that's involved. There's not a lot of room for error over here," D'Arcy said. "Even among the clerical workers, the predominant clerical is customer service representatives.

"I wouldn't want to do their jobs, take complaints."

[note: Brian is the co-chair of Working Californians]

Not many people would for bad pay. That is what the LADN is arguing for. They are encouraging a race to the bottom, where workers should compete to earn the least. They are attempting to publicly shame DWP employees for their salaries.

It was heartening to see comments coming into the LADN, pushing back against them for attacking workers. Here is one from nuttingcowboy:

For those of you who've never been close enough to live wires to hear them hum, or worked 40 to 100 feet off the ground let me give you a few clues. Electricity over 6,000 volts can jump up to an inch per 1,000 volts in dry air. The little lines at the top of the pole can carry up to 120,000 volts, the ones that feed the transformers carry 12,000 and your street lights run on between 6,000 and 7,600 volts. It takes less power to light a 25 watt light bulb than it does to kill a healthy person. Lineman expose themselves to hazards daily that would make any of the whiners in here wet themselves. (greatly increasing their exposure to shock) They work higher and deeper than most folks would go and you almost never know they're there. Now I'm no fan of the top heavy politically driven management of the DWP that's been using utility rates to circumvent Prop 13 for a generation; but before you whine about the IBEW workers making $100,000 a year (with overtime), climb that pole in the rain to restore service while the power's still on after you've already put in 11 hours that day. Or visit a friend in the hospital as they recover from the internal burns caused by electrocution; then you can complain about what hard working service people earn. Until then; when you turn on that light, you might thank an electrician.

Indeed.

This is yet one more example of an editorial agenda creeping into the LADN. The editors note at the top of the article borders on being unethical. There should be a clear line between the news and the opinion page.

The LAT is on it. Well, sort of...

The Los Angeles City Council returned from its three-week recess last week and wasted little time diving into difficult issues.

Even before lunch, four members -- Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel, Tom LaBonge and Jan Perry -- stepped outside the heavily air-conditioned City Hall to hold a news conference and take a provocative stand against power outages.

They decided to spend the remainder of the article on talks of weddings and foreign trips rather than the substance of the councilmembers' comments about the DWP.

Notice, they are trying to be snarky about the decision to talk outside in the heat. So informative.

The past year's low precipitation rate is starting to cause problems and has prompted Long Beach to "impose the region's most severe water restrictions in years". Water is about to get a lot more limited and thus expensive. LAT:

The measures, which took effect immediately after the city declared a water emergency, will force residents and businesses to change their behavior, including when they water lawns and how restaurants serve water to diners.

Regional water officials said Long Beach's action could be a precursor for other communities around Southern California as they grapple with the drought and a federal judge's ruling last month on water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The delta is a key source of imported water for the Southland, and officials believe the court ruling -- set to take effect this winter -- could reduce supplies by 30%.

This is not an isolated problem. The Metropolitan Water District, which gets about 60% of its water from the delta, is set to finalize water allocations in October. First they need to complete a study of the judge's decision. The limited water may increase costs and those will be passed on to consumers. The DWP seems headed in the same direction as Long Beach.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power may enforce mandatory water rationing similar to Long Beach's if the judge's decision is upheld and if the region has another bone-dry winter.

"Because water has been plentiful, with that came a certain degree of comfort and complacency," said David Nahai, president of the DWP board. "We have to jolt Angelenos out of that kind of mind-set. If things don't turn out favorably, we may return to [drought] protocols."

The new rules in Long Beach are reminiscent of the strict water policies adopted across California during the drought of 1990-91.

But officials said Southern California is in better shape now than during that drought because agencies have been aggressively storing water in recent years in reservoirs, which remain at healthy levels.

True, but if we get another dry winter, we will be in big trouble.

That reminds me. I need to talk to my landlord about the sprinklers in front of my building. Seeing them go off in the middle of the day really ticks me off.

That is the headline in today's LAT and deservedly so. Promises were not met, thousands of people went without power and they deserve an explanation for it. The LA City Council was asking for one yesteday, in order to make sure it never happens again. The Times called them "steamed" over the situation.

Council President Eric Garcetti said he felt that the city-owned utility misled the council when, on three occasions, officials vowed that they were better prepared to handle another heat wave than the one that crippled the power grid last year.

Instead, Garcetti said he spent much of the Labor Day weekend scrambling to get answers for residents in Silver Lake and surrounding areas who lost their electricity.

"The department looked us square in the eye and said they were prepared," Garcetti said at a City Hall news conference.

The other council members at the news conference -- Wendy Greuel, Tom LaBonge and Jan Perry -- said they now would demand monthly reports from the DWP on its infrastructure. They also want to see the department beef up its staff, but none detailed how to pay for doing so.

There are hundreds of jobs open at the DWP and thousands of pieces of equipment that need to be replaced. The DWP has been slow to act and it is great to see the Council using their leverage to force them to get a move on. Oversight is a good thing.

You know, it is great when public workers gets an article in the Los Angeles Times about being praised and greeted by smiling members of the public.

On the fourth day of misery, a big, white truck with a cherry picker at long last arrived on Avenue 52 in Highland Park to turn the lights back on. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power workers clambered out and started going through their gear. Neighbors stopped to look. A group of them gathered outside Doug and Teddy McDougall's house.

"Finally," said a smiling Edmond Legaspi, a father of four who has been avoiding the heat primarily by taking his children to the nearby Chuck E. Cheese's. "I've spent way too much money this week."

Too bad this could have been avoided if the DWP had actually invested properly in infrastructure. LA should not be having all of this equipment going offline, even when the system is strained. So, it is great that the workers are being praised and they should be for their enormous efforts to get the whole system back on line. But, this is yet another example of the fragility of the power system in LA.

This heatwave has been relentless. DWP workers are battling to keep the system going, however the intense heat in Southern California led to an all-time record power use before noon today. If people don't take measures to conserve electricity immediately, officials may be forced to issue a STAGE 3 POWER ALERT. This means ROLLING BLACKOUTS. Available capacity is extremely low right now and this may be their only option.

This is exactly what we warned about months ago. The DWP has not invested enough to keep the system going at a time of an heat wave.

This is the aforementioned video by the DWP workers, warning of a impending crisis. The power and water systems are so degraded and undermanned that Los Angeles' reliable power and clean water are at risk. This video mixes in local news reports, interviews with workers and energy experts to warn of the tenuous situation.

Watch it and pass it around to your friends and family. Use the email to a friend button on the bottom, and/or click on menu to grab the direct link to the video within the player itself.

The coverage of the IBEW video has been pretty good in the local press. Here is a clip from KNBC on the video and the protest at the DWP meeting. It also has some good commentary from Working Californians' co-chair Brian D'Arcy.

For background, see my post from yesterday.

That is the question being asked by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), who make up the vast majority of the DWP workers. They have stepped up the pressure this week on the DWP, to ensure that the DWP is prepared for the summer heat and able to respond to a major crisis.

For over a decade, DWP management has been reducing critical staff positions and neglecting routine maintenance. This has left DWP workers frustrated and angry. They are forced to work overtime to make up for staff shortages and then blamed because there is so much overtime. They are forced to use “band-aid” fixes on a system that badly needs real updating and repair. They know that the failure of management at the DWP to address longstanding problems means that the DWP is not ready for another heat wave, like the one that happened in 2006, let alone a major natural disaster or terrorist attack.

The IBEW workers have been highlighting this dangerous lack of preparedness in a series of press releases, direct activism and the production of a DVD exposing the problems at the DWP. They have been rewarded with a nasty editorial in the LA Daily News, attacking their activism. The paper does not disagree about the the problems at the DWP, but uses it to blame the workers for the problems.

But how about taking on some of the responsibility, maybe suggesting deferring workers' raises this year to hire more workers or turning down future raises so ratepayers don't have to take on another rate hike?

That would never happen because the union isn't really interested in the best interests of the public, just its own membership. So it's offensive for the union to wax moralistic about how unwisely the DWP spent its money when the union was endorsing those bad financial decisions all along.

It's time the IBEW started giving back to the city or the city started looking at alternatives to owning its own inefficient utility.

Aha! Now we know what the LA Daily News is really after, courtesy of that last line: privatization. That's not what voters want. They want the DWP they had in 1994. In 1994, the Northridge earthquake severely damaged the electrical and water infrastructure in Los Angeles. Despite the damage, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power workers swiftly restored safe drinking water and reliable power to the millions of Los Angeles residents who depend on them. The DWP won kudos from everyone for its swift and effective response of DWP workers to the disaster.

That would not be the case today. The DWP is just not prepared to respond to that type of crisis and the LADN admits it. It is the worst sort of cynicism to run a great public utility into the ground and then use that as an excuse to privatize it. What happened with the Enron scandal and the power crisis of the early 2000s proves that when private industry takes over, then ratepayers suffer.

As noted above, the salaries of DWP workers are higher largely because they are forced to work overtime due to the chronic understaffing. If the DWP was fully staffed, there would much much less need for overtime. And really, is the LADN literally asking that workers shoulder the cost of strengthening the system, rather than the consumers? Talk about ballsy. That will really work towards fixing the hiring crisis.

For more background on all of this, see the point by point response to a DPW press release, from which I grabbed some material for this post. Plus, the IBEW Local 18 press release. I am working on getting the DVD mentioned above into YouTube format and will get it up when I can.