Those of us in the water business look at what's happened to electricity, and we shudder.

Aside from a few insiders and those with something to gain, not many Californians knew or cared about electricity deregulation back in 1996. It passed the Legislature without a single dissenting vote.

Now customers are burning up the phone lines in San Diego, where rates have more than doubled.

Calling your legislator isn't going to bring back the days before deregulation.

It's not going to undo the damage that has been done locally. In the South Bay, Southern California Edison provided reliable power at a reasonable price, peering into the future and providing additional power as it was needed.

Deregulation turned Edison into a "power transportation" company. It sold off its power generating plants to private interests.

Edison buys megawatts on the open market, where haywire prices peaked at $500 per megawatt in the final days before the government imposed price controls last week. There has been no San Diego-style rate increase yet, but the shock will come next year.

As for reliability, California went through four straight days of Stage Two alerts and threats to cut our power as electricity reserves plunged to 5 percent.

Believe it or not, some of the same politicians responsible for electricity deregulation are trying to deregulate our water supply. When it comes to water, calling your state legislator might still do some good.

I represent Torrance on the Board of Directors for the publicly owned and operated Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which serves 17 million people at 27 public agencies. For 72 years, we have provided a very reliable supply at a reasonable cost. We've been increasingly successful at conserving and reusing water to supplement supplies imported from the Colorado River and the Bay-Delta near Sacramento.

We charge about $1.30 for 1,000 gallons of treated tap water (a half-cent per liter) and don't expect to raise our rates for the next three to four years. Compare that to the cost of bottled water in the supermarket.

Imagine a private company that would spend a billion dollars so that its customers would buy less of its product. At MWD, our investments in conservation and reclamation products allow Southern California to use the same amount of water as it did 25 years ago, even though the region has gained 5 million people.

MWD has no profit motive. In contrast to the shameful inability of the electricity industry to meet surges in demand, we have just completed Diamond Valley Lake in the Hemet area, which will provide a six-month supply for Southern California if an emergency cuts off our outside supplies. We're investing in desalination research for ocean and brackish water, looking ahead to 10 to 20 years when it might be an affordable solution.

But funding for those efforts would be threatened by a few legislators who would allow private water marketers to transport water through our system at a rate that doesn't cover the costs of our conservation and recycling programs.

Turning back the clock on energy deregulation is like trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Don't let our water system be the next one to take the plunge. Tell our lawmakers that profit margins shouldn't be the deciding factor in whether drinkable water flows from our faucets at a reasonable price, or whether it flows at all.

Bill D. Wright represents the city of Torrance on the board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

See March 2001 news release