Los Angeles Department Of Water And Power

After nearly two years of fending off criticism from ratepayers and his own employees, H. David Nahai stepped down Friday as head of the nation's largest municipally owned utility, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Nahai, 56, said in a letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa that he would leave immediately to take a position as an advisor to former President Clinton's climate initiative to battle global warming. But well before he announced his new job, the Iranian-born environmentalist and attorney found himself under fire on several fronts.

Even with the recent batch of rainstorms, the ongoing drought has grown so severe that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday called for increased citywide water restrictions and the adoption of a tiered water rate that would punish Department of Water and Power customers who fail to conserve. Sprinkler use would be restricted to two days a week under the proposal and, by summer, could be cut to one day a week if the drought continues, Villaraigosa said.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reported Monday that water demand reached a 32-year low for the month of June, dropping 11% compared with the same period in 2008. Jim McDaniel, the senior assistant general manager of DWP's water system, said hard work by ratepayers is paying off. Though experts said June was on average 4 degrees cooler than normal, McDaniel attributed the low demand to the new water restrictions.

One month after the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power barred residents from watering on days other than Mondays and Thursdays, city officials are looking at loosening the law for the city's parks department and other large landowners.

They've talked about -- and fought over -- the six-acre patch at the edge of the Silver Lake Reservoir for nearly a decade. Should the flat, grassy area created in the early 1950s when a stagnant reservoir cove was filled in with dirt be turned into a park? Or should it remain a fenced-in habitat for wildlife?

Computer equipment containing the private financial data of every employee of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was stolen earlier this week, prompting the utility to pay for a credit monitoring service for each of its 8,275 workers. DWP General Manager H.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other municipal leaders unveiled a green energy initiative Tuesday by the city's utility that they predict will create as many as 400 union jobs over the next three years to install and maintain solar panels on city buildings and other structures around Los Angeles. Villaraigosa promoted the new effort as part of a larger clean-growth strategy during an appearance atop a Los Angeles Convention Center parking garage with solar panels as a backdrop.

About 50 stern-faced mothers who work at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power confronted the agency's board Tuesday and won the ability to keep using lactation services provided as a benefit of employment. Some members of the group, organized by their union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18, lined the boardroom holding signs that read: "Mayor Villaraigosa's appointee: Nick Patsaouras is anti-women."

When the Los Angeles City Council gave preliminary approval to electrical and water rate hikes last week, the debate focused almost exclusively on a series of modest, single-digit increases planned between now and summer 2009. In reality, electricity bills will go up at least 23% over a four-year period, thanks to the Department of Water and Power's decision to ask ratepayers to absorb the higher cost of natural gas and the switch to other environmentally friendly forms of energy.

A top executive hired to run day-to-day operations at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has come under fire as the latest example of the revolving door between city government and businesses that seek lucrative public contracts. Before returning to the DWP in December after a six-year absence, Raman Raj, who earns $247,000 annually as the utility's chief operating officer, worked most of last year as a consultant for at least three DWP contractors.