Nahai

Re "Please step away from the hose, sir," Aug. 16 In response to a recent inquiry, I am pleased to report that my most recent DWP bill showed a 28% reduction in water use over the same period last year. Over the last year, we have reduced our water use 27% when compared with the same 12-month period the prior year. We've cut our family water use -- like so many other Angelenos -- by reducing watering outdoors and taking simple steps to conserve water indoors. David Nahai Los Angeles The writer is the general manager of the DWP.

A business venture led by a friend and advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa outmaneuvered the city last year to buy land in Kern County that the Department of Water and Power wanted for a wind farm. The purchase of Onyx Ranch, which covers nearly 68,000 acres east of Bakersfield, highlights the dual roles played by J. Ari Swiller, an entrepreneur whose field, renewable energy, has received a significant boost from the mayor's pledge to make Los Angeles "the greenest big city in America."

The head of the nation's largest municipal utility resigned Friday, immediately igniting a debate over the process that will be used by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to find a successor. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power General Manager Ron Deaton, who forged a reputation as one of the most powerful bureaucrats at City Hall, sent a letter to city officials saying he was resigning "with a heavy heart" after working in city government for 42 years.

Boundless optimism was in ready supply Monday outside Department of Water and Power headquarters, where Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced that he was recommending attorney H. David Nahai to be the municipal utility's next top executive.

The Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County has agreed to pay more than $2.5 million to settle a dispute over a massive spill earlier this year that sent more than 800,000 gallons of sewage into the Pacific Ocean and coastal groundwater supplies. The agency's agreement with the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board and Santa Monica Baykeeper avoids what was expected to be a prolonged legal fight over the spill, which was the largest into the Santa Monica Bay in a decade.

The Marlborough School, where two of Jody Fay's daughters are enrolled, is the kind of educational establishment she always dreamed of for her children: The private, all-girls school in Hancock Park offers small classes, specialized courses, individualized attention from top instructors. Sending her girls there is a gift, Fay believes, that will last a lifetime. And it is a gift that does not come cheap.

As Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa prepares to pick the next general manager of the Department of Water and Power ? his sixth in three and a half years ? the massive utility is quietly backing away from his ambitious goal of generating 40% of its power from renewable sources by 2020. That shift, initiated under the leadership of First Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner, is only the latest at an agency marked by upheaval as it pursues the mayor's lofty environmental agenda. Since Villaraigosa took office in 2005, the nation's largest municipally owned utility has been in a state of churn.

Children's books are full of whimsical stories, heroic tales and colorful, mind-expanding illustrations, so it's a bit surprising that the decor of most kids' rooms hasn't changed from a pink or blue world of bunnies and teddy bears, with an occasional Speed Racer room thrown in for boys. But that may be slowly changing.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power can generate 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010, or seven years earlier than planned, but it will likely result in heftier bills, the agency said Tuesday. DWP board members said any increase is likely to be about $1 per month for the average homeowner, a rise that member H. David Nahai characterized as "affordable." As a result, the panel reached a consensus during a workshop Tuesday to move the deadline up to 2010.