Opinion: That isn’t rain, that’s Angelenos crying over unchecked water waste

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Now the LA City Council may know how the rest of us feel.

The council was peeved enough to vote unanimously against what it regarded as a last-minute push by the mayor and the Department of Water and Power to set up surcharges on people who waste water during the drought. The deadline’s too hurried, the action too hasty, the council felt.

That’s pretty much how voters felt about the way the solar-panel measure, Measure B, was hustled through the city council and muscled onto the March ballot [it narrowly failed].

The difference is, the drought’s been going on for a long time. Trying to restrict water wasting and to reward water stinginess are nothing new, and any city council member who feels ambushed by this is either disingenuous, or bathing in bottled water.

Stricter drought measures -- rewards and punishment -- have been knocking around the city for more than thirty years, some adopted, some rolled back and modified, back and forth. If it’s just numbers they’re fighting over, and not the surcharges themselves, then, as fashionista Tim Gunn tells the quarrelsome contestants on ``Project Runway,`` ``Make it work.`` Summer’s waiting.