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The Beverly Hills City Council last night rejected a water rate increase presented by the city’s Public Works staff that would have had a major impact on residents of West Hollywood’s Westside.

But a rate increase is not off the table. The council asked the staff to make a number of changes in the proposed increase including devising a different rate structure. It also raised concerns about how water charges would be allocated among residents of multi-unit buildings where individual condos or apartment don’t have their own water meters.

The Beverly Hills Drinking Water Enterprise (BHDWE) supplies water to West Hollywood residents and businesses in an area whose approximate boundaries are Doheny Drive on the west, Sunset Boulevard on the north, Flores Street on the east and Beverly Boulevard on the south. The rest of West Hollywood is served by the L.A. Department of Water and Power (DWP).

The two water districts that serve Encinitas both fell short of their conservation mandates in November, and cumulative savings are below their goals.

Residents in the San Dieguito Water District cut back 9.2 percent in November, bringing the district’s cumulative reduction over six months to 20.6 percent, according to a recently released report from the State Water Resources Control Board. The state has mandated that the district slash 28 percent.

Due to the crippling drought, California in June began requiring that water agencies conserve. The mandate is scheduled to expire in February, but could be extended.

November marked the second month in a row that Californians failed to meet the governor’s emergency water conservation order amid a historic drought.

Regulators announced Tuesday that residents used an average of 20.3 percent less water in November when compared with the same month in 2013, the baseline year for Gov. Jerry Brown’s mandate. His benchmark is a minimum savings of 25 percent.

California water conservation

The program began June 1 and is scheduled to last through February, with some type of extension eyed for much of the rest of this year.

There’s been a lot of progress at the Salton Sea in the last year, but local officials and activists aren’t taking anything for granted.

In what’s becoming a regular ritual, representatives from the Imperial Irrigation District and other groups trekked to Sacramento on Tuesday to make the case for action on the Salton Sea. They urged state officials to fulfill their promise to pay for fixes at California’s largest lake, and to support geothermal energy development, which many see as critical to generating restoration funds.