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Civic Circus with Ankur Patel breaks down local politics, with a weekly report on city, county, and state bureaucracies. This week on Uprising I’m going to take a look at one of our most precious resources: Water.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (the LADWP) is the largest publicly owned utility company in the country – it distributed 193 billion gallons of water to customers in the fiscal year 2009-2010. The LADWP has 114 water tanks and reservoirs; 7,238 miles of pipe; 59,605 fire hydrants… and is hoping to charge you more for your water starting in March.

That’s right, last Wednesday’s City Council meeting saw the council vote 9 to 4 to increase water rates by 3% under the guise of infrastructure improvements and water quality improvements. Now, these infrastructure improvements have been deemed mandatory by the Environmental Protection Agency and bring a cost of $600 million, but daily fines for not implementing the improvements could be as large as $25,000 per day per fine.

So the rate increase was made into an urgent issue. So urgent that the Rate Payers Advocate (RPA), the people’s independent analyst for rate increases proposed by the LADWP, didn’t have time to review the rate increase. In fact, the new Rate Payers Advocate, Frederick Pickel, an energy consultant, was voted into the position just one day before the council took on the vote to increase our water rates.

Many of the politicians on our City Council made promises to their constituents that they wouldn’t vote for a rate increase unless it was approved by the rate payer’s advocate first. By approving the RPA the day before they voted to increase the water rates, the politicians held true to their worthless rhetoric, but only by a technicality.

Additionally, the independent consultant selected to conduct a study on the necessity of the water increase (and found it necessary), was none other than PA Consulting. PA Consulting is a familiar member of the LA City family, the part of the family that does the lobbying.

On Wednesday, Council Members Englander, Koretz, Perry, and Zine voted no on the increase – Parks and Alarcon were absent. But because the rate increase is part of an ordinance, it actually takes 12 votes to pass, and will find itself in front of the City Council again this week. The next vote may make some of the behind-the-scenes political divides a little more visible to the public, as candidates attempt to line up their endorsements ahead of next year’s election.

The vote was openly talked about as one that sets the table for many more water rate increases in the upcoming year to pay for the future water quality improvements, but we all know that money often doesn’t go where it is supposed to.

With 4 no votes, this issue is one of the few times that the City Council finds itself in contentious waters. Will the rate hikes, coming at a time of economic struggle for the 99% of Americans, be used toward infrastructure development, or will our money continue to flow down the drain to the politically connected?