Mayor Tony's Gopher Issue

Mayor Villa (will his soon-to-be-ex-wife really let him keep the Raigosa?) is proving to be quite the crafty politician this summer, weaseling his way through some rather public, personal crises.

We can now add the Gopher Issue to the list of Tony V's lamest and greatest excuses.

In spite of his call this summer for Angelenos to consciously conserve 10% more water, the LA Times scoured DWP records and found that the mayor and his family used almost twice as much water as typical property owners with similar-sized lots in their Mount Washington home before moving to Getty House. The mayor's explanation?

Villaraigosa blamed his comparatively high water use at Mount Washington on gophers that chewed holes through a rubberized drip-irrigation system installed beneath his hillside backyard to protect against erosion and to ostensibly save water.

Even worse was City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's water usage -- despite being cut off at one point for his failure to pay the bills. That's honest Rocky for ya.

Here are 49 water-saving tips.

photo by kwc via flickr.