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As Tucson's lone "water cop," Tracey Berry liked to describe himself as a guy who would leave his family sitting in a car for a weekend hour if he spotted a blown-out sprinkler head illegally spewing water.

But this month, Berry left that job enforcing city laws against water waste to take another Tucson Water position. His departure as water conservation specialist and half-time water cop leaves an enforcement void that will last through the summer, when water use and public complaints about water waste typically peak.

That gap is symbolic of a series of problems that have plagued the city's program to enforce its 23-year-old law forbidding anyone from letting water run down the street or otherwise squandering it.

Staff shortages, the city's failure to fine violators, problems with repeat offenders, and uncertainty about whether the program really works have brought criticism.

The mayor is now calling for changes to the program, as are a council member, several members of the public, Berry's predecessor as water cop, and, in one case, Tucson Water Director David Modeer.

"Our standards in the past may have been OK, but we're in for a long drought and we've got to change our ways," said Mayor Bob Walkup.

Seeing water run down the street virtually every time he drives angers musician Steve Grams, who lives on Tucson's North Side.

"The people are being so selfish. I mean, we don't have enough water, yet we keep having people move here and that's fine, but why do we have to waste water?" Grams said.

Until Berry's replacement arrives, other Tucson Water employees will pitch in as temporary water cops. They'll be led by the city's six Zanjeros (Spanish for water managers), who also go to customers' homes and identify leaks. But overall, enforcement against water waste will be reduced.

The laws against water waste are aimed at making sure that a desert city squeezes every possible drop out of a limited supply. Berry's departure "comes at the least opportune time for us, when we're going into the hottest, driest part of the year," Modeer noted.

The city probably will not have a replacement until September, because of the typical time lag in filling government vacancies, officials said. The city must first advertise for and interview candidates.

But the timing of Berry's departure was unavoidable, Modeer said, because he now fills another key job, as Tucson Water's grounds maintenance supervisor.

The city gets 10 to 20 complaints each week from people saying they saw water waste. Officials have investigated about 400 cases of purported waste since November 2003.

By far the biggest sources of waste complaints are apartment complexes and strip centers and other businesses, many with steep, grass-covered slopes running along the sidewalks and street. Together, commercial and apartment complexes use about 42 percent of Tucson Water's water deliveries.

But because the city doesn't collect its records of waste cases in a database or other repository, nobody knows how successful the program is in deterring repeat violators. The city puts each complaint file on water waste into the billing file of the individual home or business.

Officials say, however, that repeat violations do occur because many commercial and residential irrigation systems are poorly designed and not easily fixed. Contacting property owners is also difficult because many owners live out of state.

Four years ago, Tucson Water stopped fining waste law violators, to emphasize public education. That approach contrasts with successes that Las Vegas and Albuquerque officials say they've achieved by regularly fining repeat violators.

Today, Berry's predecessor, Richard Verduzco, and Mayor Walkup are critics of the no-fine policy, and it may be changed.

Berry, whose old job paid $44,000 a year, said some complaints about water waste fell through the cracks because because he worked only 20 hours a week on waste issues. The city has just created two other full-time "water cop" positions that also probably won't be filled until September.

On Berry's next-to-last day as water cop on June 8, he visited two locations of water waste that illustrated its double-sided nature: waste due to a simple problem, and waste due to broader problems with irrigation systems.

In the first case, near South Mission and West Silverlake roads, a leaky underground pipe was streaming water into the street and creating a pond 24 inches deep near the Pima County jail complex. The Sheriff's Department quelled the problem quickly after Berry called, by turning off the water and calling in its landscaping service to repair the leak.

More complex was the situation at 1345 S. Kolb Road, where water was pooling and streaming across the Fountain Village apartment complex parking lot. Teenage resident Maize Garcia said she often sees water shooting from busted sprinkler heads after people kick them.

Melissa Medeguari, the complex's property manager, said she would replace grass with rocks in some sloped areas, change the irrigation system's timing, or try to install a different sprinkler system to slow the flow of water onto the lot. She acknowledged that kids break sprinkler heads all the time, adding, "But right away, people report it to our office. I've worked at different properties and it's all the same."

Gene Burns, a Tucson naturopathic physician and chiropractor, said he gets frustrated watching Modeer and the mayor tell people on television that they should use less water when brushing their teeth, when he sees water spraying sidewalks and streets when he drives by offices and apartment complexes.

It also annoys Burns to drive by cemeteries and schools and watch sprinklers pouring water on the grass at midday, which is legal but not recommended by water officials because it's the time when evaporation is the highest.

"The point is, they've got a water cop and what are they doing about it?" asked Burns, who owns the New Life Health Center chain of health food stores.

Walkup, a Republican, and Karen Uhlich, a freshman Democrat on the City Council, agreed changes are needed in the waste program although they aren't ready to propose specifics.

"I hear from people that there is a real desire to have a sustainable, healthy community," Uhlich said. "We cannot have that if we squander resources."

Tucson's first "water cop," Verduzco, took the lead in enforcing the water waste law from the time it passed in 1983 until leaving in 2000. Today, as citation inspector, he enforces a separate law forbidding water theft by customers who run their water illegally after the city has disconnected their service for nonpayment of bills.

But he still looks for water waste by regularly stopping at various businesses and apartment complexes en route from his East Side home to his Downtown office. Repeatedly, he sees and photographs water running down the street from a half-dozen or so sites along East Broadway, he said.

He opposes the city's policy not to fine offenders, even repeat violators. He didn't issue that many fines during his water cop days — 27. But whenever fines were issued, "we never had compliance problems with those properties again," he said last week.

In June 2000, the City Council raised the allowable fines to $250 for a first offender who fails to correct a violation and at least $500 to repeat offenders.

But at about the same time, Tucson Water stopped fining violators because, Modeer recalled, he wanted to emphasize public education instead. In fact, the reluctance to fine people is one reason the city has had only one water cop, he said.

"We had so many people moving to town who weren't even aware of the ordinances," he said. "Granted, ignorance of the law was no excuse, but we were trying to get out the ethic of conservation. The intent of the program is not to get money, but to get people to conserve water."

Overall, he thinks the city's water conservation efforts are working, since the typical household today uses about 274 gallons of water compared to 324 gallons per day a decade ago.

But Modeer also agrees that "now is the time we need to go to the stick a little bit more."

One possibility is to charge repeat violators fees that are added to their water bills, instead of fines, which would allow Tucson Water to collect the money without going to court. Getting this change through City Hall, a utility spokesman said, will probably take until next summer.

● To report cases of water waste, call Tucson Water at 791-3242.

● You can also tell the Star. If you see an example of excessive water waste, call our news tips line at 573-4209 and we'll check it out.

● Laws on water use in Tucson and other cities in the Southwest. Page A10