An even better reason than claiming drought:

‘The additional revenue will be used to “cover the costs of importing and treating water, as well as finance climate change adaptations to infrastructure and make up for declines in revenue due to widespread conservation efforts,” according to the Times.’

Yes… All that conservation we did (if you did of course), earned us more expensive water.

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/water-rates-taxes-to-increase-l-a-times-reports/