The LA Times article here describes a very-Californian, three-way, Catch-22 that impaired better water distribution:
1.) A number of water projects that might have helped with putting out the fires have been delayed, due to high costs, aggravated by the demands of environmental compliance;
2.) The people of Malibu, Topanga Canyon, and nearby areas have resisted paying higher water rates to fund these water projects because they already pay high water rates. What the local people really want is a slower pace of development, in part, because faster development increases fire dangers.
3.) Poor water distribution gives the locals the leverage they need to slow down development. Thus, there is no pressure from the locals to improve water distribution even as the infrastructure decays with time. Danger slowly creeps upward.
Probably what would help would be an external fund, maybe run by the state, to help accelerate water projects in very-fire-prone areas to completion. I'm sure there are plenty of places where improvements should be made.
Please note, better water distribution helps only at the margins. There is no municipal water system in the world that would suffice to stop or even slow down these Santa-Ana-wind driven fire tsunamis. Still, more water would have helped firemen save houses at the edges of the fire.
I think people need to stop heaping blame on the politicians; particularly state-level politicians like Gavin Newsom. The hard decisions are not made at his level. Try Los Angeles County instead. Assigning blame here is really nuanced - a classic case of systems failure. In some ways, these fires remind me of the sinking of the Titanic. Everywhere you look, you'll find earnest, slightly-blinkered people doing their very best. Just like with the Titanic.
One nice thing about government in California is that the politicians really do listen to the voice of the people, as expressed through their Neighborhood Associations. Sometimes, though, the righteous, self-governed people get things wrong, and that's when the trouble starts:
The lack of water has been a concern at both the city and county levels, and has come under scrutiny since the wildfire broke out Jan. 7. L.A. city officials, for example, have scrambled to explain why the 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir was left empty for repairs.
But thousands of pages of state, county and municipal records reviewed by The Times show the disaster was years in the making. Red tape, budget shortfalls and government inaction repeatedly stymied plans for water system improvements in parts of the county like Malibu and Topanga outside the city of L.A. — including some that specifically cited the need to boost firefighting capacity.
...Plans to build tanks that would have provided more than 1 million gallons of additional water storage in fire-ravaged Malibu and Topanga were left on the drawing board.
Replacements of “aging and severely deteriorated” water tanks were postponed, according to county records, along with upgrades to pumping stations and “leak prone” water lines in the two communities, whose water system is run by the county’s Department of Public Works.
A plan to build a new connection to draw water from a neighboring water system during emergencies has also been delayed for years.
...In 2019, the county compiled a new “Priority Project List” that included several action items left over from six years prior. The 13 upgrades would have cost about $59.3 million, and all but one was scheduled to be complete by September 2024.
One of the projects considered most essential, according to city of Malibu records, was a planned connection to the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District that the county estimated in 2019 would cost about $4.1 million.
...The lack of progress on many of the plans has been driven in part by residents’ opposition to potential increases to their water rates, already among the highest in the county. Ensuring compliance with environmental regulations can also take years, according to Pestrella, the county’s public works chief.
Anti-development sentiment has been an especially limiting factor in Malibu, where Pestrella said the city has at times used insufficient water access as an excuse to restrict new construction.
“The community is not demanding it,” he said when asked why so many projects have failed to move forward.
“They’re not pro-development. They’re still utilizing the water system as a way to restrict development in Malibu. That’s the bottom line. That’s why it’s not happening at the pace it could happen at.”
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