‘Devastating’: California had record rainfall last year, but lacked the infrastructure to store it
California has no shortage of water, but firefighters battling relentless fires in Los Angeles are facing scarce resources to keep up with the blaze, which threatens thousands of lives, homes, land and wildlife.
Meanwhile, critics protest Governor Gavin Newsom He urges “not to play with politics”, claiming that the reason for this is political mismanagement.
“It’s all political,” said Edward Ring, director of water and energy policy at the California Policy Center, a think tank, in an interview with Fox News Digital. “The whole reason is political, and they’re ironically politicizing it by saying it’s about climate change, which is the political wedge they use all the time, and it’s really one of the smallest factors that’s causing it.”
Experts place the blame primarily on the state’s management of forestry and a lesser-known problem, the state’s aging water resources system. Available in California reservoirs can only hold so much water, and many were built in the mid-20th century.
Last year, the state recorded record rainfall following an atmospheric river event, but the existing water infrastructure has struggled to handle the sudden inflow. A significant part of this rain fell into the ocean.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass tour the Pacific Palisades central business district as the Palisades Fire continues to burn on January 8, 2025 in Los Angeles. (Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
Ring also pointed to “environmental extremists” in the state who are pushing for tougher regulations, such as the Endangered Species Act, which requires freshwater to flow through rivers to the Pacific Ocean to protect endangered delta smelt and salmon. Mandates limit how much water can be diverted to storage, even in wet years.
“There’s a lot of water,” Ring argues, but the main problem in getting water south to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California cities isn’t infrastructure capacity—it’s environmental policy. He points to a “consensus among bureaucrats and board directors” overseeing California’s water management that favor keeping more water in rivers to support endangered fish.
“That’s about as true as it gets,” he said, but despite these efforts, salmon and smelt populations have not recovered. In addition, there is growing concern that sturgeons will soon be classified as endangered.
“These endangered fish are used as a reason to release water in the rivers.
Khaled Fouad and Mimi Laine hug as they check on a family member’s property destroyed by the Eaton fire on January 9, 2025 in Altadena, California. Fueled by strong Santa Ana winds, the Eaton Fire has grown to more than 10,000 acres and destroyed many homes and businesses. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Urban areas such as Los Angeles have highly developed drainage systems that deliver stormwater directly to the ocean. They were originally designed as flood prevention rather than reservoirs, so this presents an additional challenge for the area.
“They’re bringing water from the California aqueduct and they’re importing water into Los Angeles and they haven’t brought enough water there and they’re running out of reservoirs,” Ring said. “But the biggest problem, because you won’t even drain a half-full firefighting reservoir, is the water infrastructure. in Los Angeles, and water infrastructure in Los Angeles has been neglected. The reason for its neglect is that they ask for money for other projects.”
“The bottom line is that they didn’t spend money on it and justified it by saying we should use less water,” he continued. “And so they incentivize people, and in some cases ration, even force people to use less water. And you end up not having a very robust system.”
A former California lawmaker recently said the state’s lack of water infrastructure is “destroying California.”
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An evacuating woman reacts after high winds caused devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area on Jan. 8, 2025, in the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California. (David Swanson/Reuters)
California voters passed Proposal 1 Also known as the Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014, it authorizes $2.7 billion in bonds to increase the state’s water storage capacity by building new reservoirs and groundwater reservoirs. As of January 2025, Prop. No new reservoirs have been completed under 1.
“And here all these years have passed and we haven’t seen a shovelful of dirt to move to get the project going,” Dahle said. “The project just wasn’t funded and we had a $100 billion surplus and we didn’t fund it. I think the frustrating part for most Californians is that we had the money and we said, ‘Don’t do anything about it.’
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The largest of the wildfires, the Eaton fire near Altadena and Pasadena, has burned more than 27,000 acres, according to Cal Fire as of noon Thursday.
Reached for comment, Newsom’s spokeswoman Izzy Gordon told Fox News Digital: “The governor is focused on protecting people, not getting involved in politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”
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