California’s Mismanagement of Fire and Water

The more we learn about the Los Angeles-area wildfires, the more caution is called for when assigning blame. When the Santa Ana winds periodically sweep down from California’s eastern deserts and rip through the mountains surrounding the Los Angeles Basin at up to 100 MPH, sparks don’t go up, they go sideways, and turn entire canyons into blast furnaces.

Any criticism of the response to these fires, or of the inadequate preparation for these fires, has to recognize that sometimes even if authorities do everything they possibly can, it will not be enough. In the face of low-probability/high-consequence forces of nature, humans can only do so much.

On the other hand, the biggest ideas California’s politicians have come up with so far in response to worsening fires are symbolic. For example, after California’s devastating fires in the summer of 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars starting in 2035. After another round of fires in 2023, Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against five major oil companies, accusing them of knowingly misleading the public regarding the harm that fossil fuels would inflict on the climate.

These are distractions. If we are truly facing a climate crisis, then authorities ought to be doing more to prepare for whatever nature may throw our way. And if the moral basis for diversity is to erase group discrimination, then the path toward achieving that is to hire and promote based on individual qualifications. That would eliminate any speculation that the executive leadership at, for example, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the LA Fire Department, were hired based on the diversity boxes they check, instead of based on their competence.

The massive response has undoubtedly saved thousands of homes and hundreds of lives, but much more could have been done. For the last several years, why wasn’t top management at the LADWP and the LAFD demanding the state, county, and cities immediately send crews into the canyons and finally engage in fuel-reduction projects? More recently, once it was known that the Santa Ana winds were forecast, why wasn’t the LAFD more aggressively prepositioning tankers and engines? If more resources could have been there in advance, why wasn’t the chief of the LAFD urgently requesting that help in advance from other jurisdictions?

And why, in a city as big as Los Angeles, in a state as innovative and wealthy as California, hasn’t LAFD been exploring and deploying new technologies, such as nontoxic fire retardants or robots to clear overgrown grass, brush, and fallen limbs? Why didn’t LAFD chief Kristin Crowley demand the LADWP more thoroughly trim the trees around power lines, or better yet, move them underground in fire-prone neighborhoods, and demand the state find the funds to help pay for it?

There are systemic failures going back many years, which have combined to undermine California’s ability to prepare for and respond to fires. For example, the Santa Ynez reservoir, which could have supplied 300 acre-feet of water to the hydrants that ran dry in Pacific Palisades, has been empty since February 2024 while its cover has been under repair. This failure not only points to the larger problem of bureaucratic incompetence, but to the question of overall water availability.

The idea that there isn’t enough water is a myth. In 1985, California’s total urban water consumption  was 7.5 million acre-feet. That total rose each year to peak at nearly 10 million acre-feet in 2007. But since then, conservation measures have reduced that total back to 7.5 million acre-feet in 2023. Meanwhile, the population of Californians has increased from 26 million in 1985 to nearly 40 million today. A nation-leading 94 percent of Californians live in urban areas, and they are getting by with the same amount of water today as they did 40 years ago, despite the population growing by 65 percent.

This degree of conservation is an impressive achievement, but it comes at a price that is only paid when a huge amount of water is needed and the water isn’t there. Everything necessary to deliver water throughout Los Angeles is stretched to its limit. When more pumps and more pipes are needed to rapidly recharge hilltop tanks and reservoirs that are being emptied onto flames, the extra capacity is not there.

Largely misunderstood by the environmentalist zealots and conveniently ignored by the municipal bureaucracies that perpetually agitate for more budget allocations to feed their pension plans and homeless housing boondoggles is that having abundant water in an arid, densely populated megacity like Los Angeles is not an extravagance. It is necessary for resilience, not only to fight fires, but to compensate for any possible disruption to water supplies. Stripping all surplus out of the state’s capacity to store, treat, and distribute water can have devastating consequences.

But rationing is the mantra in Sacramento, and as a result, the only major reservoir built in the state in the last half-century is the 800,000 acre-foot Diamond Valley Lake, completed in 2000 by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The state’s only remaining serious proposal for more water storage is the beleaguered Sites Reservoir, an off-stream behemoth that would have a storage capacity of 1.5 million acre-feet. Mired in litigation, bureaucratic paralysis, endless redesigns, and renegotiations with myriad “stakeholders,” the Sites Reservoir may never begin construction.

In 2014, by a supermajority of 67 percent, California’s voters approved Proposition 1. It authorized $7.12 billion in general obligation bonds for two reservoir expansion projects and two new reservoirs. Of those, only the Sites Project is even still being considered. Both expansion projects were cancelled along with the other proposed new reservoir. They were all victims of endless litigation and escalating cost estimates.

The people want more water, but the authorities don’t want them to get it. California’s state legislators are now in the process of implementing SB 1157 and related legislation that enforces permanent water rationing on California’s households and businesses. This will require two meters to be installed on the property of every urban water consumer, one for indoor watering and one for outdoor watering. The indoor allotment shall be 42 gallons per person per day, and the outdoor allotment shall be negotiated with an official from the local water agency. This intrusive law will squander an estimated $7 billion to save a scant 440,000 acre-feet of water per year.

It’s not just city dwellers who are unwillingly subjected to water rationing. California’s farmers are, too. The State Water Project commenced operation in 1967, following a golden age of rapid construction of dams and aqueducts. In the 34 years from 1967 through 2000, farmers received 100 percent of their contracted water deliveries all but seven times. The reduced deliveries occurred only during two multi-year periods of severe drought, the first in the late 1970s and the second in the early 1990s. During the more recent 24 years from 2001 through 2024, farmers received 100 percent of the water they’d contracted for (and paid for) only once, in 2005. And contrary to popular rhetoric, there has not been less rain. Annual statewide precipitation data in California since 1895 (when measuring began) does not show a downward trend. In fact, the driest year ever recorded in California was over a century ago in 1923.

So if it isn’t worsening droughts that’s costing farmers their fields and Angelenos their hillside homes, why isn’t the California State Water Resources Board sending more water south through the California Aqueduct to irrigate fields and hydrate the Los Angeles Basin? It turns out, it’s for the fish.

For the last 20 years, and with increasing severity, water allocations have been reduced in adherence to the theory that the more water is allowed to flow through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and out to the ocean, the better the chances will be for endangered species of salmon and smelt to rebound and thrive. But there is no evidence this strategy is working. Sources familiar with the machinations of Sacramento’s water bureaucrats have a more cynical explanation for the cuts: It’s easy. When the director of the SWRCB instructs engineers to throttle down the pumps at the south end of the delta that supply water to the California Aqueduct, it requires nothing more than an email.

Actually helping the farmers and the fish requires hard work and hard choices. Efforts to replace habitat and develop more innovative hatchery programs cost money and take time. Often, even these projects invite litigation from environmentalist groups, and they are always burdened with layers of multi-agency bureaucracy which results in glacial rates of progress. And then there are the bass.

One of the biggest causes of salmon and smelt decline is the presence of alien predator fish. In 2013, the consulting firm FishBio, one of the most reputable sources of expert studies on the health of the delta, published an article called “The Delta: California’s big bass lake.” Bass were introduced to the delta in the 1870s and their population has exploded. Far hardier and more aggressive than salmon, these predators actually congregate around California’s salmon hatcheries and wait for the fingerlings to be released. Salmon that survive this initial feeding frenzy must then navigate their way downstream through a gauntlet of non-native predators, with only an estimated 3 percent making it to the ocean. But the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is one of the best sport fishery destinations for bass in the world. It is not at all clear that both of these species can thrive in the same place, and today, the bass are winning. Until something is done about this, all the water in the world isn’t going to help California’s endangered salmon.

If there isn’t enough water, there are too many trees. But the reason for these extremes is the same: a powerful environmentalist movement that wants to turn back the clock. Break the dams; release the river. Shut down the mills; save the trees. Less water for farmers; less board-feet from logging. At its peak in the 1950s, California’s timber industry harvested 6 billion board-feet per year. Today that total is down to 1.5 billion board-feet. At the same time, California’s firefighters got very good at stamping out forest fires. Today, trees and undergrowth are so crowded that everything is stressed. Light, soil nutrients, and water are now being shared by anywhere between two and six times as many trees and plants as these ecosystems were naturally evolved to support. Observations of excessive tree density are corroborated by numerous studies, testimony, and investigations by journalists.

The fires in Los Angeles are tragic reminders of how the prevailing political consensus in California remains oriented to scarcity even though the policies pursuant to that are not helping anyone. Less water for farmers has not helped the salmon rebound. Fewer trees for the mills has harmed our forests. And this scarcity mentality has not spared housing, despite rhetoric acknowledging the shortage. Bureaucratic obstruction and a bewildering avalanche of regulations have attacked California’s housing industry as thoroughly as they have attacked its farming and logging industries. But it’s all to save the planet. In the case of housing, the danger is “sprawl.”

The idea that there isn’t enough space for California to expand its urban footprint is also a myth. California has the most concentrated urban centers in the United States. The average urban density is nearly 5,000 people per square mile, and only 5 percent of California’s land is urbanized. As for “sprawl,” if California’s population was increased by 10 million people, and all of them lived, four per home, on quarter-acre lots, and an equal amount of space was reserved for roads, parks, schools, shopping centers, industrial parks, and the like, it would only consume 1,953 square miles. Which is to say that if California’s population increased from 40 million to 50 million people, and the entire additional 10 million people lived in so-called sprawling suburbs, it would only increase California’s urban footprint from 5 percent to 6.2 percent of the state’s land area.

This fact does not impress California’s ruling elite. Constructing the infrastructure to accommodate such growth is anathema to them, despite the fact that during the 1950s and 1960s these accomplishments were performed with ease. Instead, to save the planet, Californians must use existing infrastructure, consume the same amount of water, energy, and land as they did when the population was half the size it is today, and continue to live on this fixed allotment of amenities no matter how much more the population grows. Already a predictable procession of “urbanist” experts are coming forward to recommend higher-density zoning in the fire-ravaged areas, so that the developers who rebuild in these devastated neighborhoods – inevitably subsidized by taxpayers – can construct multi-family affordable housing.

Perhaps the choice Californians face will be clarified in the aftermath of these fires. They can continue down the path of rationing and scarcity, propping up special interests while raising the cost of living. Or they can embrace the politics of abundance in all of its shocking iterations: practical infrastructure investments instead of subsidized social experiments; responsible extraction of timber to restore healthy forests and bring down the cost of rebuilding material; tough and tedious habitat restoration and innovative hatchery projects to restore salmon and smelt populations while also sending more water to farms and cities; a California Department of Fish and Game that is willing to raise the limits on bass fishing; an explosion of homebuilding permits including on open land to allow private and unsubsidized developers to again be able to build homes people can afford while still making a profit.

Thanks to absurd building codes baked into state law, new homes have to have solar panels, interior fire sprinklers, and an EV charger circuit. The water heater, HVAC, and lighting all have to comply with ridiculously detailed requirements as set forth in California’s “Single Family Residential Compliance Manual,” courtesy of the California Energy Commission. Victims of this fire may expect construction costs to rebuild—not including permits and fees—to top $500 per square foot.

No attempt to describe what’s happened to Angelenos displaced by these firestorms can ignore the insurance nightmare. California’s FAIR plan, set up after insurance companies started pulling out of California in response to regulators preventing them from charging rates sufficient to pay claims without going bankrupt, is itself on the brink of bankruptcy. According to a January 10 report in the San Francisco Chronicle, FAIR’s reserves are reportedly around $385 million. Estimated damages now exceed $250 billion.

When it comes to the hills surrounding Los Angeles, residents face another choice. They can retreat, pretending the lost neighborhoods are a casualty of climate change and giving them back to their rightful owners – mountain lions and mesquite and all the other accoutrements of chaparral ecology. Or they can embrace resilience and rebuild.

Imagine a renaissance of new construction, bringing new neighborhoods and culture to the famed canyons, from the Hollywood Hills and Bel Aire all the way to the Palisades. Imagine new homes in the hills required to have swimming pools with a minimum capacity of 20,000 gallons, hooked to roof sprinklers and a suction line in the deep end connected to a standpipe at the street to allow firefighters a guaranteed source of water. Imagine homes with non-combustible exteriors, windows with tempered glass, fire-resistant shingles and roof underlayment, and attics with ember-resistant vents and sprayed with fire-retardant coating. Homes like this, along with more aggressive brush management on adjacent open land, turn battles with the Santa Anas into a fair fight.

Los Angeles can not only adapt to resist the inevitable fires and minimize the damage in the future. It can improve the climate by encouraging lawns. What heresy! But lawns percolate runoff, transpirate valuable moisture into the atmosphere, and reduce the urban heat island effect. Lawns can be the cornerstone of an abundant water policy that creates a well-hydrated urban landscape, increasing humidity and reducing the chances of fires. And when the fires come, all that lawn watering overcapacity is in place and ready.

The final piece in this puzzle is reimagining firefighting. Los Angeles and the surrounding cities should procure and test not only systems to remotely detect small fires before they become big fires, but also next-generation technologies such as firefighting drones and autonomous robots designed to march into canyons to cut and remove brush.

Ultimately, how this tragedy happened and who is to blame is far less important than what to do about it from now on. The hazards were known, as are the solutions. Political mismanagement is at the heart of the problem, and perhaps at last, California’s voters will hold their politicians accountable.

This article was originally published by National Review.

Edward Ring is the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, National Review, City Journal, and other media outlets. Ring’s undergraduate degree is in Political Science from UC Davis, and he has an MBA in Finance from USC. Ring is the author of several books, including “Fixing California – Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism” (2021), “The Abundance Choice – Our Fight for More Water in California” (2022), and “Solutions – Innovative Public Policy for California” (2024).