A large reservoir in the Pacific Palisades, part of Los Angeles’ water system, has been rendered useless after raging wildfires destroyed thousands of homes and other buildings nearby.
Officials told the Times that Santa Ynez Reservoir was closed for cap repairs, emptying the 117 million-gallon water storage facility in the heart of the Palisades.
The revelation comes amid growing questions about why firefighters were running out of water while battling the blaze. Many fire hydrants on the high-altitude streets of the Palisades ran dry, and firefighters struggled with low water pressure while battling the fire.
Ministry of Water and Power officials said the unprecedented demand for water from the fires made it impossible to maintain pressure on fire hydrants at higher elevations.
Martin Adams, an expert on the city’s water system and former DWP general manager, said water pressure in the Palisades would have increased by Tuesday night if the reservoir had been operational. But it’s only temporary.
“Still, it would have ended up being a significant drop in pressure,” Adams said in an interview Thursday. “What about Santa Ynez?” [Reservoir] Was it helpful? Yes, to some extent. Would that have saved the day? i don’t think so. “
DWP officials acknowledged that the absence of a reservoir likely contributed to some of the pressure drop and depletion of fire hydrants in the upper Palisades.
However, a spokesperson for the utility said in a statement that DWP is still assessing the impact of the reservoir being taken offline and staff are conducting a root cause analysis.
A DWP spokesperson said: “Our main focus is to provide water supply across the city,” adding: “This system has been designed taking into account the bushfire scenarios we are experiencing. It’s nothing at all,” he added.
It is unclear when the reservoir first stopped working. Mr Adams said the breach in the cover had left water unavailable for “some time” and that DWP’s extensive storage and distribution infrastructure had continued to provide water to residents without interruption until this week.
Water pressure above the Palisades is maintained by three storage tanks, each capable of holding 1 million gallons. These tanks are part of a network of more than 100 locations across the city, located in series at high elevations in the coastal hills, and water is pumped up to the tanks to maintain pressure. Therefore, it flows down due to gravity.
By 3 a.m. Wednesday, all three tanks were dry.
DWP CEO Janice Quiñones said tanks were not being refilled fast enough and demand at lower elevations was hampering the ability to pump water to tanks at higher elevations. Ta. In one case, a DWP crew had to be evacuated as they tried to reroute water to refill a tank, officials said.
Quiñones said four times the normal water demand on the main line over a 15-hour period led to a drop in water pressure.
Had the Santa Ynez Reservoir been in use at that time, Adams estimated that demand could have tripled. Water in the reservoir would have fed fire extinguishing equipment, and a pumping station would have helped deliver water to storage tanks. But the reservoir “wasn’t going to last forever, and it wasn’t going to solve everything,” Adams said.
“We will end up in the same place,” he added. Adams cautioned that his claims were based on rough estimates and did not calculate specific impacts.
It remains unclear whether the reservoir had any meaningful impact on fighting fires of this intensity. Researchers said urban water systems like DWP are not designed to fight wildfires that sweep through entire neighborhoods.
The National Weather Service had warned of “life-threatening” winds before the fires broke out. Adams said DWP’s options were limited at the time. He noted that the fire danger is not limited to the Palisades, but exists throughout Los Angeles County.
If DWP had stored water in the reservoir with the cover torn, the water would have been legally undrinkable except in emergencies.
It’s also unclear whether the utility would have been able to add water quickly enough to be useful if it had chosen to start filling the reservoir over the weekend ahead of the extreme winds, Adams said.
“They would have bet that there would be a fire that would burn down the whole neighborhood, which of course no one had ever seen before,” he says. “That would have been a strange bet.”
The reservoir is one of several operated by DWP throughout the city, with a combined capacity of more than 4.1 billion gallons of water. More than 91 billion gallons can be stored across the city’s vast infrastructure, including water reservoirs. The 117 million-gallon Santa Ynez complex is one of several water sources in the area, including a large pipeline from Stone Canyon and the nearby Palisades Reservoir.
The utility has designed the system with redundancy and multiple water sources. The agency said in a statement that none of its infrastructure had failed on Tuesday or early Wednesday, but the “intensity” of the fire had disrupted the state of emergency in place.
DWP chief communications officer Joseph Lamarro said the reservoir is scheduled to reopen in February. He said maintenance was needed to comply with water quality regulations.
Adams said if the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been in normal use with the cover fully repaired, the water level would likely have been far below its maximum capacity.
In winter, water levels are intentionally kept low due to the seasonal reduction in water use by residents. If water remains in the reservoir, there is a risk that the chloramine in the disinfectant will decompose and the chlorine will evaporate, leaving behind ammonia that promotes bacterial growth in the water supply.
“If the water was just sitting there, it wouldn’t have been there,” Adams said. “That’s the battle for water storage. You have to keep the tanks and reservoirs fluctuating.”
Furious residents blamed a lack of water pressure for the destruction of 5,300 homes and buildings in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Malibu. Civic leaders such as Los Angeles City Councilman Tracy Park and developer Rick Caruso say the problem is a sign of poor infrastructure.
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