Blame Democratic Party incompetence for Palisades destruction

Why it lay empty as firefighters ran out of water is an indictment of federal overregulation and slavish Democratic adherence to bureaucratic processes that defy reason and common sense.

In 1961, after a fire fanned by the Santa Ana winds incinerated nearly 500 homes in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, city leaders did not blame oil companies or global warming. Instead, they came together and created a plan to fire-proof their city. Their plan included building 13 fire stations, installing hundreds of fire hydrants, buying helicopters for fire management, and building reservoirs and pumping stations. Among these was the Santa Ynez Reservoir, just above the Pacific Palisades.

For decades, the reservoir was filled to the brim without a cover, helping fill Pacific Palisades fire hydrants and harming no one. However, in 1996, Congress passed amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act that directed the Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen regulations against microbial contaminants such as cryptosporidium in surface water.

In 2005, the EPA found that microbial contaminants such as cryptosporidium cause 89,000 cases of “gastrointestinal illness” and contribute to 20 premature deaths per year. It decided that eliminating these dangers was worth the $1.45 billion annual cost. By 2009, the agency finally issued guidelines for its “Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule,” which included a requirement that water stored in surface reservoirs, such as the Santa Ynez Reservoir, be covered to prevent contamination from birds and wild animals. The 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez was then fitted with a cover for the first time in 2012. 

In January 2024, an employee of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power noticed a tear in the cover. DWP officials decided to keep the reservoir operational while the cover was fixed, but state officials overruled them, even though tests found no trace of cryptosporidium in the water, which was the reason the cover was put on the reservoir in the first place.

Despite the water being a danger to no one, state and city officials decided to drain the reservoir and solicit a bid for repair of the cover. A contract was not awarded until November 2024, 10 months after the tear was noticed and eight months after the reservoir was drained. The city still doesn’t know when the work will be done and when the reservoir will be filled. Not that it really matters anymore, as the neighborhood the reservoir was built to protect has since been burned to the ground.

Apologists for Democratic Party incompetence may claim the water in the Santa Ynez Reservoir wouldn’t have saved the whole neighborhood. But without it, the neighborhood only had three 1-million-gallon water tanks. It is hard to see how 117 million gallons of water normally stored in the reservoir wouldn’t have made a huge difference.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Years ago, a far more resilient generation of Californians spent wisely and built infrastructure to harden their defenses against fires fueled by Santa Ana winds. But a Democratic president signed a law that made it needlessly more expensive and difficult to maintain that defense, and a Democratic governor, a Democratic mayor, and a Democratic city council failed to ensure the infrastructure was operational when it was needed.

Maybe instead of obsessively trying to stop the climate from changing, which is a fool’s errand while China is building hundreds of new coal plants a year, Democrats should take care of the infrastructure needed to keep their constituents safe from weather patterns that have existed since before the city of Los Angeles was built.