First, we investigated the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's extensive land holdings in rural Inyo County.
The latest series installment brings the focus back to Los Angeles and examines LADWP's earthquake preparedness.
READ MORE →
This reporting was supported in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. This is the third story in a series examining the impact of Los Angeles’s extensive landownership in the Owens Valley. You can read other stories here.
Tucked in a remote corner of Imperial County lies an artist colony on the foot of a dying lake. Art installations litter the horizon as this former ghost town teeters back from the brink. Underneath the ruins and the art made from them lies the San Andreas Fault – a sleeping giant. This corner of Southeastern California, known as Bombay Beach, is the predicted epicenter of “the Big One.”
The federal government, the state of California and local governments have spent nearly two decades preparing for this earthquake. The USGS’s 2008 ShakeOut report, a critical planning document, shows that Southern California’s water infrastructure, aqueducts built in the early 1900s through the 1960s, are particularly vulnerable.
Collectively, the four aqueducts that slake L.A.’s thirst cross the San Andreas fault zone, in 32 places, according to the ShakeOut scenario. This leaves Angelenos’ water supply uniquely vulnerable to a major San Andreas earthquake. In an average year 88% of L.A.’s water supply is brought in through these aqueducts. Earthquake experts estimate the region is about 150 years overdue for what’s known as “the Big One.”
The Southern Andreas Fault runs inland from the northeastern shore of the Salton Sea in Imperial County north through to Kern County. The four aqueducts supplying the bulk of L.A. water belong to three different water systems, each managed by a different organization:
Metropolitan Water District sells water to municipalities, including LADWP, from the California and Colorado aqueducts.
In the aftermath of a major San Andreas quake, L.A. could be cut off from the Los Angeles Aqueduct and major water supplies for more than a year. A decade ago, a city report said L.A.’s backup reserves are insufficient. Despite this, major projects to make L.A.’s water supply more secure have not been started, and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) could not provide a timeline for when they would be completed. When pushed for a plan, LADWP said it will tap into reservoirs owned by other water distributors that are not seismically sound, and the contaminated San Fernando basin. The agency is also decades behind producing recycled water at a large scale for the City.
More than 100 publicly available documents reviewed by AfroLA detail how the sole provider of water to the City of Los Angeles failed to make critical improvements to emergency water systems for more than a decade. LADWP bond documents, policy memos and technical reports indicate that the department has known about weaknesses in their water conveyance systems since at least 2014, but some failures were exposed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
AfroLA’s 2024 investigation into LADWP’s dealings in the Owens Valley uncovered the implications of how much of L.A.’s water supply comes from 300 miles away. Previous reporting on LADWP focused on exposing the human and economic toll the extraction of water for L.A. takes on Eastern Sierra communities. Most of L.A’s water is imported through aqueducts, including the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which runs through the Owens Valley.
So, what might happen? The ShakeOut report paints a grim picture.
In Southeastern California, the San Andreas Fault’s spine runs from Imperial County’s Bombay Beach through the Central Valley. Then it curves northwest until it meets the Pacific Ocean, just south of Eureka.
In the scenario depicted in the ShakeOut report, when the sleeping San Andreas Fault awakens, the ruins of Bombay Beach will shake violently for approximately 75 seconds. Then the quake will shiver through the Coachella Valley and Antelope Valley in Los Angeles for 60 to 75 seconds. The earthquake will be disproportionately felt in East L.A. and the San Gabriel Valley. The ground in eastern Orange County, near the Santa Ana River will turn to liquid with everything on top of it sinking into the ground. When the shaking stops, two to five minutes later, it will be chaos.
The earthquake is predicted to trigger more than 10,000 landslides – mostly in the San Gabriel Valley. Regionally across Southern California, including Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles Counties, more than 1,600 fires will ignite, but fire departments will not have enough resources to fight about three-quarters of them.
Cell towers will work for the first few hours before becoming overwhelmed. When backup generators run out, regional cell service will go offline. Electricity loss will be instant, and Angelenos will be in the dark for at least three days. Getting around will be treacherous. Interstates 10 and 15, as well as California Highway 14 will be damaged so badly they will become unusable. Numerous roads traveling east to west cross the fault in nearly 1,000 places.
Once the fires, landslides and structural failures – including building collapses – subside, the report estimates 1,800 Californians will be dead.
This hypothetical ShakeOut scenario is used by FEMA, the state of California, and local agencies to assess and prepare for a large earthquake in the Los Angeles/Southern California region.
So a fault is basically it's a plane of weakness in the Earth's crust. It's not just like a line on the surface. It's basically a slice down into the crust along which the two sides, the rocks on either side of it, slide past each other. And so they are 99.99999% of the time faults are not moving because rock is rough and grippy, and so friction of the rock on either side of each of the fault holds it together, as just does, just the confining pressure of being in the earth and cutting down like a dozen kilometers into the earth and just being held together. But due to plate tectonics, you know, the plates want to slide. They want to slide, but the friction on the fault prevents them from sliding until a certain point where enough energy builds up that the friction on the fault can't hold it together anymore. So kind of in this way, it's a lot like us, is that we can withstand, withstand a certain amount of stress, until we suddenly hit a breaking point and then we flip out. Faults are very much like that. And then when the friction overcomes, or when the build up of energy overcomes the frictional resistance, it'll usually start at a point, like at one spot. And then, if you can imagine, just like unzipping a zipper, really, really fast, like several miles per second, fast. That is basically the process of an earthquake, is this, this track kind of starts at one point on the fault and unzips it, like a zipper, which allows the two sides of the fault to slide past each other and release all of that energy that was built up between earthquakes. And then also, you know, which is what we feel, is shaking. The zipper analogy also works, is like the direction that things unzip actually matters a whole lot. And so the reason that the ShakeOut is so bad for L.A. is that it starts at the furthest point of the southern San Andreas from here and unzips toward us. And so in that case, like the energy buildup is a little bit like the rolling a snowball downhill thing, whereas the more it charges towards you, the more energy it builds up. So like, for the same earthquake, like, you can be in the direction that it's moving towards you, you'll feel it a lot more than in the direction where it's moving away from you. And like, so like, that's the same reason that things like in the 1989 earthquake in the Bay Area like San Francisco and Oakland, got so badly damaged, even though the earthquake was down near Santa Cruz, that's because it was all moving towards them.
Rebuilding after the earthquake is estimated to take months, and for some damage done, years.
“If you are the hardest hit area, that's going to be where most of the aid goes. But if you're in a sort of hard hit area, you might actually have to [live] off of your earthquake kit for longer than the people who are in the worst area,” said Dr. Julian Lozos, a geophysicist with California State University, Northridge who focuses on modeling earthquakes.
Much like the aftermath of January’s L.A. wildfires, recovery won’t happen equitably. A 2017 study using data from the 2014 Napa earthquake found clear indicators that pre-existing socioeconomic factors predicted recovery and rebuilding time. This means lower-income communities, including those with large immigrant populations, will have a more prolonged recovery. More recent evidence shows how imbalanced media coverage, mutual aid, government response, and rebuilding efforts have already created a stark divide between wildfire recovery efforts in historically Black Altadena versus the wealthier, whiter Pacific Palisades.
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While many Angelenos have homeowners insurance that covers fire damage, earthquake damage is not covered by typical insurance plans and is an additional policy for homeowners and landlords to consider. In 2023, just 20% of Los Angeles County homeowners had earthquake insurance, according to the California Department of Insurance’s most recent data. This is above the statewide average of 14%.
According to the city's 2014 Resilience by Design report, “When the biggest earthquakes occur, with potentially hundreds of years of annualized loss happening at once, we face a catastrophic depression of our regional economy.” That same report also concluded L.A.’s backup water supply is not sufficient to sustain Angelenos in the aftermath of a major San Andreas quake.
The Southern San Andreas Fault, the section of fault that ruptures in the ShakeOut Scenario, runs through northeast Los Angeles County. Though it wasn’t recorded, there is evidence that this part of the fault ruptured between 1670 and 1720. Experts and researchers say this is the section of fault most likely to rupture next.
Seismologists who study similar faults and places that frequently experience earthquakes, such as Myanmar and Turkey, contribute research to help Californians better prepare for a San Andreas quake. The ShakeOut Scenario says “the Big One” will cause widespread destruction, and the region’s water infrastructure is particularly vulnerable.
Though published in 2008, researchers from around the world continue to refine and update the ShakeOut’s underlying model, and it is still the industry standard for preparedness.
For nearly two decades, the national government, California state agencies and local governments have been preparing for this earthquake. California and Colorado River aqueduct operators have made seismic improvements to their infrastructure since even before the Northridge earthquake in 1994. Metropolitan Water District began its Seismic Resiliency Taskforce in 1971.
LADWP won’t be able to restore water to the Los Angeles Aqueduct for 18 months1, according to multiple reports obtained by AfroLA, including a city report, a UCLA report funded by LADWP, department bond documents as well as and an emergency preparedness report from the Seismic Resiliency Taskforce co-managed by LADWP and other regional water providers. The taskforce was created specifically to prepare for the Big One.
In the days following a major San Andreas quake, LADWP will rely on its water storage on the coastal side of the fault. The 10 major reservoirs and 106 smaller reservoirs within the City of L.A. contain a combined 4.1 billion gallons of water – nearly 5% of the city's water supply2 . That sounds like a lot of water; it is enough for 3.8 million Angelenos to each use 55 gallons per day to drink, cook, and bathe for 20 days. However, the average Angeleno uses 104 gallons per day.
The city does have some offline reservoirs currently holding 8.5 billion gallons, according to LADWP. However, these reserves are offline because they failed to meet EPA water quality standards. LADWP said in an interview that these water supplies in the reservoirs will be used to fight fires that will break out after an earthquake, just as these reservoirs were used in January’s wildfires.
The Bouquet Reservoir is the only major reservoir in the Los Angeles Aqueduct system on the L.A. side of the fault. However, it is expected to sustain damage during the quake because of its location and age.
In a task force report, LADWP estimated it would take 8 months to make necessary repairs to access the 2 months of stored water in the Bouquet Reservoir.
When asked about damages to the Bouquet Reservoir in a video interview, a media relations manager and a civil engineer who currently serves as the Director of Strategic Initiatives said that there are many reports that document the damage, but they said “they didn’t have the report in front of them.” Depending on the damage, Director Evelyn Cortez-Davis said, “the extent, the nature and location of the damage will drive how long” repairs might take following a San Andreas event. “It may be significantly less than 8 [months]. It may be more than 8 [months to get the reservoir back online]. It really does depend on the inlet, outlet line for Bouquet [Reservoir].”
(AfroLA emailed the report a day earlier at their request to ensure they looked at the “same resource documents to refer to.”)
There is “positive” news, said Cortez-Davis. LADWP expects its in-city reservoirs to perform better. “Reservoirs in-city, within the metro area of Los Angeles, would not necessarily be as affected by something that happens as far away as the San Andreas Fault.”
But again, the department’s own documents3 show there is less than a month of water in these reservoirs.
So what has LADWP done to improve the resiliency of the Bouquet Reservoir? The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires public agencies like LADWP to submit reports on the impact of development on the environment and local communities. According to CEQA filings, work was approved in 2020, 2022 and 2025 to clear brush around the Bouquet Reservoir pipe that carries water to L.A. Why? To make it easier to inspect the pipe for leaks and corrosion. However, filings specifically say work is not approved to repair any leaks or damage to the pipe.
AfroLA could find no record of any efforts to repair or replace this critical pipeline.
Once the two months of water in the Bouquet Reservoir runs dry, there won't be any more water flowing to L.A. from the Los Angeles Aqueduct system until LADWP employees repair the Elizabeth Tunnel.
Located in the Angeles National Forest near the Antelope Valley, the 5-mile horseshoe-shaped Elizabeth Tunnel is remote and 250 feet underground. It is difficult and complex to repair. More importantly, the tunnel is where the Los Angeles Aqueduct crosses the San Andreas Fault. This makes the Los Angeles Aqueduct particularly susceptible and harder to bring back online than the other aqueduct systems serving Southern California. According to bond documents, LADWP anticipates that damage to the Elizabeth Tunnel in a 7.8- to 8.0-magnitude earthquake would split the tunnel 10 feet in each direction, trapping water behind rock and impeding flow to L.A.4
Aftershocks, which August bond documents estimate to be between magnitude 7.2 and 7.5, would “make it difficult, if not impossible to repair the tunnel during the first few months following such an earthquake5. In a 2016 meeting of the Seismic Resiliency Task force, LADWP said it will take at least 18 months to repair the Elizabeth Tunnel.
According to internal reports obtained from LADWP, the agency was supposed to approve design plans for the Elizabeth Tunnel retrofit by 20216. The project was slated for completion by 2026. As of publication, no requisite CEQA application or Notice of Exemption (which explains why a project won't have a significant environmental impact) was filed, no permits were filed and the department’s 2024 aqueduct operations plan still lists the tunnel retrofit as a “long term goal.” AfroLA found no evidence of funding for the project in publicly available budgets.
When AfroLA inquired about progress on the Elizabeth Tunnel retrofit, LADWP said it could not provide a timeline because the agency is still weighing courses of action. These options include retrofitting the existing tunnel, constructing a tunnel bypass system, building a brand new tunnel, and building a pumping system to move the water over the mountain pass instead of underground through it.
“At this point, because of the phase of the planning that we're in, we do not have a current timeline for the completion of the actual project [Elizabeth Tunnel project],” said Cortez-Davis.
So, what’s the plan?
If the Southern San Andreas Fault ruptured today, LADWP could not bring critical water supplies via the Los Angeles Aqueduct back online for more than a year. This aqueduct provides more than 35% — and as much as 75% — of the city's water supply in a year,
LADWP hasn’t started the design process to retrofit the infrastructure, including the Elizabeth Tunnel and Bouquet Reservoir, that would keep water flowing to Angelenos.
Sooooo…what’s the plan in the meantime?
When pressed for specifics in an email, LADWP responded that 213 million gallons of water per day is needed to provide enough water for 3.8 million Angelenos. The agency confirmed AfroLA’s calculations, that there is less than a month of water contained in the “in-city” reservoirs, is accurate.
LADWP representatives described three alternatives to address the water shortage for residents in an emailed statement. The department responded with three pages of answers riddled with complex jargon. And, some details didn’t add up.
Here is what they said, and what AfroLA found fact checking the responses.
“Roughly 360,000 acre-feet of regulatory groundwater storage is available at the San Fernando Groundwater Basin.”
[ AfroLA's FACT CHECK ]
The basin’s water is contaminated and contains cancer-causing chemicals. Under regulatory restraints, LADWP only has the water rights to pump about a quarter of that amount.
The San Fernando Groundwater Basin is a combination of three active (and one inactive) EPA Superfund sites. LADWP isn’t responsible for the contamination. (That would be Lockheed Martin and other aerospace companies, and as far back as WWII factories.) The discovery of cancer-causing chemicals, such as TCE and Hexavalient Chromium (remember Erin Brokovich?), in the 1980s and Superfund site designations led to the reduction in pumping capacity. Basin water must be mixed with imported sources, like from the Los Angeles Aqueduct or from Metropolitan Water District, to dilute contaminants and meet water quality standards.
“Metropolitan Water District (MWD) reserves 626,000 acre-feet of local storage for catastrophic supply interruptions, including Diamond Valley Lake, Lake Mathews, and Lake Perris at their Eastern portion and Pyramid Lake and Castaic Lake at their Western Portion. Supply through MWD inter-connections such as in the Eagle Rock and the Harbor areas can be used to supply about 51 mgd [million gallons per day] and 25 mgd, respectively.”
[ AfroLA's FACT CHECK ]
LADWP stores 60,000 acre-feet (about 20 billion gallons) on the Los Angeles side of the fault7. In an earthquake, the department will partially rely on water stores from Metropolitan.
In an email, Metropolitan said that it reserves 750,000 acre-feet (about 245 billion gallons) of water stored on the coastal side of the San Andreas Fault in case of an earthquake. Metropolitan specifically maintains water reserves in both Castaic Lake and Pyramid Lake Reservoirs for LADWP.
AfroLA reviewed task force reports8 that describe the seismic resilience of these two reservoirs and found the systems that let water flow out of the reservoirs to Los Angeles are not seismically sound and are in need of upgrades. Particularly, the system that lets water out of the reservoir to L.A. is likely to fail.
The state’s Division of Water Resources (DWR) operates the water infrastructure, like dams, at Castaic Lake and Pyramid Lake. But it has only completed the first phase necessary to modernize the dam at Castaic Lake. (Work hasn’t started on Pyramid Lake’s dam.) DWR anticipates improvements will take 15 years.
LADWP expects to secure a collective 76 million gallons of water from these reservoirs in the event of an earthquake. If the outlet system for the dams remains operational, this would still provide just one-third of the city's daily water needs9.
“A finished water and raw water connection at the MWD’s Jensen Treatment Plant near the Los Angeles Aqueduct Filtration Plant can also provide emergency supply through the State Water Project's West Branch in the event major imported supplies are interrupted. DWP will coordinate with MWD and California Department of Water Resources (DWR) to obtain a portion of these emergency supplies to supplement our local storage and groundwater storage.”
[ AfroLA's FACT CHECK ]
The ShakeOut report doesn’t include the section of the California Aqueduct system that would supply water to Los Angeles. It’s unknown if it would sustain major damage in the Big One.
The State Water Project, an aqueduct system operated by the state, brings water from northern California to southern California. When water reaches SoCal, the flow branches east to supply water to Riverside County, and west to bring water to Los Angeles.
LADWP said it would rely on the West Branch for water supplies in the Big One. Although the West Branch is believed to be the least likely of the two branches to sustain major damage or disruption in the Big One, the full extent of damage is unknown because the ShakeOut Scenario’s fault rupture stops short of where the West Branch is located.
How are the other local water districts preparing for a major San Andreas earthquake?
LADWP plans to access Diamond Valley Lake Reservoir in the event of a major earthquake10. But, the infrastructure does not exist to get that water from the reservoir in Riverside County to Los Angeles11. LADWP and Metropolitan have known this for decades.
In the 1980s Metropolitan started planning the construction of the Diamond Valley Lake Reservoir as an emergency water supply south and west of the San Andreas Fault. The reservoir was completed in 2001, before the ShakeOut Scenario was initially published. It contains enough water for 13 million SoCal residents to drink, cook and bathe for six months, and is built to withstand a maximum 8.4-magnitude earthquake.
Riverside County was selected for its location southwest of the San Andreas. Its high elevation means that gravity moves water without the need for electricity, which may be out in the event of an earthquake.
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Because of the terrain, water can’t reach these areas, including Los Angeles, leveraging gravity alone. Accessibility issues came starkly into focus during the 2020 and 2022 droughts when LADWP and five other water systems could not access this water. They needed pump systems that didn't — and still don’t — exist.
Metropolitan’s Assistant General Manager John Bednarski said they are currently designing a pump system to get Diamond Valley Lake water to Los Angeles.
Proportionally, recycled water provides more water to Orange County residents than the Los Angeles Aqueduct supplies to Angelenos each year. Aside from reservoir capacity, recycled water is critical because these plants can be built to modern seismic standards.
Recycled water takes wastewater – yes, including toilet water – and purifies it to a drinkable standard. Despite what you may think, recycled water is actually much cleaner than water coming from an aqueduct or the ground. The 3-step process is one of the only water treatment systems that removes cancer-causing “forever chemicals,” a slew of pharmaceutical drugs, and kills viruses.
Orange County residents have been drinking so-called “toilet-to-tap” drinking water since 2008.
The first and largest water recycling plant in the world, Orange County’s plant is also built to withstand a magnitude-7.8 earthquake. Its technology has been replicated in Las Vegas, the City of San Diego and Monterey County.
“The [Water Board] saw the light like, there's no way we could keep this groundwater basin this full forever with population growth,” said Mehul Patel, Orange County Water District’s executive director of operations. “Drought started becoming a big thing that was considered.” This was a big deal because OC is “a very conservative county, fiscally and politically, and we're doing, you know, toilet-to-tap.”
Recycled water in Orange County is significant because it means that its water is truly local. North and central Orange County gets 85% of its water locally. L.A.’s water footprint is nearly the perfect inverse of this, importing water from as far as several states away.
Metropolitan is early in the process of building a recycled water system for Los Angeles County based on Orange County’s model. “We view recycled water as our third aqueduct,” said Metropolitan’s Bendarski.
It will be decades, though, before recycled water at scale will come online in Los Angeles. In 2018, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti set a goal to recycle 50% of wastewater in L.A. by 2035. Garcetti’s plan emphasized the need for significant amounts of recycled water to be online by 2035. LADWP’s recycled water program for Los Angeles estimates bringing 230 million gallons of water per day to L.A. residents. In March, though, LADWP and Los Angeles Sanitation announced this plan will be pushed back 20 years. This is four decades past when the original goal was set and nearly 50 years after Orange County began its toilet-to-tap system.
The earliest any recycled water could come online from this facility is 2040, enough to fulfill about 13% of the city's current water needs12. LADWP’s Cortez-Davis made sure to emphasize the 50 million gallons per day coming online in 2040. Full operations for the “Pure Water Los Angeles” program to phase in recycled water will not happen until closer to 2056. Once it’s fully operational, it will provide about 58% of the city's current water demand13. Still, LADWP’s water recycling system will provide more water than the L.A. Aqueduct provides most years.
On Oct. 28, LADWP voted in a department board meeting to expand a smaller recycled water project. The expanded program at the Donald C. Tillman Groundwater Replenishment District would provide a year's worth of water to nearly half a million Angelenos. The goal is to have this water online before the 2028 Olympics, but the project still needs to be approved by City Council.
Three days later, the Los Angeles Times reported that the recycled water program would mean L.A. would stop diverting streamwater from Mono Lake in the Eastern Sierra. However, this could not be confirmed in any of the documents and agreements attached to the Oct. 28 meeting’s agenda.
“The lake is only halfway to the healthy, state-mandated level and a decade overdue in getting there,” Geoffery McQuilkin, executive director for the Mono Lake Committee, said in an email. “The result of LADWP’s many years of water diversions is that the lake ecosystem is still in perilous condition. For example, last year was the worst on record for nesting California Gulls due to high salinity and disrupted lake dynamics. A low lake is a big problem for millions of migratory and nesting birds, human health, recreation, and the heritage of the Mono Lake Kootzaduka’a Tribe.”
McQuilkin went on to say that the recycling program is “a watershed moment. Creating sustainable water solutions is a win for Mono Lake and a win for Los Angeles.”
(Read LADWP’s full response on Mono Lake here.)
When asked if this time would be different and what specific details could ensure the department follows through on the plan to keep water in Mono Lake described by the Times, an LADWP spokesperson said in an emailed statement it has “met all its obligations under its water license.” In addition, the City of Los Angeles has invested nearly $50 million in restoration efforts at Mono Lake, and LADWP has reduced water exports by 85%.
“While these reductions [at Mono Lake] were necessary, they have led to a substantial increase in the amount of water purchased from the State Water Project to meet the city's demands, resulting in higher costs for Angelenos,” the statement continued.
L.A. has made promises before to reduce its Mono Lake diversions, but it has a historical record of breaking these promises. Most recently after the L.A. wildfires.
Existing city programs install seismic retrofits to L.A.’s many soft story buildings with open space or parking on the ground floor as well as concrete structures built prior to 1977. Many of these concrete buildings include skyscrapers dotting L.A.’s skyline. A program created in 2002 required valves designed to automatically shut off gas in the event of an earthquake.
In an emailed statement, Mayor Karen Bass’s office said her administration is committed to resiliency and highlighted the retrofitting programs that the city already has in place. “As L.A. and cities across the country – and the world – experience more frequent and severe weather events, we must ensure we are prepared for every possible emergency – in L.A. and up the California coast. That means being earthquake-ready.” The Mayor’s Office, the statement said, “will continue working with all City departments and partners to ensure our homes, buildings, utilities, and most importantly, Angelenos, are safe and prepared.”
Recommendations to “mitigate key known hazards and their cascading effects, with the ultimate goal of protecting the economic viability of the City of Los Angeles” is the top priority described in Garcetti’s decade-old resiliency report. The Big One’s ripple effects aren’t just seismic shakes. California is the fourth largest economy in the world. And researchers estimate the 2028 Olympic Games, through controversial, could have an $11 billion economic impact on the local economy.
“When the biggest earthquakes occur, with potentially hundreds of years of annualized loss happening at once, we face a catastrophic depression of our regional economy…If infrastructure comes back into service without a long delay, the recovery will be quicker and the regional economy may return to its expected level within a few years…In the greatest extreme, the economic activity never recovers but continues to decline, disabling a safe and equitable lifestyle for city residents.” — 2014 Resilience by Design report
The report also outlined more direct and immediate impacts on residents: the city's public infrastructure, including the Los Angeles Aqueduct system. Since 2014, LADWP still has not started to implement the necessary improvements to ensure Angelenos have enough water to drink in the aftermath of a major earthquake — despite awareness of issues for at least that long, and possibly since the Northridge earthquake two decades before the report.
A previously abandoned recycled water project, LADWP anticipates Tillman will be the city's first fully toilet-to-tap system. With plans to expand the Tillman Plant. LADWP took its first important steps to improve L.A.’s water resiliency – not just in an earthquake but increasingly frequent years-long droughts. But other critical infrastructure projects, repairs, and retrofits to ensure the security of existing water sources in an earthquake languish, or have failed to materialize at all.
Water and Power articles are the result of more than two years of records requests, interviews and data analysis by AfroLA. Collaboration and co-publication with Inyo County's The Sheet helped ensure that Owens valley residents have ready access to news that directly affects their lives and communities. Thank you to the many people who made reporting and sharing this story possible.
Are you an Owens Valley resident or LADWP ratepayer to share? Have a tip regarding LADWP? We want to hear from you. Visit our Contact page for details on how to call/text/message us. You can also use contact reporter Katie Licari via encrypted email at katielicari@protonmail.com or leave an anonymous message on our online voicemail line.
