\nThe Los Angeles Department of Water and Power says it has captured nearly 5.5 billion gallons of water since Oct. 1 following the recent storms.<\/p>\n
Mayor Karen Bass\u2019 office announced the estimate on Tuesday, saying it\u2019s enough to serve almost 68,000 homes for an entire year.<\/p>\n
According to the National Weather Service, downtown Los Angeles received more than five and a half inches of rain in November, making it the 5th wettest November on record \u2013 that\u2019s dating back to 1877.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
My first thought was that was big news: 5.5 billion gallons. But 68,000 homes isn\u2019t as big as it sounds: ot basically totals a little less than 2% of Angelenos. Later in the article, DWP CEO Janisse Qui\u00f1ones promises an annual average of 48,9 billion gallons, or 150,000 acre feet: but that actually represents only about 17% of the City.<\/p>\n
Why can\u2019t Los Angeles do better? Using advanced journalistic techniques unknown to most reporters, I picked up the phone and spoke with Art Castro, the head of the Department\u2019s stormwater replenishment program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re losing up to 600,000 acre-feet a year to stormwater runoff,\u201d Castro told me. That\u2019s about four times what the Department is hoping to get in a decade. So why in the world are we only shooting for 150,000?<\/p>\n
The problem is that of course a whole lot of rain hits private property. It would be great for Los Angeles to build new rainwater capture areas like the Tujunga Spreading Grounds (pictured), but anyone who has looked at property values knows that that isn\u2019t the cards financially.<\/p>\n
Conceivably, one could try to get it out of storm drains, but that would require an even more expensive massive repiping.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to engineering school in the mid-90\u2019s,\u201d Castro said, \u201cand they told us that we wanted to\u00a0divert water, not capture it. Get the water away from buildings.\u201d And that was the paradigm for most of the 20th century.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we have seen a paradigm shift about 10 years ago,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe get our water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct and secondarily from the Colorado River. What if there is a huge earthquake? Those sources could be cut off. We need to expand our portfolio now.\u201d<\/p>\n
That will be amazingly expensive. The Department tries to get more stormwater capture from parks and schools as well: the idea is to put the infrastructure in both places. When it comes to schools, the Department can pay for great permeability, which also makes school playgrounds healthier and reduces heat island effects. And of course DWP also tries to incentivize things like rain barrels and cisterns, \u201cbut that is literally a drop in the bucket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Basically, for more than a century, Los Angeles \u2014 and most US cities \u2014 made themselves as unsustainable as possible. We woke up about two decades ago. That means turning an aircraft carrier around. And that is too slow. Sterner measures will be necessary. I don\u2019t envy the politicians who are going to have to break it to the voters. They will soon be ex-politicians.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power<\/a>, stormwater recapture<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Replumbing Los Angeles \u2013 Painfully Slowly The City has captured 5.5 billion gallons of stormwater since October 1st…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":426872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,2961,224,176899,5337,198720],"class_list":{"0":"post-426871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-department-of-water-and-power","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-stormwater-recapture"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115667991068925578","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Tujunga-Spreading-Grounds-After-400x300.jpg\")
Tujunga Spreading Grounds: More Like This, Please<\/p>\n