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California has no shortage of water, but firefighters battling the brutal fires in Los Angeles are facing scarce resources to keep up with the blaze that has threatened thousands of lives, homes, land and wildlife.
Meanwhile, critics challenge Governor Gavin Newsom calls to “not do politics”, arguing that precisely the fault lies with poor political management.
“It’s all political,” Edward Ring, the director of water and energy policy at the California Policy Center think tank, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “The whole cause is political, and ironically, they politicize it by saying it’s climate change, which is a political wedge they use all the time, which is really one of the least of the factors causing it.”
Experts mostly blame the state’s management of its forest management and a lesser-known problem, the state’s outdated water reserve system. California exists reservoirs can only hold so much water, and many were built in the mid-20th century.
Last year, the state experienced record rainfall following an atmospheric river event, but the existing water infrastructure struggled to handle the sudden influx of water. A significant portion of this rain was dumped into the ocean.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass tour the Pacific Palisades Central Business District as the Palisades Fire continues to burn on January 8, 2025 in Los Angeles. (Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
Ring also pointed to “environmental extremists” in the state who have pushed for stricter regulations like the Endangered Species Act, which requires freshwater to flow through rivers and into the Pacific Ocean to protect delta smelt and endangered salmon. The mandates restrict the amount of water that can be diverted to storage, even during wet years.
“There’s a lot of water,” argues Ring, but the main challenge to transporting water south to San Joaquin Valley farmers and Southern California cities isn’t infrastructure capacity, but environmental policies. He points to a “consensus among bureaucrats and board directors” that oversees California’s water management that prioritizes keeping more water in rivers to support endangered fish.
“That’s true as far as it goes,” he said, but despite these efforts, salmon and sprat populations have not recovered. In addition, there is growing concern that sturgeon may also soon be classified as endangered.
“These endangered fish are being used as a reason to release water into the rivers,” he said.
Khaled Fouad and Mimi Laine embrace as they inspect a family member’s property that was destroyed by the Eaton Fire on January 9, 2025 in Altadena, California. Driven by strong Santa Ana winds, the Eaton Fire has grown to more than 10,000 acres and destroyed many homes and businesses. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Urban areas, such as Los Angeles, have highly developed drainage systems that channel stormwater directly into the ocean. They were originally designed with flood prevention in mind, not water storage, so this presents an additional challenge for the area.
“They bring water from the California Aqueduct and they import water into Los Angeles, and they haven’t brought enough, and their reservoirs are running low,” Ring said. “But the biggest problem, because you’re not going to drain even a half-full reservoir fighting a fire, is the water infrastructure. in Los Angeles, and the water infrastructure in Los Angeles has been neglected. And the reason it’s been neglected is that they want the money for other projects.”
“The conclusion is that they haven’t spent any money and have justified it by saying that we need to use less water,” he continued. “And so they’ve been encouraging people, and in some cases, rationing, or even forcing people to use less water. And as a result, you don’t have as robust a system.”
A recent former California lawmaker said the state’s lack of water infrastructure is “devastating California.”
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A woman reacts as she evacuates after powerful winds fuel devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area at the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California on January 8, 2025. (David Swanson/Reuters)
California voters approved Proposition 1 in 2014, also known as the Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act, which authorized $2.7 billion in bonds to increase the state’s water storage capacity by building of new reservoirs and underground water storage facilities. However, as of January 2025, no new reservoir has been completed under Prop. 1.
“And here it’s been all these years, and we haven’t made a shovel full of dirt to move to do the project,” Dahle said. “The project is unfunded, and we had $100 billion in surplus, and we didn’t fund it. And so that’s the frustrating part, I think, for most Californians, is that when we had the money, and we did it.” I don’t do anything about it.”
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The largest of the wildfires, the Eaton Fire near Altadena and Pasadena, has burned more than 27,000 acres, Cal Fire reported as of noon Thursday.
When reached for comment, Newsom spokeswoman Izzy Gardon told Fox News Digital, “The governor is focused on keeping people safe, not politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.” .
