'Devastating': California had record rainfall last year, but lacked infrastructure to store it
California does not have a water shortage, yet firefighters battling the brutal fires across 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 Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call to "not play politics," arguing that political mismanagement is precisely to blame.
"It's all political," Edward Ring, the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center think-tank, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "The entire cause is political, and they ironically politicize it by saying it's about climate change, which is a political wedge that they use all the time, which is really one of the least of the factors causing this."
Experts lay blame primarily on the state's handling of its forestry management and a lesser-known problem, the state's outdated water reserves system. California's existing reservoirs can only hold so much water, and many were built in the mid-20th century.
Last year, the state experienced record-breaking rainfall after an atmospheric river event, but the existing water infrastructure faced difficulties managing the sudden influx of water. A significant portion of that rainfall was dumped into the ocean.
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Ring also pointed to "environmentalist extremists" in the state who have pushed for heavier regulations like the Endangered Species Act, which requires freshwater to flow through rivers and into the Pacific Ocean to protect the endangered delta smelt and salmon. The mandates restrict how much water can be diverted to storage, even during wet years.
"There is plenty of water," Ring argues, but the primary challenge in transporting water south to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and cities in Southern California isn’t infrastructure capacity—it’s environmental policies. He points to a "consensus among the bureaucrats and board directors" overseeing California’s water management that prioritizes keeping more water in rivers to support the endangered fish.
"That’s true as far as it goes," he said, but despite these efforts, the salmon and smelt populations have not recovered. Additionally, there is growing concern that sturgeon may soon be classified as endangered as well.
"These endangered fish are being used as the reason to leave water in the rivers," he said.
Urban areas, like 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 in off of the California Aqueduct, and they import water into Los Angeles, and they haven't brought enough in there, and their reservoirs are depleted," 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 bottom line is they haven't spent money on it, and they've justified that by saying, we have 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 a system that's as robust."
One recent ex-California lawmaker said the state's lack of water infrastructure is "devastating California."
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California voters passed 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 through building new reservoirs and groundwater storage facilities. Yet as of January 2025, no new reservoirs have been completed under Prop. 1.
"And here it's been all these years, and we haven't done a shovel full of dirt to move to make the project," Dahle said. "The project is just not funded, 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 didn't do anything about it."
The largest of the wildfires, the Eaton Fire near Altadena and Pasadena, has scorched more than 27,000 acres, Cal Fire reported as of midday Thursday.
When reached for comment, Newsom's spokesperson Izzy Gardon told Fox News Digital, "The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need."