Opinion: Palisades and Eaton fires outstripped what any water system is built for
As the general manager of a public water agency, I’ve tried to succinctly explain the quandary facing water systems, especially those whose infrastructure has evolved over the past 130 years from irrigating citrus orchards to serving highly populated and dense residential communities. One metaphor has seemed to resonate. When I talk to people about the finite capacity of water systems, I ask them to imagine a small coffee shop that sells 200 to 300 cups of drip coffee on an average day and a few days a year might sell 400. … At that imaginary coffee shop, if one day someone comes in and orders 40,000 cups of coffee, that order simply can’t be filled. There aren’t enough beans, cups, people to make it, people to serve it. That 40,000-cup order is similar to the demand on water systems during the ground response to the Eaton and Palisades fires in early January.
–Written by Tom Majich, general manager at Kinneloa Irrigation DistrictRelated video:
