Challenges
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FACES MULTIPLE CRITICAL
WATER SUPPLY CHALLENGES
The Drought
The water supply restrictions, cutbacks and curtailments of 2022, imposed by government agencies at every level – local, state and federal – and impacting nearly every traditional source of water supply used in Southern California, demand attention and action. One important lesson from this unprecedented water supply crisis is this: The only agencies and communities that have avoided these severe cutbacks are those that started planning years ago for drought by investing in long-term infrastructure and local supply solutions.
We believe that advancing safe, clean, reliable, and affordable water supply improvements should be the top priority for all our elected officials … especially our water board representatives. Join us in asking these men and women to explore all options for water resources in Southern California while maintaining our region’s important focus on responsible and environmentally sound water resource management.
Earthquakes & Wild Fires
In California, you can’t move water long distances without crossing fault lines. Just because we haven’t felt a major quake for some time, it doesn’t mean they are not happening regularly, continuing to degrade our water infrastructure and making ongoing maintenance a must.
In no place is our water supply infrastructure more at risk from earthquakes than in the Sacramento Delta, the starting point of the State Water Project, historically Southern California’s largest source of water, supplying approximately 30% of the region’s water. There, seismic activity on the dangerous Hayward fault could disrupt, then limit, water deliveries to our region for several years. Other faults put other infrastructure at risk and much of this infrastructure needs to be upgraded with greater seismic protections, which is why the Secure Water Alliance supports the Delta Conveyance Project, greater funding for infrastructure improvements, and an “all of the above” approach to our region’s water supply options.
Wildfires.
The conclusion many people intuitively reached after the huge and devastating Los Angeles wildfires of January 2025 – that our urban water systems are sized too small to fight these large fires – is implausible and should not be our goal. Water systems are sized to meet daily needs and have enough remaining in the system to fight a handful of house fires. If the system were made larger, which would come at an incredible cost, water would be stagnant in the system for too long, which would lead to declines in water quality that have negative health and taste impacts. In fact, some experts say that because conservation efforts have brought significant declines in water consumption, urban water systems may already be oversized.
Because sizing for large wildfire fighting and sizing for optimum water quality are diametrically opposed, an entirely new dialog is needed to effectively address Southern California’s new reality. Wildfires are no longer seasonal, and the traditional wet season/dry season cycles on the state may be no more. Southern California was experiencing severe drought conditions in January 2025 – normally the peak of its wet season – as shown on this map from the California Drought Monitor.) Plus, higher springtime temperatures wring the moisture out of vegetation and increase the potential for wildfire activity.
Here is even more evidence of the need for a new dialog: California legislators responded to the LA wildfires by authoring more than 50 new bills as the deadline for new bills for the 2025 session approached – and not one of these bills addressed water infrastructure!
The LA wildfires also showed how important it is to maintain and modernize our water infrastructure. Wildfires can cause inadequately protected pumping stations to go off-line, for example. The need for continuing improvements in the fire resiliency of our water systems is just one of many examples of Southern California’s continuing need to invest in upgrading and maintaining its water infrastructure. Act now to help us make this happen!
Endless Opposition
Less than a month before the tragic LA wildfires of 2025, activists stood before the Metropolitan Water District and argued that no money should be spent on the Delta Conveyance Project (even though Southern California gets 30% of its water from the Delta). The Secure Water Alliance was there in support of continued funding of the Delta Conveyance Project, and Metropolitan voted in support of the funding.
This incident, one of many over the years, shows how progress towards a secure water future requires successful navigation around the 800-pound gorilla in the room: vocal opposition to new water supply projects. Some people oppose these projects because they don’t understand the amount of care that goes into protecting the environment when planning, constructing, and operating water supply infrastructure. Others try to stop new water projects because they mistakenly think they cause growth, when in fact they are needed to accommodate our region’s natural growth and to ensure adequate future water supplies for all our communities.
Decision-makers within our water and regulatory agencies too often only hear the roar of that 800-pound gorilla, so they need to hear other voices, voices backed by facts, strong convictions, and personal experience. These facts can be from scientific studies that counter opposition rhetoric by detailing how effective these water projects are in protecting the environment (the Secure Water Alliance is active in developing these sorts of studies), or they can be from human experience and the stories of underserved Southern Californians who have suffered disproportionally from poor decision-making on water supply projects.
The bottom line is that too many view our water supply challenges as, at best, problems that must just be accepted, and at worst, the fruit of their efforts to stop new water supply projects. But we don’t accept that view, and we invite you to join us in challenging it.
Flooding
Changing climate patterns are directing more Atmospheric Rivers to California. These super-saturated storm events could be an answer to the state’s ongoing water shortages – were it not for the fact that our flood control projects and water storage infrastructure were designed for a climate that had much less frequent Atmospheric River storms.
We need to reduce the devastation of these flooding events before it gets worse than what was experienced in the 2022-2023 wet season, when Atmospheric River storms killed 22 people and caused economic losses as great as. $5 billion to $7 billion in the state. This will require expanding surface water and groundwater storage capacity and improving and expanding our flood control infrastructure.
Aging Infrastructure
Did you know that some of our water infrastructure is over 100 years old? Or that a water main breaks somewhere in America every minute? Or that even though we have known the danger of lead in water supply for years, there are over 10 million homes and 400,000 schools and childcare centers in America that still have lead pipes in them?
Investment is needed not only to replace this failing and unsafe infrastructure but also to explore other avenues of delivering safe and affordable water.
Endless Opposition
Progress towards a secure water future requires successful navigation around the 800-pound gorilla in the room: vocal opposition to new water supply projects. Some people oppose these projects because they don’t understand the amount of care that goes into protecting the environment when planning, constructing, and operating water supply infrastructure. Others try to stop new water projects because they mistakenly think they cause growth, when in fact they are needed to accommodate our region’s natural growth and to ensure adequate future water supplies for all our communities.
>Decision-makers within our water and regulatory agencies need to hear other voices, voices backed by facts in addition to strong convictions. These facts can be from scientific studies that counter opposition rhetoric by detailing how effective these water projects are in protecting the environment, or they can be from human experience and the stories of underserved Southern Californians who have suffered disproportionally from poor decision-making on water supply projects.
The bottom line is that too many view our water supply challenges as problems that must just be accepted. But we don’t accept that view, and we invite you to join us in challenging it.
We must act now.
Join the positive thinkers and creative problem solvers to end the never-ending obstacles to Southern California’s water supply reliability.
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We Must Act Now
