LA’s Crappy Old Pipes Mean More Epic Floods Are Coming

Workers respond to the broken water main in Los Angeles.Gene Blevins/ZUMA Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Yesterday at around 3:30 pm, a water main burst near the campus of UCLA in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. It gushed for nearly three hours, sending water as high as 30 feet into the air and flooding campus—cars’ wheels were submerged, the brand-new basketball court was covered in standing water, eager students brought boogie boards. As much as 10 million gallons are estimated to have been lost, at a rate of 38,000 gallons per minute.

The dramatic photos made national headlines, but the serious problem likely behind the break is just as dramatic: Los Angeles’ crumbling water infrastructure. The pipe that broke was constructed in 1921, as Mayor Eric Garcetti tweeted during the flood—and that’s pretty old for a city pipe. The average age of a water pipe in New York City is 69 years. As of 2010, 70 percent of Los Angeles’ water infrastructure was composed of cast-iron pipes, most of which were laid down during the city’s expansion in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.

Standing water at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. Gene Blevins/ZUMA Wire

But those pipes weren’t designed to handle how massively the city—and its water demand—grew in the decades after. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Jim McDaniel said on Tuesday that repairs are so far behind that pipes are on a “300-year repair cycle.” Unsurprisingly, from 2001 to 2010, 90 percent of Los Angeles’ pipe breaks came from the old, cast-iron dinosaurs; as of 2009, 1,400 pipes were breaking in the city every year.

When asked for comment, a DWP official said that the exact cause of the UCLA pipe break remains under investigation. A 2010 study of leaks pinned blame on the city’s policy of asking citizens to limit activities like washing cars and watering lawns to two days per week, in the name of water conservation. But too many people used too much water at the same time, leading to catastrophic breaks. The DWP denied the claim, citing pipe corrosion as the problem, but nevertheless officials eased water conservation policy to cover three days per week instead of two.

Gene Blevins/ZUMA Wire

Ultimately, until the city’s ancient infrastructure gets better—and City Hall is spending billions to slowly improve it—there’s no reason to believe that these breaks will get rarer. In addition to causing damage and snarling already-bad traffic, they are, obviously, tremendous wastes of water. The 10 million gallons lost yesterday represents a small percentage of the city’s daily 500 million gallon thirst—but it’s water that could’ve gone to more than 52,000 people. In the thick of the worst drought in California history, that’s nothing to scoff at.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate