Seven months before fire swept through the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, the city’s water managers were formulating a plan to revive an old reservoir to temporarily boost the area’s limited water capacity.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was exploring the option because the neighborhood’s main reservoir — the Santa Ynez Reservoir — had been taken offline as a result of a torn cover, which officials had begun preparations to repair early in 2024. The repair project was still months away from completion this January when the fire broke out, and with the reservoir empty, firefighters ran short of water in fighting the blaze.
Emails released to The New York Times under public records law show that the city had searched for solutions to rectify the monthslong supply shortage but, despite lengthy discussions and preliminary preparations, failed to correct the problem in time.
In early June 2024, crews spent several days cleaning the Pacific Palisades Reservoir, a facility that was about three miles away from the larger Santa Ynez site, and that was retired in 2013. The work, officials wrote, was “in preparation for temporarily placing the Pacific Palisades Reservoir back into service while the Santa Ynez Reservoir is out of service.”
After the cleaning was completed, the crews planned more work, including disinfection of the area and installation of new pipes.
But the plan to bring the old reservoir back online was never completed. Ellen Cheng, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said in an email on Friday that the city ultimately determined that bringing the reservoir back online could have posed a risk to workers and residents of nearby homes because of structural and other safety issues.