Wasting our rain water in Los Angeles

Sharon McNary (scpr.org, Jan. 23, 2017); CC Liu, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

Streets of Los Angeles flooded due to series of rainstorms after 7 years of drought (AP)

West coast mermaids need more water

Los Angeles County storm water capture systems have shunted enough water from rain-swollen rivers into percolation ponds this rain season to serve the annual water needs of about a half-million people, an official said Monday.

 

More than 22 billion gallons of storm water has been collected since mid-October  along the San Gabriel and Los Angeles rivers, said Steven Frasher, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Public Works Department.

 

However, most of the water that falls on the region is still lost to the Pacific Ocean, partly because the kinds of investments made over the years in spreading grounds along the San Gabriel River have been lagging along the Los Angeles River, said Mark Gold of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Unsustainable

Annual fires due to lack of rain retention

"You see a storm year like this, and you see all the water that ends up going through the LA River and Ballona Creek and Dominguez Channel, and you say, "Wow, that could have been our water supply for the next year," Gold said.

 

"I think this storm here has really demonstrated where the shortcomings are in our local water system," Gold added.

"We've barely scratched the surface on what we can do in the eastern San Fernando Valley in trying to capture more of that precious rainfall from the sky and have it actually infiltrate into the ground and get into our groundwater supply." 

Why do we lose so much rain water?

The flood control system was initially built to speed water to the ocean to avoid damage to communities along the rivers during heavy rain storms. So it took decades for the region to adapt to the idea of capturing that water for later use. More

• VIDEO: Paradox: California has the highest poverty rate in the USA
• Third Southern California storm brings flooding, rockslides 
• Rainstorm prompts freeway flooding, rescues across LA
• LA Women's March causes Metro trains to reach capacity
• California's poorest may finally be feeling rising economy
• Study says Californians missing out on health care subsidies
• Surprising charts on smoking, unemployment, cell phones
• Trump signs 3 executive orders, withdraws from TPP