‘Devastating’: California had record rainfall last year, but lacked the infrastructure to store it

There is no water shortage in California, but firefighters battling the brutal fires across Los Angeles are left with scarce resources to keep up with the blaze that has threatened thousands of lives, homes, land and wildlife.

Meanwhile, critics are rejecting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for “no politics” and arguing that political mismanagement is to blame.

“It’s all political,” Edward Ring, the director of water and energy policy at the think tank California Policy Center, said in an interview with Fox News Digital. “The whole thing is political, and they’re ironically politicizing it by saying it’s about climate change, a political wedge that they constantly use, which is actually one of the least factors causing this.”

Experts largely blame the state’s handling of forestry and a lesser-known problem: the state’s aging water reserve system. California’s existing reservoirs can only hold a limited amount of water, and many were built in the mid-20th century.

Last year, the state experienced record-breaking rainfall following an atmospheric river event, but existing water infrastructure struggled to handle the sudden influx of water. A significant portion of this rainfall was discharged into the sea.

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California Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass tour the downtown Pacific Palisades business district as the Palisades Fire continues to burn on January 8, 2025 in Los Angeles. (Eric Thayer/Getty Images)

Ring also pointed to “environmental extremists” in the state who have pushed for tougher regulations like the Endangered Species Act, which requires freshwater to flow through rivers and into the Pacific Ocean to protect endangered Delta smelt and salmon. The regulations limit how much water can be diverted for storage, even in wet years.

“There is plenty of water,” Ring argues, but the biggest challenge in transporting water south to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and cities in Southern California is not infrastructure capacity but environmental policy. He points to a “consensus among the bureaucrats and board members” overseeing California’s water management that is to keep more water in the rivers to support endangered fish.

“That’s true so far,” he said, but despite these efforts, salmon and smelt populations have not recovered. In addition, there is growing concern that the sturgeon could soon be classified as endangered.

“These endangered fish are being used as a reason to leave water in the rivers,” he said.

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Khaled Fouad and Mimi Laine hug as they inspect a family member’s property destroyed by the Eaton Fire on January 9, 2025 in Altadena, California. Fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds, the Eaton fire has grown to over 10,000 acres and destroyed many homes and businesses. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Urban areas like Los Angeles have sophisticated drainage systems that drain stormwater directly into the ocean. They were originally designed for flood protection rather than water storage, so this presents an additional challenge for the area.

“They’re bringing water from the California Aqueduct and importing water to Los Angeles, and they haven’t put enough in there, and their reservoirs are depleted,” Ring said. “But the biggest problem is the water infrastructure in Los Angeles, because you can’t even drain a half-full reservoir when fighting fires, and the water infrastructure in Los Angeles has been neglected. And the reason it has been neglected is because they want the money for other projects.”

“The bottom line is that they didn’t spend any money on it and the reasoning behind it was that we need to use less water,” he continued. “And so they have encouraged and in some cases rationed or even forced people to use less water. And as a result of that, there is no system that is as robust.”

A former California lawmaker recently said the state’s lack of water infrastructure is “devastating for California.”

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A woman reacts as she evacuates the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, on January 8, 2025, following high winds fueling devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area. (David Swanson/Reuters)

California voters passed Proposition 1, also known as the Water Quality, Supply and Infrastructure Improvement Act, in 2014, which authorized $2.7 billion in bonds to increase the state’s water storage capacity by building new reservoirs and groundwater storage facilities. However, no new reservoirs have been completed under Project 1 as of January 2025.

“And here it has been all these years and we haven’t done a shovelful of dirt to make the project happen,” Dahle said. “The project is simply not funded, and we had a $100 billion surplus and we didn’t fund it. And I think that’s the frustrating thing for most Californians is that when we had the money, we didn’t do it.” “I’m not going to do anything about it.”

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The largest of the wildfires, the Eaton Fire near Altadena and Pasadena, has burned more than 27,000 acres, Cal Fire reported midday Thursday.

When reached for comment, Newsom spokesman Izzy Gardon told Fox News Digital: “The governor is focused on keeping people safe, not on politics, but on making sure firefighters have all the resources they need .”