Possibly the most politically damaging footage to emerge from the Los Angeles fires is Mayor Karen Bass staring blankly at the camera like a deer in the headlights as a reporter asks her if she is concerned about the thousands of homes burned. People have something to say. [emphasis, links added]
However, California Governor Gavin Newsom went even worse than Bass, telling CNN's Anderson Cooper, “Locals need to figure this out” after Cooper asked why so many of the city's fire hydrants were without water to extinguish the flames threatening homes.
Newsom shouldn't show off, he should know that while the city's main lines are still under pressure, So much water is used in the Pacific Palisades that there is not enough pressure to move the water to the higher elevations needed.
The city eventually sent 20 water tankers to high-altitude areas to support firefighters, but when those tankers ran out, They have to travel long distances to refuel before returning to the fire.
“This is a window into the systemic issues in the city, not just mismanagement, but our infrastructure is antiquated,” Pacific Palisades owner Rick Caruso, a former commissioner of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told reporters.
Los Angeles City Councilwoman Traci Park, who represents Pacific Palisades, agreed with Caruso, adding: “The City of Los Angeles' chronic underinvestment in public infrastructure and public safety partners is clear and on full display in the past 24 hours.”
The Democrats’ failure to invest in water infrastructure is not only incompetent but ideological.
When asked to respond to Caruso's assertion that low water pressure is due to mismanagement, Greg Pierce, a professor of urban environmental policy at the University of California, told reporters that investing in the necessary water infrastructure to protect homes in Pacific Palisades is a disservice to the wealthy. “Subsidy” for homeowners. “I think the discussion should be about whether these areas are livable.”
What Pierce and his ideological colleagues in the Democratic elite forget is that Much of Los Angeles is livable only because of expensive infrastructure and policy choices that the current Democratic Party lacks the courage to make.
The Los Angeles River can accommodate about 300,000 people, but there are 4 million residents in the basin. The only reason these people survive is because of the difficult decisions made by past generations to build proper water infrastructure.
The Democratic Party’s willingness to change the environment to support human flourishing has evaporated in California.
Half of Los Angeles' water comes from the Colorado River, which flows through 242 miles of aqueducts.
Another quarter comes from the state water project, which consists of 22 dams and reservoirs and 444 miles of aqueducts that carry water from Northern California.
Another 15 percent comes from the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which comes from the Owens River Valley and Mono Lake basins.
Only 10% comes from the Los Angeles River.
All of these projects were completed before the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Commission were enacted, and none are being built today.
The Democratic Party’s willingness to change the environment to support human flourishing has evaporated in California. The Los Angeles fire was a direct result of this political failure.
Poseidon Resources recently proposed building a desalination plant at Hunting Beach, a project that could supply water to 250,000 homes per year.
The California Coastal Commission blocked the project because studies showed it would kill plankton near the facility.
Democrats running the Coastal Commission chose microbes over humans. This is why California is dying. It has nothing to do with something as grand and melodramatic as global warming.
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