Deep Analysis of California Water Challenges Amid LA Fires | Brett Barbre

Los Angeles has been facing devastating fires in the last few days. There are reports that fire hydrants ran out of water in Palisades. Many people are wondering, how is the water infrastructure in LA and California? My guest today is Brett Barbrey, who's a board member of a water district in Southern California. He's here to explain to us what's happened with the fire and also what's going on with the water infrastructure in California. Brett, it's great to have you back on. Welcome back. It's great to be back. You know, we want to talk to you about the fires. You're a water expert. You know the water situation in California, Southern California pretty well. And you have been part of the board that has been involved with some of the fires, local fires. What is your assessment of the situation that happened in LA with water running out on the hydrants? Well, I think there's going to be an after action report and they'll find out a lot of things. But in a big fire like that, you're going to have a certain number of dry hydrants because you only have a limited number of hydrants in a system, little six inch line, that's a standard. And you can only move so much water through. And if your reservoirs are out, you can't move more water through the hydrants. So you're going to have empty hydrants. It's just a fact of life. I hate to say that, but it does happen. Now there's some things you can do to minimize the risk. And that's really something I think we need to take a look at on a more global level. You mentioned reservoirs are being out and we have talked about water infrastructure. How much of that has to do with us building water infrastructure and how much of it is just somewhere out? One was out for maintenance, right? Yeah, one was out for maintenance. You try not to do maintenance during high fire time. So I don't know why they chose January to do some. Usually the big maintenance is done February, March where you get a lot of rain. So that's going to be a question that people will ask. But you also need to be able to refill the reservoirs and in high PSPS areas where they turn off the power, you need to have a backup. That's where having a backup generator, whether it's natural gas, whether it's propane, whether it's diesel, those are important to have. And so in our district, in Yorba Linda, we had a catastrophic fire in 2008 and we had a portion of our district that was served only by pumped areas and that pump blew out during the fire. And so there were some hydrants that were empty. You know, the firefighters got there and opened up, no water, it happens. So what did we do as a response as a result of that? Two things, we added permanent natural gas backup generators so even if all the power goes out, you can continue to move the water because we have elevations in our district from 250 feet to 1390, because that's moving a lot of water and it's very heavy and power intensive. So you need these backup generators. But the second thing is to have enough reservoirs where you can fill them up and keep them full so even if you lose all power, you can still gravity feed everything. And so my guess is what they're gonna find in that fire is a whole host of things. And this, I'm gonna get a little global here and look at things from the state level. Statewide, they don't allow proper management of forests, weed abatement, brush abatement, and so you have buildups around the state. And the example in Yorba Linda, we have the Chino Hills State Park, that's a state park so you can't do brush abatement there. So it's just dead tinder waiting for a spark and once it hits and in a wind, it's gonna blow and go through. So I think you probably had quite a bit of that, you had a lot of buildup of this brush and the state doesn't allow it. Same thing with the forest, it's why other states with big forests that do proper management, they don't have the same issues. Second thing is the state, there's a war against natural gas and getting rid of natural gas. If you get rid of natural gas, you lose electricity, how are you gonna move water around? You can't really store enough propane. Natural gas, you have lines going all over the place where you can keep these generators running. You have a diesel one, that's difficult to refill those as well if you have to run them for two or three days. The other challenge is, and we've had to put in four natural gas generators the last couple of years, just getting them approved by the AQMD is a challenge. So you have air quality issues. And I would think running a natural gas generator to prevent a fire is gonna cut down on emissions far more. But that's another issue. But then you have to go even bigger on the whole water system in this state. We're not building enough storage, we're not building enough facilities, we're not proactive anymore. As a state, we used to be proactive. Governor Pat Brown really was a champion when it came to building infrastructure in this state. If you look at the great water projects in this state, first big one was Hetch Hetchy in the early 1900s. Then you had the LA Aqueduct in 1913. Then in the 1930s, Metropolitan was formed for Southern California and we built the Colorado River Aqueduct. In the 40s, they built the Central Valley Project to bring ag water to Central California, the breadbasket. And then in the 60s, we built the State Water Project, which was mostly completed in 1973. We had 20 million people in the state then. The very top way of technology-wise of storing music, rate track tapes, right? 1973. And I forgot to bring mine to show people because most people don't know what it is. Look it up, Google it. Today, on my little cell phone, I have 9,000 songs and eight track tape holds nine, 10 songs at most. Why is it our technology for storing music has advanced in the last 20 years, but our water infrastructure has not changed a bit? And so we had a very robust system, 1973, to move a drop of water, still can today, from the Oregon-California border down to the Mexico-California border. But we had 20 million people then. Today, we have 40. So we've doubled the number of people haven't changed the infrastructure. Think of roads. If we just still had two-lane highways and we doubled the population, no one could get anywhere anytime. And in an emergency, it makes it even worse. So in the state, we're not building enough storage. We don't have the ability to move water around as much as we can. And most communities, they're telling their customers, stop buying water. Stop watering your grass. Stop watering your trees. Pull it out. Put in astroturf. Put in carpeting, whatever it is. Put in native plants. They want people to cut their water usage. And so when you do that, you lose the ability and the abundance that the state is used to. And the thing that I get the most tired of are people saying, it's all because of climate change. And to me, climate change is an excuse for not building infrastructure. Now, we've been told about the drought, and the drought has existed. Do you think we have enough water despite the drought? We have roughly 200 million acre-feet of water that hits California in an average year. 100 million goes right back into the environment, to the streams, the lakes, runs off, evaporates, goes to the ocean. Then you're left with another 100 million acre-feet. Of that 100 million, 50 is once again set aside for the environment. Then you have 25. So you mentioned this 100 million, this extra 100 million, then that potentially can be captured, right? You could capture and use that. But a majority of that, a lot goes to ag, and I'm okay with that because we're the breadbasket of the world. And if COVID should have taught us anything, it's controlling our own destiny when it comes to medicines and foods. We should be able to control that. Here in California, it used to feed the nation, if not the world, in a lot of products. And so I have no problem with the ag water there. The amount of water that the humans consume is very small. Five million acre-feet a year, five to 10 million acre-feet a year. So five to 10% of what we can capture. Five to 10% of the whole of everything could be captured. Of what we can capture. Right. So then half of this water that we can capture is actually going back to the environment. Just going right back to the environment. And I'm not anti-environment or anything like that. But there needs to be a balance. And if you go back in history, the Bureau of Reclamation was founded by the federal government to help the West develop. And their charge was to develop an abundance of power and water. Hoover Dam was a great example. Hoover Dam was constructed. Dams are there for many reasons, but for flood control, because Colorado River would flood out of control every seven years. Then water storage, very important for that. Power generation. And then recreation. So those are the four uses of most dams. And Hoover Dam, you know, we were talking about our mutual friend, John Morlock, and it's all about the nickels. How much did Hoover Dam cost the taxpayers to build? And the answer is zero. Because there are all these power contracts. And the sale of the power that's generated at Hoover paid for all the construction and all the R&R and all the maintenance. So it doesn't cost the taxpayers one penny. And that was the vision that we had 100 years ago in the public policy arena. That's missing today. You know, solar is great, but it doesn't do anything other than generate electricity. You need these, you know, dams are the greenest power source. Keep generating over and over again. Generate power, water, flood control. It's great. We have a wonderful system on the Colorado. California, not so much. We don't have a lot of storage. You know, the LA Aqueduct, that's a great example. It was built in 1913 by Mulholland. And there was storage associated with that, but St. Francis, I think St. Francis Dam is the name, failed. So they don't have any storage on that. So whatever comes down, they have to use, or it goes out to the ocean. You always need to be able to store what you're producing. And the more you can store, the more flexibility you have. You know, Metropolitan has the ability, you know, the Deamer plant, which is for part of Southern California is right in the hills of Yorba Linda. During the fire in 2008, they were able to just open up the valves and push as much water as they could into our system, which was very useful. We lost a lot of homes, but we lost a lot fewer than necessary because we had that abundance of water. And when you have an abundance of water and can keep pushing it, you're not gonna save every single home, but you're certainly gonna cut it down. So you're saying that we have, the population have doubled in California, but we haven't done, we haven't invested much in water infrastructure, right? Right, we've not been proactive in that way. And there's, you know, supply and demand. You need to have both. Today, they just wanna focus on the demand side and push demand down. And I joke that they want low flow fire hydrants at some point, which, you know, they don't, but that's the natural extension of where they're going. The challenge I see is no one's being proactive, especially when it comes to fire management. And I look at our district and what we had to do in order to become proactive. So the first thing we did was we started fire hardening all of our facilities. That means rocking everything on top so there wasn't brush growing that could burn during a fire and going around our perimeter to make sure all that's covered. Then the second thing is we needed to make sure all of our booster pump stations in those high fire areas had permanent backup natural gas generators. So we installed those. So even if we lose power, we can keep moving the water. The third thing, any infrastructure for our facilities that were close to the fences that could possibly burn, we moved them inland and built protection around them so the heat wouldn't affect them at all. And then the final thing that we did was we increased our ability to pump water to different levels around our district and in higher quantities. So we weren't stuck with kind of an old system in one pipe. The addition of two heli hydrants, which are big open containers that the firefighting helicopters can control and tap, those have been critical because they can be tapped anytime, day or night. And the helicopters can land, grab the water and go drop it on the fire before it grows out of control. So there are a whole host of things that you need to do. We'd love for the state to allow us to do more brush management around the perimeter of our district, but the state's not interested in that. It may disturb a habitat or a species. And I remember the 1993 fires here in Laguna Beach and there were some sensitive habitats and they weren't able to build their water system back then. And some elected official, I think it was a supervisor, made the comment that, well, with the fire now, there are no species left. So what are you protecting? If you can't protect the area, you can't protect the species. So there's that balance and we've lost that balance. Now, Brett, you have been a water expert for many years, right? And when you hear that we don't have enough water and you just mentioned that it seems like we have, how does that, what do you think of that? Well, a great example, Pat Brown built the State Water Project and there was the Bay Delta area that needed to be fixed. Jerry Brown tried it, his first term didn't work. Second term, 2016, 2017, the Metropolitan Water District, which is the largest water contractor, guaranteed the full construction cost of the twin tunnels. And Governor Brown was very active in that. He was calling Met directors. He was making a real push for this, making a real push in the state. We got it approved. Metropolitan went on record, we will pay this money. Wouldn't cost the state one red cent. And how much water would it bring? It would have, and CFA, it would have brought probably 12 to 16,000 CFS and it's a 23,000 intake and the pumps down at the bottom can pump about 16. So you wanna match the two. So it would have been perfect to move water through underneath the Delta, would have had a de minimis impact on the environment and would have been given us the ability to move water more efficiently through the Delta. Right now it has to go through the Delta. And if you suck in what, 16 fish in a year, you have to shut down the pumps. This has been going on since 1982 and they actually knew they needed this in 1960. So this is not a new problem. It's just, we don't lack the engineering or understanding what needs to be done. We lack the public policy will to get it done. And every time you get close, a new lawsuit's filed. And that litigation I think is gonna be problematic moving forward and it stymies everything in this state. So people are coming and suing these projects and bringing pressure to politicians not to do them. Right. Because they think it will impact the environment. Right, and they don't wanna build infrastructure so they decided we're gonna start imposing restrictions on water usage throughout the state. And there's a war on swimming pools. There's a war on green grass. There's a war on using as much water as you think you need to. They will tell you, no, no, we only think you need to use this amount of water. And that's becoming a real problem in this state. So when it comes to the firefighting, you need to have robust facilities. You need to have a robust hydrant inspection program. You know, in our district, we service all the hydrants every nine months. And in the high fire areas, we go back right before the high fire time and make sure all the hydrants are working. So all the hydrants work. It's important to do that. That's being proactive. There's a lot of reactive policy in this state. And I will say, I was on the MET board for 11 years. And, you know, I feel- Which is the Water Workforce Southern California. Southern California, the major importer provide water to 20 million people and own the Colorado River aqueduct. And, you know, we sell anywhere from one to two million acre feet a year. So we provide water for roughly half the population. Half of California. Yeah. And there is a big contingency on the board that was opposed to more storage. They were opposed to fixing the Delta. And you can't have that. We've got to focus on water. And having that abundance of water is what makes us a first world economy. We're not a first world economy. We don't have the water and power. We no longer are a first world economy. And if you have consistent power outages, no water supply, that's not a first world economy. But it seems like the public wanted this, right? Because there was a bond that passed for water. Prop one, a while back ago. Yeah, there was a big water bond for storage because people understand storage is pretty basic. It's like a giant savings account. And we passed a bond for roughly 2.7 billion just for storage. And the little section in there, it said had to be for environmental benefit. What does that mean? They have to be able to provide a benefit for the environment. Humans are no longer relevant. So how many fish will this save? Will this make sure the runs of the salmon are protected, what have you? And having to quantify that and take that away from the benefits to humans, I don't think 99.99% of the voters in this state knew that was a provision in there. And had they known, they'd be furious. A clean bond, which would say build storage, period, would pass 80% vote because people want storage. They understand that. But if it said build storage for the benefit of the environment only, they would never vote for that. You know, the one thing that I've learned in the water business is if you communicate to your customers the value you're receiving for the water and what you're charged, they're okay with it. People will pay higher taxes, higher fees if they see the tangible benefit and know it's gonna be good for the state. It's good for their community. It's good for their family. They will always do that because they understand that self-interest. But they're not gonna just give away money if they don't know where it's going. Why do you think that bond hasn't, that infrastructure hasn't been built? Because it was passed almost a decade ago, right? Maybe a little longer, yeah. I think the challenge is agencies are trying to find ways of complying with it. And how do you demonstrate to the satisfaction of a judge who will get the litigation to prove that there's enough tangible environmental benefit for this reservoir? I mean, Sites Reservoir, take that as an example. It's been on the books since 1984. So what's that, 40 years, 41 years? And we still can't get it built. Diamond Valley Lake, now this is a great example of what local control does. So we had a huge drought in the early 90s. And Metropolitan said we need to build one more large reservoir in Southern California. So when there are storms, we can take advantage of those storm flows, put it in an above-ground reservoir, and then use it to make sure our groundwater basins are full as well, dual use. And so we started in the early 90s, and we built Diamond Valley Lake, doubled the amount of storage we had above ground in Southern California, and we were online in 1999. So in less than 10 years, we did it. But it was because, as an agency, we had the money to do it. We went to all the environmentalists and said, tell us what you want, and we'll write the check. I mean, it's almost unseemly that these environs can come and make all these demands. They have no skin in the game, but they have all these demands, and their cudgel is litigation. So MET went to them and said, what do you need? And they said- So you just pay them off? So you pay them off. So what do you want? Well, they wanted MET to buy a plateau and guarantee that it'd be maintained in perpetuity. So MET bought a plateau out in the Inland Empire, and they maintain it in perpetuity. But the exchange was, we got a big reservoir in less than 10 years. And the fact that you have to do that, that adds 30, 35% to the cost. And so what we did is we built this huge reservoir. We did a big tunnel through the San Bernardino Mountains, called the Inland Feeder. And we did that so we can move State Water Project or Colorado River water into that reservoir any time and store it. Because you have storms, there are enough storms in this state where seven to 10 days worth of storms is more than enough water for the entire state. If you can- Seven or 10 days? Seven to 10 days, if you can move it through the system and it had enough storage to fill up. But you have a lot of facilities, Army Corps, they build flood control. And so their little manuals tell them, oh, we need X amount of space so there's no flood. So they'll let water run out to the ocean. Other dams, oh, for safety, we need to make sure there's enough room for storm. This is why you need both on-stream and off-stream storage. Diamond Valley is off-stream storage. Sites is off-stream storage. Oroville, Oroville, we had issues up there a couple of years ago. That's on-stream storage. So you need to manage that better. You need to do releases and run it through the system, run it in Southern California. But when we had those big rains in 2017, we had to shut off all the pumps in the state late February, early March because we ran out of places to put the water. And you can't do groundwater storage quickly. It has to go and percolate in. But with above-ground reservoirs, you can put a ton of water in very quickly. So if we have the right plumbing in our system, seven to 10 days' worth of storms in Northern California, the whole state could be flushed with more than enough water to use. And that's in Northern California because we have a lot of storms. And I tell people, I tell my neighbors, it doesn't matter whether it rains down here because our water comes from Colorado or it's Northern California. It doesn't really matter. I mean, it does, but for the most part, that's what we depend on. That's where our water comes from. And, you know, our water forefathers and mothers were very visionary and built these facilities. They could never be built today because the litigation would stop them. I mean, we had enough challenges building the Colorado River aqueduct just with one state, the state of Arizona. You know, they sent out the National Guard troops and they wanted to stop it. I mean, it was a great story with the Colorado River aqueduct. But the state has a history of looking to the future and preparing for the future. And we had a water system and a state that did that up to 1973, and then we stopped. Fortunately, Metropolitan still looks ahead and is still trying to find ways of generating more storage and more water. But as long as the state is up there calling the shots, saying no, you don't need this, don't need that. You know, litigation stops this, stops that. It's a world of hurt. And so then you translate that to the local levels. Then these local agencies may wanna build bigger reservoirs because they know, okay, we're gonna have fires. We need bigger facilities so that we don't run out as quickly. Or we need permanent backup generators to keep them full, keep moving it up because we're gonna lose electricity. If you can't do that, we're in a world of hurt. And that fire was out of control so quickly, so fast. Firefighters can only do what they can do. And I'm not gonna fault the water folks until we see the end report. But for goodness sakes, by not allowing local communities to build and install backup generators, that plays a role in this. By not having enough water in Southern California that we could move over, that plays a role. Not having enough storage, that plays a role. Not allowing the brush to be maintained and cleaned out. You know, they used to do controlled burns through this state. You pick the months, you know, February, March, where it's not, no high winds, high humidity, and you do controlled burns to get rid of the stuff on the floor of the forest, you know, around the urban wildland interface areas to cut down that risk. We don't do that anymore. And that's what I hope this is gonna lead to, going back to a time where we were more proactive. As a district at Yorba Linda, it was a tough lesson to learn because there were a lot of folks that lost homes and a lot of folks that lost homes where hydrants were dry. They were really, really angry. And so the district really had to be smart and be proactive and demonstrate to the community, we're sorry this happened, and we're gonna do everything we can to make sure it never happens again. And that's where we are. And everything we've done points to that. And minimizing risk. If I could be king for a day, I would let us build a 50 foot barrier between the state park and all of the properties along our eastern and northern border and then allow for brush removal. Not clear cut or anything like that, but just do smart. If they're dead bushes, pull them out because they're just doing nothing other than waiting to burn. We are honored to be sponsored by Shen Yun. I've been attending Shen Yun performances every year as they change the choreography and music. Shen Yun takes you back in time to the magical world of ancient China with unique blend of brilliant dancing, beautiful costumes and legends coming to life. Overall, it's a very meaningful performance with a lot more than just entertainment to offer. Make sure to go see it this year. Go to Shenyun.com and book your tickets today. I highly recommend it. People nowadays go to the doctors, the psychiatrists for pills, for antidepressants. This, this is the antidepressant, the best. I knew it was gonna be good. It's a billion times better than I even thought it would be. I've heard people say, you don't wanna miss this and I would fully agree. I'm gonna tell everyone to come see it. You have to. Definitely gonna come back next year. Totally inspirational. You have to go see this. It's a once in a lifetime must see that will change their lives forever. Now, Brett, when you see those numbers, you say you look at the data, you see the numbers, but then you kind of hear that we have to conserve more instead of building these reservoirs. How does that make you feel? It's frustrating because we had a wonderful, robust system and we had a plan to keep it wonderful and robust and we stopped building in 1973. Now, CEQA and all that, NEPA came on board in 72, 73 and that litigation has been used to stop progress in a lot of those. I'm a member of the Colorado River Water Users Association, which is seven basin states for the Colorado River. And they're Indian tribes that are very active now and they're building these fantastic projects. They're building them quickly. They don't have the EPA to deal with. They don't have CalEPA to deal with. They build what they need. And I'm not saying we need to be irresponsible. I believe we need to be very good stewards. The part of being a good steward is making sure there's an abundance for you, for me, for all of our families and for the future. If we're not making the future better, when I voted on the Twin Tunnels at MET, I told a little story. I said, my great-grandparents lived in LA and they voted to tax themselves to build the LA Aqueduct because they knew there'd be benefits for LA. And my grandparents who lived in LA in the 30s, they voted to tax themselves to build the Colorado River Aqueduct because they knew that would be good for the future. My parents in the 1960s voted for the State Water Project because they knew that would be good for Southern California. And I said, we're 50 years later. What has our generation done? Nothing. We're living off the investment made by our great-grandparents. And you can't do that. You need to be providing for the future generations. And we've lost that vision in California. You don't say, oh, climate change, we need to preserve. No, if you'd build the proper infrastructure, this wouldn't be an issue. Weather's always gonna change. It goes in, what, 32-year cycles. Just kind of shifts back and forth. It's just the way the earth has always been. But we've gotten away from that. You talk to most farmers. Most farmers will tell you, we build resiliency into our system to deal with a maximum seven-year drought. And so they know what they need to do. So I would always ask myself, who do I trust? A farmer who has an interest in making sure there's water to grow the crops and keep the fields well-tendered, take care of their, not only their crops, but their livestock, so they can send it out to market and feed you and me. They know what they're doing. They know what their needs are. Or is some bureaucrat at some university who's writing a paper who's never lived or worked on a farm and is trying to tell the farmer, no, you need to do this, you need to do that. I trust the common sense, the farmer. And I think you look at the most recent election results. That was all common sense. Who likes being told, this is how you need to do it? And America's supposed to be the freest economy, the freest nation, freest communities. And with freedom comes responsibility. Don't get me wrong, I believe we're responsible. But we have to be good stewards, and by being a good steward, we're being a good steward for the future. Now, Brett, you built your career in the water space, right? I worked for a member of Congress and knew early on, because I grew up in basically Yorba Linda, and we saw fires every 10 years. Come from a family of firefighters, so I always talked about fires, Thanksgiving table, you hear the various stories from my grandfather and uncle and cousin. But I realized water was a big deal for this state. And you look at the history of the state and the development in Southern California. Without water, we'd be nothing. And the whole West was able to develop because of it. It's a great book by Michael Hiltzik, who's a writer for the LA Times. It's called Colossus. It's about the history and the construction of Hoover Dam. Fascinating book. Yeah, if you want a good read and understand the history and development of water for Southern California, read Colossus. I mean, it's not as exciting as Chinatown or anything like that. But this is a true look at what it took to build this infrastructure and what our country went through to do it and the amount of compromise it took amongst all the Colorado River Basin states. So I started learning about that when I worked in the house. I found this was fascinating. So 1998, there was an opening on my local water board. So I ran, got elected and just took off from there. And now if you wanted to build this infrastructure, can we do it? Technologically, it'd be very easy. Engineering-wise, it'd be very easy. It's a public policy will that's lacking because as soon as we start doing it, we're gonna get sued and they're gonna stop it. I mean, the Colorado River aqueduct is 242 miles from Lake Havasu, which was created by Parker Dam, which was paid for by Matt, all the way to Lake Matthews in Western Riverside County. And it's pumped five times and gravity feeds the rest of the way. We go through the San Jacinto Mountains. It was a brilliant engineering feat. They tunneled from both ends in the 20s and 30s, just through trigonometry and a lot of dynamite. And they went from both sides and ended up perfectly in the middle. So we have the technology, we have the engineering. And look at how more advanced we are today. I mean, nine songs versus 9,000 songs. We did it on music side. We should be able to do it on the water side. And we can be much more efficient. But we lack the public policy will. And that saddens me the most as a third generation Californian. Is it the public policy will or is it the lawsuits? Well, I think a lot of folks are afraid of the lawsuits. And I know I get criticized for saying this, but once again, climate change has become the convenient excuse for anything, any lack of action on something. So if we didn't build enough storage and we didn't have enough hydrants and something burned, well, it's obviously climate change. No, you should have built a bigger reservoir, had more hydrants. And I'm not saying that towards the most recent fires, but that's the excuse they use. And we have 40 million people working off a system designed for 20. I mean, that's easy math to do. Even I can do that math. What would you say to Californians that are seeing all of these fires in LA and they're seeing some challenges with water here in California? Well, I look at somebody like a Bill Maher. Bill Maher is a liberal, right? He has that HBO show. I don't watch it much. But I follow him tangentially. He talks about the over-regulation in California. This was long before the fires. They tried to put in a garage door the number of permits he had to get, tried to do solar, the number of permits and the amount of time it took. You can't do anything quickly in this state. Adam Carolla is another person that I listen to. He, like me, is a native, grew up about the same time period in Southern California. He was a builder. He'll go to a lumber yard. I like to build things. You go and buy some of the impregnated wood, they won't cut it for you there, but you can take it home and cut it. Well, why can't you cut it? Well, there's formaldehyde in it and that's a danger to the employee, but it's okay for the citizens. This over-regulation that you can't do anything without the state telling you you can do this or you can't do that. I mean, just to put in, we put in a heli hydrant, 37 work days. That was most of our district staff building this, doing a helicopter landing zone, doing fire hardening, putting rocks around everything. 37 work days. Another agency in Southern California, it's gonna take them 18 months because there's more bureaucracy, more that you have to answer to. And then when you try to build a large facility where the state regulates it, good luck. I mean, people are leaving the state in droves because it's no longer the golden state. I mean, I ask people, what was the seed money for the Cal States, the UC, community colleges, the interstate highway, and the state water project? The answer is the revenue we had from offshore oil drilling. Well, we can't have that now. We can't have those resources. So all of that money's gone. That's what made California the golden state. Now, there's a great article from the 1930s about why California is unique and different from the rest of the country. And part of it was the ability to get things done. And one of the things they talked about was the development of the state water project or of the Colorado River Aqueduct and dreaming of bringing water from Colorado to Southern California for everyone to benefit from, which allowed the development of Hollywood. We have the best weather in the world here. I mean, where else would you want to live? We don't have hurricanes. We don't have tornadoes. We have some fires, earthquakes, but it's a great place to live, one of the most beautiful states. But people are leaving in droves because that freedom is going away. Your schools aren't at the level they used to be. So I just think overall, I look at it from the water perspective, and that's just a tiny piece. Most people don't think about it. But when they start getting told, I'm sorry, you have to cut your water use in half. Well, why? Because we're telling you to. Well, my lawn's gonna die good. We don't like lawns. Most people dream of the house, the green grass and the white picket fence, right? Not the house, the white picket fence and dirt or gravel or astroturf. I mean, I've got dogs, I've got grandkids. They want to play on grass. They don't want to play on hot carpeting. So that freedom is gone from California. People are gonna go and try to rebuild their homes. They're gonna be told by the Coastal Commission, nah, we don't think you should rebuild your house. Sorry. If you own the property, if you pay for it properly, maintain it. If it burns down, you should be able to rebuild it. We're losing insurance coverage. I mean, how many of those people have their insurance canceled? I mean, it's tragic. And so I go back to, I'm just a little district and I look at what can we do to be proactive for our community to minimize the risk as much as possible. You're never gonna get rid of 100% of the risk. I had lunch with a friend today who deals with the Paddleboard Association. And the Coast Guard wants to require that every paddleboarder in a navigable water wear a life vest. Why? Well, to eliminate risk. Well, has it really cut down on deaths? Would it? Well, we don't have any studies to show that, but we think it will. You need to be able to demonstrate these things. And we can't eliminate all risk in society. Part of coming west and building a business and starting a business is taking that risk. And if you take that risk out of it, you look at the entrepreneurs, the early entrepreneurs, Hewlett and Packard and the Apple guys, no government money, but they just took a risk. They started in their garage and they had a great idea and they worked hard and tried to push it up. And look at where we are today. Silicon Valley grew because of that. Then you look at some of the groups that got a ton of taxpayer money to do things. They had no skin in the game, no risk. Goes bankrupt, walk away, do something else. So we have a different mindset and we need to get back to that. Let's be proactive. Let's look ahead. Let's prepare for the future. We're not doing enough of that today. And this after action report on the fires, it's gonna be very interesting what they point to, but also the reaction is gonna be very important for those local government agencies. Just a thought. Fire departments there, it's a pretty well run fire department, but were they properly staffed? I don't know. You know, LADWP, were they doing maintenance at the wrong time? I don't know. Were they properly maintaining the hydrants and inspecting them regularly? I don't know. Did they have plans to put in permanent generators and were rebuffed? I don't know. We'll find that out. But those are small tangible things that you can do in the future. Try to make sure it doesn't happen. And we had that small pain in our community and it's taken 16, 18 years to restore that trust. But you have to do that because you have no option. And that's leadership. Brett Barberi, water expert from Southern California. It was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you. Great to be here again. Let us know what you think about the water infrastructure in LA and California. You can always reach out to me at siamakacaliforniansider.com or comment. I read all of your comments and emails. We'll see you next time. Thank you.