Palisades water supply cleared for drinking as Bass touts speed of fire recovery
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Residents and businesses in Pacific Palisades will be able to safely use water this week, Mayor Karen Bass announced Thursday, touting the milestone as a sign of the speed of efforts to rebuild the devastated neighborhood.
The “do not drink” notice will be lifted Friday, the two-month anniversary of the deadly Palisades fire, after engineers and experts at the L.A. Department of Water and Power confirmed the absence of contaminants in the water supply.
Bass credited DWP crews for working seven days a week to restore and flush out toxic substances from the water supply, drawing a comparison to the November 2018 wildfire in Paradise, where the do-not-drink advisory remained in place until May 2020.
“In the tragic Camp Fire, it took 18 months. It was done here in two,” Bass said at a news conference at Palisades Recreation Center. “I’m committed to rebuilding this community at lightning speed.”
Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer and chief executive of DWP, said that before using water Friday, residents and businesses in the Palisades should flush their systems for at least 10 minutes, turning on all spigots, showers and faucets. Customers will receive a $50 credit on their next bill, “so you don’t have to worry about the cost of running water,” Quiñones said.
Water utilities in Altadena and Pacific Palisades are undertaking an arduous process of repressurizing their underground pipelines, testing for contaminants and attempting to flush them out.
“We flushed the system all the way to the meter,” said Quiñones, who called on residents to finish the flushing process inside their homes and eliminate any remaining contaminants. “Once you flush it and the water comes clear inside your structure, we know the water from the meter is clean — so you should be good.”
Residents and businesses will be able to drink, shower and cook with the water as they had prior to the wildfire.
At the Palisades Recreation Center, Bass and city officials also highlighted progress in the recovery efforts since the Jan. 7 blaze, which destroyed thousands of homes and killed 12 people. Noting that the Environmental Protection Agency completed debris removal last week in a third of the time originally projected, Bass said that 60 properties were now in Phase Three — the permitting and rebuilding process.
Bass thanked the Trump administration for providing the staff and resources “to move so quickly.”
Both Bass and the DWP chief reiterated their commitment to “undergrounding” power lines in the Palisades. Parts of the Palisades — including the Highlands and some streets in Castellammare — already had underground power lines. DWP engineers began planning the move about a week after the Jan. 7 fire broke out and have so far designed 4,000 feet of new underground lines that are now “ready for construction,” Quiñones said.
What — or who — started the Palisades fire? Two leading theories emerge as investigation intensifies
For the last few weeks, a team of investigators from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has worked out of a command post near a popular hiking trail, where officials believe the Palisades fire began around 10:30 a.m. Jan. 7.
“The goal is to have all of Palisades with new underground infrastructure, power infrastructure,” Quiñones said.
Underground lines are protected from wind, falling branches and lightning, reducing the risk of sparking a wildfire.
DWP plans to place underground the 80 miles of electric lines across the Palisades area, a process that can take several years. Each mile of subterranean electric line can cost from $1 million to $4 million, and Quiñones said the utility was assessing how to finance the overall installation.
Meanwhile, Quiñones said, the utility has rebuilt distribution systems and replaced 800 power poles to restore electricity to nearly every customer.
As of Thursday, 143 customers in “hard to reach areas” of the hilly, coastal neighborhood remained without power, Quiñones said.
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