Study Details How Water Disruption Would Devastate Pasadena

A sustained disruption of water flowing into Southern California due to terrorism or a major earthquake would cause massive job losses and wield other devastating economic effects in Pasadena, a study released today by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation warns.

The report was released as the Pasadena Water & Power (PWP) celebrated this month its 100th year anniversary as water leaders in the city try to find ways to secure untapped water supplies over the next 100 years and improve water distribution service.

“Our findings indicate how critical water is to the LA County economy and how fragile that relationship is,” acknowledged USC Professor Adam Rose, the report’s lead author. “Despite many effective investments in water security at the state and local levels, serious consideration should be given to doing even more to protect and maintain the County’s water supply.”

Rose, one of the nation’s leading economic risk analysis experts of terrorism and other major disasters, said Los Angeles County could suffer startling job and gross domestic product (GDP) losses if a major disruption to the region’s imported water supplies were to occur from a shutdown of the California Aqueduct due to a man-made or natural disaster such as an earthquake.

Speaking about the report’s findings, Ed Casey, Chair of the LAEDC Water Subgroup and Partner with Alston & Bird LLP, stated, “by commissioning this study, we wanted to put an economic price tag on what experts have long known, namely that a disaster could significantly disrupt our region’s water supplies and cause extraordinary economic and social consequences.”

Casey continued, “and what a destructive price tag it could turn out to be with a 12-month disruption of the Aqueduct potentially resulting in 550,000 lost jobs in Los Angeles County; that’s close to 15 percent of our county’s entire employment base and nearly twice the number of jobs lost in L.A. during the Great Recession. These numbers should startle policy makers into taking the necessary actions to prepare for such a major disruption in our water supply system.”

As such, the report demonstrates the importance of protecting imported water sources that are vulnerable to natural disasters, developing local water supplies, maximizing groundwater storage, and implementing locally driven strategies to expedite the development and delivery of critical water infrastructure projects as well as moving to a smarter design of the built environment.

The study suggested to ways to make the Los Angeles County can become less vulnerable to water disruptions. One is to have the major federal-state initiative to improve the Bay Area conveyance system to make it more capable of withstanding a major earthquake. The ongoing Bay Delta Conservation Plan is proposing such an improvement.

The other way is to continue to invest in storage and alternative water supply systems.

Top officials of the Pasadena Water asnd Power have similarly suggested to invest heavily in looking for alternative source of fresh water particularly in recycling non-potable water and its distribution system.

The entire study can be viewed online at: http://bit.ly/TrXkpB