LOS ANGELES – After so much rain has fallen in Southern California this week, we wanted to know how much is saved for future use and how it’s done. For that, we turned to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works.
Mark Pestrella is the Director of the LA County DPW. To him, capturing rain water is like saving money in the bank. Rain water capture happens at dams, like Big Tujunga or Pacoima, to name a couple. When it rains, Pestrella says, “each water drop that travels across the land” ends up in rivers, lakes and streams” On it’s way there, “we capture it in our dams, and we store the water behind the dams.”
Pestrella says the county has captured 21 billion gallons of water so far in 2024, which is “enough to serve 517,000 people for a year.” Just from this week’s storm alone, the county captured 11.4 billion …