00:00Today I'm going to explain why the massive water main break under Sunset Boulevard was
00:04just the tip of the infrastructure iceberg in Los Angeles.
00:08As you know, the water main break caused traffic to be shut down on Sunset Boulevard, it caused
00:12a massive sinkhole into which two people fell, luckily they were okay, and it caused untold
00:17damage to local businesses and homes, and it's going to take a long time to repair.
00:22But it's not a unique event in LA.
00:25These kinds of water main breaks happen all the time.
00:27And it's largely because the pipes underneath LA are more than a century old.
00:32Most of them were put in after 1910 and haven't been replaced.
00:36In fact, the LA Department of Water and Power replaces the pipes so slowly that each pipe
00:42is on schedule to be replaced only about once every 300 years.
00:47Now these kinds of water main breaks are increasingly common because of the aging infrastructure.
00:52In 2014, there was a massive water main break near UCLA that caused the campus to be flooded.
00:57At that time, the city council said there was an infrastructure crisis, but nobody did anything
01:02about it because they were afraid of raising water rates.
01:05So these kinds of ruptures will continue, and in fact, they are continuing all the time.
01:09They usually just don't make the news.
01:11In February 2023, in my own neighborhood in Pacific Palisades, there was a massive water main
01:15break that caused water to come gushing down the hillside while kids were at school next
01:20door, and it shut down traffic in just about every direction.
01:23It also meant that homes living uphill of the water main had no water for a while, and it is
01:29much more expensive to repair a broken water main than it is to maintain a water main or replace it.
01:35However, LA has other priorities.
01:37It spends billions of dollars on homelessness without much of an impact.
01:42It spends millions on other programs and schemes of redistribution and all kinds of parties.
01:48The fundamental priorities of a city to protect the residents, to provide emergency services,
01:54those are the ones not being addressed.
01:56And that's why LA's infrastructure crisis is a long way from over.
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