A powerful long-duration atmospheric river storm has caused catastrophic flooding and widespread power outages in California, affecting both Northern and Southern regions of the state.
The storm has led to nearly 1 million households experiencing blackouts in Northern California and a “high risk” of flash flooding for nearly 14 million people in Southern California.
The weather event is attributed to an “atmospheric river,” a narrow band of vapor carrying substantial water, which has become more pronounced due to the planet’s increasing temperatures.
The state’s infrastructure, including roads, power grid, and water systems, has struggled to keep up with the population growth, with underfunding and insufficient investment in water infrastructure being highlighted as major concerns.
While California has been proactive in climate change policies, the state faces challenges in both transitioning away from fossil fuels and adapting to the impacts of climate change.
The storm’s aftermath underscores the pressing need for comprehensive overhauls to address climate change and its effects on infrastructure.
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As it is, California’s roads, power grid and drinking water systems have not kept up with the pace of population growth. The state has recognized this problem for well over a decade. But the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) warned that investment was not reaching the billion-dollar levels needed and public funding mechanisms were “insufficient” to deliver the changes needed, particularly on water infrastructure. The ASCE gave California’s infrastructure a C grade in its 2019 ranking.
While much of the focus on California’s water problems has in recent years zeroed in on how drought was depleting freshwater resources, the infrastructure to deal with heavy rainfall ranks as one of the biggest shortfalls, according to a report published last month by RebuildSoCal, a union-backed effort to push for overdue public upgrades.
Fixing sewers and adding new drains and systems to channel stormwater away from flood zones together make up the biggest problem for water infrastructure in densely-populated Southern California. But unlike drinking water and wastewater systems primarily funded through ratepayer fees, cities and counties typically pay for stormwater upgrades out of general funds raised through local taxes.
“This often leads to severe underfunding, hindering necessary maintenance and upgrades,” the report concluded.
Overall, investments in the region’s infrastructure fell by 37% between 2010 and 2020 even as the number of containers passing through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach skyrocketed and the effects of climate change dramatically increased.
PG&E is in the process of burying more than 1,200 miles of power lines. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2019 after its power lines were found responsible for sparking one of California’s deadliest wildfires, and regulators in the state approved PG&E’s request to move transmission lines underground between 2023 and 2026.
A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on whether buried lines would have maintained electrical output during the current storm. (Ahead of the storm, however, PG&E urged customers in Northern California to bring patio furniture inside to avoid chairs or tables blowing in the wind and colliding with power lines.) But a 2022 Princeton University study found that strategically burying just 5% of power lines near main distribution points would halve the number of residents who suffer blackouts during hurricanes and heat waves.
Those fixes alone are unlikely to sufficiently prepare the most populous state for the new extreme-weather records already routinely set and broken each year. But the damage seen during this week’s storm illustrates how decades of ignoring the threat of climate change makes life more challenging and more dangerous for people living in places where extreme weather is becoming more and more common.
California has been among the most progressive states on policies to cut back on planet-heating emissions by incentivizing the switch to electric vehicles, banning fossil-fueled heating in new buildings, and building solar panels and wind turbines to generate electricity.
But the cost of simultaneously funding a transition away from what’s causing climate change while adapting to the warming that’s already occurred exacts a heavy toll even on a state so big and wealthy the gross domestic product would, as its own country, rank in the top five largest economies.
Faced with rising deficits, however, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed slashing California’s budget for climate programs by 7% this year.
President Joe Biden’s series of infrastructure-spending laws are beginning to take effect. But the unprecedented trillions the legislation made available amount only to what economists at the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute called a “down payment” on the overhauls needed to deal with climate change.
