by Gregory Pierce, Faith Kearns, Edith de Guzman, Erik Porse, Camilo Salcedo, Jennifer Gorman and Jason Islas
Key Takeaways
- Water distribution systems were built with capacity to provide potable water and to put out local structure fires, not wildfires. Designing water systems capable of fighting wildfires would introduce significant design challenges, present significant tradeoffs to ensure water quality, and pull revenue from financing core services, all at a time when affordability concerns for water systems are already high.
- Water systems use a variety of methods to fund typical fireflow, including through recurring rates and fees or special fire-related charges paid by customers.
- Fireflow costs are often not recuperated directly at all and instead are considered “non-revenue” water.
- There are thousands of local water supply systems and fire agencies; state fire responsibility areas as well as coordination and communication protocols between water and fire agencies are not standardized.
- In the absence of standardized frameworks, successful examples of effective disaster response arrangements rely on pre-existing relationships with varying levels of both informal and formal agreements between fire and water agencies.
- There are major concerns around equitable financing for increasing water system wildfire fighting capacity for what might be a small part of a system’s population living in high-risk fire areas.
The deadly January 2025 fires that devastated communities in LA County have raised many questions about the role of water systems in fighting fires, especially as the nature of fire risks change with a warming climate.
On January 23, 2026, the UCLA and UC ANR Urban Water Supply + Fire working group—organized by the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, Luskin Center for Innovation, and the California Institute for Water Resources—convened 47 experts for the second of four workshops digging into the realities of planning water systems for a future with changing fire risks.
Water systems are generally designed and engineered for two primary purposes: delivering potable water and extinguishing localized structure fires. However, the new reality of wildfires moving into urbanized areas means that many water systems face critical questions: how to provide safe and reliable drinking water, ensure affordability for customers, and maintain long-term financial viability of their systems.
Ensuring that water systems are designed and financed in ways that make them supportive, resilient, and able to recover in the face of wildfires is key, but it is both financially and logistically unfeasible to design these systems with the primary purpose of extinguishing wildfires.
The convening—hosted at the UCLA Luskin Conference Center—focused on the intersection between water, fire, and finance. Despite analysis and scrutiny of many aspects of the water-fire relationship in the last year, the responsibilities and implications of financing fire and water operations remain completely unexplored in academic scholarship or policy discussions.
To address critical questions of financing fireflow in water systems, the working group brought representatives from water systems, water industry associations, fire agencies and nonprofit organizations together with regulators, technical assistance providers, engineering consultants, and researchers from across California and beyond.
Three core sessions were organized and structured around 15 key questions framed by a moderator and expanded upon by panelists. Each session included questions and discussion with broader workshop participants to investigate and gather diverse expertise.
The recap below includes contributions by the workshop organizers, panelists, and attendees.
Rethinking Infrastructure Financing for a Changing Risk Landscape
Alex Hall, faculty director of the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, director of UCLA’s Institute for the Environment and Sustainability (IoES), and a leading climate scientist, opened the day’s event with a reminder of the importance of interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration to tackle the complex challenges related to climate change, wildfire, and water systems.
Greg Pierce, chair of the working group and senior director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, framed the January 23 workshop:
- How—or if—systems recover revenue for the cost of fire protection service matters profoundly for agency practice and equity outcomes, but these implications remain unexplored in academic literature or policy discussions.
- California has a multitude of both local fire and local water agencies. Water systems, upon which fire agencies rely, have varying governance structures and the relationship between fire and water systems are largely unstudied.
- Local water systems and fire agencies both rely on local funding sources (rather than state or federal) and both face unfunded state mandates for fire resilience upgrades, but differ in the local funding sources and their stability.
- Having sufficient water and infrastructure to fight wildfires is not part of service mandates and standards of existing water systems and such expectations may not be feasible even if pursued.
Session 1: Water Systems, Fireflow, and Finances
The first session of the day featured a panel moderated by working group member Camilo Salcedo, a project scientist with UC ANR’s California Institute for Water Resources. On the panel were: Ahmed Rachid (AR) El-Khattabi, Research Director at the University of North Carolina School of Government Environmental Finance Center; Mark Insco, Engineering Planning Manager with the Golden State Water Company; and Jennifer Gorman, a graduate student researcher with the Luskin Center for Innovation.
The discussion illustrated the concept of “everyday fireflow,” its financial implications, and how fireflow financing works. The discussion highlighted the need to recognize that financing “wildfire flow” requirements must build on an understanding of everyday fireflow and firefighting capacity, which dictates overall system design to accommodate peak flows.
The discussion also highlighted the practical difficulties of balancing infrastructure needs with financial realities. Regionalization and partnerships were noted as a potential way to improve affordability and build capacity for financial reserves. Lake County offers a case study (also detailed in the report from the first workshop) about the importance of coordination between firefighting and water agencies.
Finally, the panel addressed the challenges posed by Proposition 218 restrictions in California, which make it difficult to raise rates for maintenance, especially when public perception is that wildfire protection is a direct responsibility of the water district. Proposition 218 requires that property-related fees, including utility rates, must not exceed the cost of service provision and requires direct consent from voters for fee increases.
Some themes from the discussion included:
- Design and Technical Requirements: While the most robust water distribution systems have dedicated fire pumps and reservoirs, most are built for water flow necessary to fight individual structure fires, rather than wildfires. There is a trade-off between fireflow capacity and potable water quality, as larger pipes can increase how long water remains in storage, leading to degradation.
- Fragmented Governance and Inconsistency: Water governance is a patchwork of city, county, private, and mutual systems, with different states also imposing varying rules, leading to a lack of consistency and transparency in how fire-related rates and fees are applied and charged to fire departments for firefighting use. Wisconsin was offered as a potential model, since the state requires utilities to account for fire protection costs, but most states lack such explicit rules.
- Funding Challenges and Equity: Funding mechanisms for fire protection vary from property taxes to fixed monthly fees based on meter size, to not charging directly at all (“non-revenue water”). Increasing revenue collection to fund infrastructure creates significant affordability and equity issues.
- Operational Burdens: Managers of water systems are overburdened with regulatory mandates and social pressures, from monitoring for and removing emerging contaminants like PFAS, to improving sustainable groundwater management practices, and now wildfire preparedness. There’s a need for financial prioritization or otherwise expectations and mandates will go unmet.
Despite the challenges, examples of significant local investments to improve firefighting capacity do exist.
San Francisco’s bond-funded emergency water supply system came up as a model of political will, with the city’s residents approving numerous rounds of significant local investment—San Francisco voters passed a $628.5 million bond in 2020—to maintain and improve the city’s multi-layered firefighting system (see report from workshop 1 for more details).
In many ways, San Francisco’s system exists more as an outlying anomaly resulting from very specific historical circumstances and supported at high ongoing cost. Such funding is harder to secure in smaller communities, or those that do not have a compelling historic reason to invest deeply in emergency systems. In San Francisco’s case, the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fires inspired long-term support..
In high-risk areas like Paradise, CA, experts suggested “temporary above-ground infrastructure” as an example for avoiding the prohibitive costs of permanent systems.
Session 2: Water System and Fire Agencies—Relationships and Finances
In the second panel, working group member Faith Kearns, Director of Research Communications with Arizona State University’s Arizona Water Innovation Initiative, moderated a panel discussion characterizing what we know and don’t know regarding the existing relationships between water system agencies and fire agencies. Faith was joined by: Lake County Fire Chief Willie Sapeta; Kevin Philips, District Manager for the Paradise Irrigation District; and Lisa Yamashita-Lopez, General Manager of Rubio Cañon Land & Water Association in Altadena and board member of CalMutuals.
Panelists noted that while local relationships between water and fire agencies are often sufficient for everyday fire response needs, they are frequently informal and insufficient for large-scale disasters.
There is a critical need for formal communication protocols and integrated command structures, especially when outside fire agencies provide mutual aid—systems or agencies engaging in the voluntary, reciprocal exchange of resources and services during crises—and are unfamiliar with local water systems.
Panelists emphasized that coordination and mutual aid is not just about equipment but also about sharing specialized knowledge, including during active disaster response. This could also mean including representatives of local water agencies as active members of incident command.
Full documentation and pre-established agreements are vital, as FEMA and other agencies require specific timelines and cost breakdowns for reimbursement. Lake County, for example, has monthly meetings between the fire protection district and local water agencies, which fosters ongoing communication and coordination. As a result, the county now has integrated water and fire response capacity, such as targeted valve shutoff and other approaches taking place in tandem during a wildfire event. Such cooperation takes years of building relationships and merging agency cultures to promote coordinated operations during times of crisis.
Being able to shut off water mains serving homes residences during a fire is also critical to preventing drops in the system-wide water pressure. Remote and automatic shutoffs can help maintain the integrity of the core water system but there are costly liability concerns.
Technologies like Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and digital twins can be used to share water system data with fire departments, which is especially important for conveying critical information to agencies that provide mutual aid from distant locations and are likely to be unfamiliar with local system configuration and operations. Without being able to accurately quantify the long-term benefits, however, the upfront technical implementation and cost of such systems may be a barrier for some systems.
Participants described financial relationships that were not well-delineated. While fire agencies are well integrated into disaster response and can recoup some costs that way, that seems less true for water agencies. Much of the water used to fight wildfires becomes “non-revenue” water.
Post-disaster recovery is particularly challenging because current funding models don’t account for the catastrophic revenue loss—at times upwards of 90%—many water districts can face following a disaster.
Session 3: Whether and How Should We Pay for New Wildfire Fighting Water Infrastructure?
The final topical session was moderated by Megan Mullin, Faculty Director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, and featured a discussion with: Sanjay Gaur, President of Water Resources Economics; Max Gomberg, Consultant on Water Affordability and Resilience and Luskin Center for Innovation Board Member; and Luis Gutierrez, Director of Energy and Water with the LA City Mayor’s office.
Water systems are generally struggling to balance three competing priorities: providing safe drinking water, maintaining household affordability, and ensuring long-term financial viability. Fire preparedness is a major disruption that threatens to bankrupt systems already facing high costs and depleted reserves. Laws (like Proposition 218 in California) further constrain water agencies’ ability to raise rates.
Federal support (e.g., FEMA, Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funds) is increasingly unreliable and politicized. While bonds are a common mechanism for financing infrastructure in California, such funding sources cannot fund ongoing operations and maintenance. Bonds create new long-term obligations for future taxpayers, and no major new funding sources are expected in the near term.
There is also significant debate over whether residents in high fire-risk areas should pay surcharges for protection, or if costs should be spread across the all rate payers of a specific utility. This is complicated by the fact that many disadvantaged communities struggle to pay current rates.
While there are examples of disaster preparedness costs that are spread widely across residents to reduce future losses, the rate of change in these risks across many climate-related disasters—from wildfires to flooding to extreme heat—raise important questions about whether we can adequately pay for adaptation costs while equitably distributing benefits.
Some agencies are successfully investing in visible fire infrastructure, like Heli-Hydrants,, showing ratepayers how rate increases are leveraged for fire preparedness, but the exact cost-benefit remains unclear.
Experts suggested that smaller systems could benefit from intersystem connections—simple pipe links between jurisdictions—which are relatively cheap and provide redundancy during emergencies.
There was a strong call for a “mindset shift” in state and federal programs. For instance, State Revolving Funds (SRF) currently do not fund basic fireflow unless it is incidental to another goal. Participants also argued that the state should set standards for water shutoffs during fires, similar to those for energy utilities.
The session concluded that the sector must first define the level of risk reduction it aims to achieve before it can effectively solve the question of how to pay for it.
“All-Options” Approaches and Improved Coordination are Needed
Edith de Guzman, Water Equity and Adaptation Policy Cooperative Extension Specialist with the Luskin Center for Innovation, facilitated a group reflection to distill lessons from the workshop—including the key gaps workshop participants identified in policymaker and public understanding around the issues, and actionable takeaways.
Erik Porse, Director of UC ANR’s California Institute for Water Resources, closed out the day with a summary of the discussions:
- The variety of governance structures across water systems in California means there will be many working models for how water and fire agencies collaborate to increase resilience; developing regional infrastructure models for resilience rooted in local relationships is an important step.
- There exists a critical disconnect between current funding structures and constraints and growing affordability concerns, particularly for struggling small- and medium-sized systems.
- Disaster planning frameworks note actions that agencies can take before, during, and after a disaster that can help with preparedness and recovery. There are both cheaper and more expensive actions, and agencies must consider the costs and benefits of all options.
- Water systems need more sophisticated ways to monetize their services for firefighting.
- Liability concerns for water agencies during disasters—such as emergency shut offs of parts of a system to maintain reliability elsewhere—are a significant financial risk for water systems and may need to be addressed through state legislation.
Addressing California’s water system challenges require long-term, “all-options” approaches that include a suite of options for property-level and regional improvements, which disperse costs across public and private sectors and mix low-cost and high-cost interventions. As a sector that seeks to limit risk, building capacity and expertise for these new challenges will require research, peer-learning, and experimentation.
Properly enforced home-hardening and defensible space requirements are critical, but must be coupled with improved regional coordination, financing mechanisms such as dedicated and transparent fees, and infrastructure improvements that improve system redundancy and resilience like distributed or modular infrastructure.
A full report of the day’s discussions will follow. Workshop 3: Addressing Post-Fire Challenges with Drinking Water Quality, Public Trust, and Communications will take place in May.
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Greg Pierce is the Senior Director of the Luskin Center for Innovation, an Associate Professor in Residence at UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning, and the director of the Human Right to Water Solutions Lab.
Faith Kearns is a scientist and research communication practitioner, the Director of Research Communication with the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative, and an Affiliate Scholar with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation.
Edith de Guzman is a Water Equity and Adaptation Policy Cooperative Extension Specialist based in UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation.
Erik Porse is the Director of the California Institute for Water Resources and an Associate Cooperative Extension Specialist in UC ANR.
Camilo Salcedo is a Project Scientist with UC ANR’s California Institute for Water Resources.
Jennifer Gorman is a Graduate Student Researcher (Master of Public Policy) in UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation.
Jason Islas is the Assistant Director for Marketing and Communications at UCLA’s Sustainable LA Grand Challenge.
