Pacific Palisades Réservoir, aka Chautauqua Reservoir, Drained June 2024

This is top of  the Chautququa Reservoir, which will hold more than 6 million gallons of water.

This is looking down into Rivas Canyon and across to Will Rogers State Park from the hill where the Chautauqua Reservoir is located.

When news reports highlighted the fact that the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been drained and was not available to help fight the Palisades Fire, many residents wondered why the Chautauqua Reservoir had not been used.

Before the Highlands community was built in the 1970s, the Pacific Palisades Reservoir was the lone reservoir in the Palisades.

Residents dubbed it the Chautauqua Reservoir, because it was located on the hill of the northernmost end of Chautauqua Boulevard. That reservoir overlooked lower Chautauqua and the Alphabet Streets. It was easily observed when hiking between Temescal Gateway Park and Will Rogers State Park.

Residents living below the reservoir remember water rushing down the streets in June 2024. They remember it was a Tuesday, because trash cans were swept up in the water and  pushed downhill.

One woman was upset that the water was rushing down the street and going into the ocean. Why couldn’t that water be used she wondered?

A Fire Station 69 Captain remembered that DWP invited them up to the reservoir and that they even walked inside the drained cement structure.

CTN sent the following public records request to the L.A. Department of Water and Power on March 7.

Subject: California Public Records Act Request No. R25-221 – Records Related to the
Chautauqua Reservoir, including the Date and Reason it was Emptied, Capacity, and
the Date it was Refilled. On June 16, CTN received a map of the Pacific Palisades Reservoir aka Chautauqua, but did not receive answers to the questions and sent an email again requesting those answers.

The map notes that this reservoir holds 20-acre feet of water, which is more than 6 million gallons.

A New York Times May 2 story [Before the Fire, L.A. Tried to Restore Second Reservoir in Palisades] via emails released to the Times under a public records request that “In early June 2024, crews spent several days cleaning the Pacific Palisades Reservoir, a facility that was about three miles away from the larger Santa Ynez site, and that was retired in 2013. The work, officials wrote, was ‘in preparation for temporarily placing the Pacific Palisades Reservoir back into service while the Santa Ynez Reservoir is out of service.’”

The reservoir was emptied, cleaned and supposedly new pipes were meant to be installed, but according to the NY Times “Ellen Cheng, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said in an email on Friday that the city ultimately determined that bringing the reservoir back online could have posed a risk to workers and residents of nearby homes because of structural and other safety issues.”

Two reservoirs, the Santa Ynez and the Chautauqua (Palisades) Reservoir, both meant to help with water for wildfires in Pacific Palisades were empty.

CTN received this sole map in response to its CPRA questions and by return email noted its questions were not fully answered in the request and asked for a response.

The Times story also raises further questions. Why was there water still in the structure if it was not being used? What were the issues with the structure that would not allow it to be filled again? Why did it go offline in a very high fire severity zone, in an area where people had trouble getting fire insurance?

If DWP officials had considered using Chautauqua (Palisades) Reservoir while the Santa Ynez was off-line, it means there was an earlier acknowledgment that an additional water source was needed.