2025 Los Angeles Wildfire Recovery

Beginning on Jan. 7, 2025, portions of Los Angeles County were devastated by multiple wildfires driven by hurricane-force winds. Alongside state, federal and local partners, the State Water Resources Control Board and Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board are supporting ongoing recovery efforts to help local authorities and partners restore drinking water systems and protect local watersheds from harmful debris and mudslides.

After a wildfire, the state and regional water boards support local recovery efforts in three main ways: 1) guiding local water systems in issuing necessary drinking water advisories post-fire to protect public health; 2) providing technical support to these systems as they assess and repair their infrastructure; and 3) working with partners and hazardous materials removal teams to ensure that water quality and watershed health are protected.

California is on the front lines of climate change, which has been fueling wildfires that are getting bigger and more destructive. Due to the increase in extreme weather events, including wildfires, the state and regional water boards have gained critical knowledge and expertise in recovery. This practical experience is helping guide the Water Boards’ approach to Los Angeles' recovery from the wildfires.

Boards and program directly involved

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board is collaborating with the State Water Board’s Emergency Management Program to support recovery efforts for the Los Angeles County wildfires. Both the regional board and emergency management program support on-the-ground cleanup efforts, help mitigate common post-fire impacts such as debris flows and flooding and erosion, and work to advance the recovery process by removing regulatory hurdles.

The State Water Board’s Division of Drinking Water regulates municipal water systems and is providing expertise and support to water systems affected by the Los Angeles wildfires. The State Water Board gained significant expertise during the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa and, leveraging this experience, has provided support to fire recovery efforts in Oregon, Hawaii, Colorado, and Australia. The board has also published research articles and papers and contributed to the research efforts of US EPA’s Office of Research and Development on the topic.

Learn more below.

The State Water Board regulates public water systems and provides support and expertise to local water systems as they recover from major fire events. The board’s Division of Drinking Water is supporting water systems impacted by the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires and will continue to do so throughout the recovery process.

Public water systems can sustain heavy impacts during a wildfire, and the timeframe for recovery will depend on the extent of damages. Impacts to water systems affected by the Los Angeles wildfires will continue to develop in the coming days and weeks.

Drinking water quality notices (advisories): Relying on practical experience gained from previous wildfires, such as the 2018 Camp Fire, the State Water Board developed guidance for water systems on necessary water quality testing and directs systems to issue drinking water advisories that alert their customers as to how to use, or when not to use, water being provided to their homes.

Drinking water advisories are issued with the intention of providing as much use of the water available as possible; even when water may not be safe to drink, it may still be used for sanitation and other purposes.

These advisories are:

• Boiled water notices – Water should NOT be used for drinking and cooking unless boiled. It can be used for showering and flushing toilets.
• Do not drink – Water should NOT be used for drinking or cooking, even if boiled. It can be used for flushing toilets and showering. Boiling water does NOT make water safe to consume but poses no additional health risk if boiled.
• Do not drink and do not boil – Water should NOT be used for drinking or cooking. Water should NOT be boiled, as it may pose an inhalation risk. Cold and tepid water can be used for flushing toilets and showering.
• Do not use – Water should NOT be used for any purpose.

All water systems impacted by the LA wildfires initially issued a Do Not Drink – Do Not Boil water quality notice to their customers. These notices were issued as a precautionary measure until the condition of the system could be determined. Water systems are currently assessing impacts of the wildfire on their service areas, making repairs, testing for contamination and revising their notices, as appropriate.

Drinking water notices remain in effect until water can be used normally again by customers; your local water service will have the most up-to-date info.

Before water quality notices can be lifted, water systems must conduct thorough water quality testing, and contaminant levels must meet all state and federal regulatory requirements. Systems that experienced low or no pressure during the wildfire event are susceptible to contamination from benzene and other organic compounds in the water supply lines. Water quality sampling throughout the entire affected service area may be necessary to confirm the water supply is safe for use.

What you can do:

• When returning to a residence or business, first check your local water quality notice before assuming the water is safe to drink.
• Follow any water quality notices issued by your local water provider. Instructions for using safe water will be listed on the water quality notice.
• If your area is under a water quality notice, bottled water and clean water filling stations may be available in your area. Check with your water company for potential bottled water points of distribution.
• If you have damaged or destroyed property, water quality on the customer side of the meter may be impacted. Contact your local water provider to discuss assessing your property for water quality impacts.
• If you can operate water on your property, performing low-flow flushing is a common tool that customers can use to bring fresh water into their water lines. Continually refreshing water in the lines could help lessen or limit water quality impacts you may experience.

Water System Recovery

Depending on the extent of the damage to their infrastructure during a fire, water systems can take weeks to months to recover fully. The recovery stages are generally:

• Stage 1: Repressurize as much of the system as possible. To do this, system operators will need to complete damage assessments, make repairs (where feasible), and close valves to service lines at severely damaged structures and isolate severely damaged parts of the system.
• Stage 2: Clear the system for the different uses of water up to actual consumption of the water. To do this, the system will identify sampling locations to conduct sampling and testing. Systems will prioritize sources and storage facilities (i.e., tanks and reservoirs). Systems will first flush and then stagnate distribution lines before testing to determine if they are contaminated. If contaminated zones in the distribution system are identified, systems will conduct flushing with fresh water to remove contaminants, stagnate and retest. Once sample test results are acceptable, systems will reduce or cancel the notices.
• Stage 3: Complete longer-term repairs. For those facilities where immediate fixes or repairs were not feasible during Stage1, systems will repair and/or replace damaged infrastructure.

For larger systems, zones within their service areas may move to the next stage before others.

The State Water Board’s Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program (ELAP) is also actively supporting water systems impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires by monitoring accredited laboratories qualified to test for fire-induced contaminants, which helps ensure regulatory testing is timely and reliable.

The aftermath of a major fire poses significant challenges to protecting public safety, drinking water infrastructure, and restoring water quality and fish habitat. Debris flows and flooding pose the most obvious threats, but fertilizers, herbicides and other chemicals in fire-ravaged areas that might be washed into stormwater systems or flow into waterways also threaten water quality, public health and the environment.

While it is true that modern building materials can contain compounds that may contaminate water runoff from burned areas, this runoff generally does not impact drinking water supplies of local water systems, as these supplies are protected from environmental exposure so long as the infrastructure was not directly damaged. Contaminated runoff does pose a threat, however, to the watershed itself by draining to rivers, streams and the ocean. The Water Boards are actively involved in efforts to protect watersheds following fire events.

During the recovery process, the Water Boards work closely with hazardous materials removal teams to ensure that water quality and watershed health are protected. Water Boards staff are currently deployed to the CalOES Debris Removal Task Force (removing hazardous materials) and the CalOES Watershed Debris Flow Task Force (mitigating post-fire debris flow and contaminated runoff). As part of these task forces, staff are assessing the risk to local water sources, waterways and species, and working to identify the most significant threats to water quality to develop solutions to mitigate those threats. Proven removal methods and lessons learned from previous wildfires will guide federal, state and local efforts to clean up damaged structures and hazardous materials with the aim of limiting runoff into nearby waterways during future rain events. Mitigation strategies can include new retention ponds to capture debris and sediment, fiber rolls that can slow runoff from rain and snowmelt and hydroseeding to promote the revegetation of native species.

In conjunction with federal, state and local partners, the Water Boards are also focused on threats to public health from toxic pollutants in coastal waters due to the recent wildfires. The State Water Board has provided public health thresholds for several toxic pollutants to help further inform local beach advisories and closures associated with runoff from storms or flushing events.