The green light has been given to residents in the city of San Fernando, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Glendale, Long Beach, Pasadena, and Torrance to resume limited watering outdoors. Residents were asked to voluntarily curtail watering as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California completed repairs on a leak on a 36-mile pipeline.
Repairs to the water pipeline connecting the Colorado River to customers in Los Angeles County were completed ahead of schedule
The pipeline serviced the Foothill Municipal Water District, Three Valleys Municipal Water District and West Basin Municipal Water District that were affected by the leak.
Metropolitan Water District officials say it is estimated customers in the affected areas reduced water demands by about 30% during the repairs.
“We know it wasn’t easy to heed our no-outdoor-watering call, particularly during the extreme heat wave the region experienced early in the shutdown, but Southern Californians stepped up their water-saving efforts again, as they have in the past, to help us through this critical shutdown,” Metropolitan Chairwoman Gloria D. Gray said in a statement.
The MWD made a temporary repair to the leak in the pipeline earlier this year and began operating the pipeline at a reduced capacity. The MWD scheduled the shutdown to install a longer-term fix to the pipeline to avoid a possible critical failure to the water supply.
“I want to thank the crews who worked tirelessly to complete the project ahead of schedule,” Metropolitan General Manager Adel Hagekhalil said.
“This shutdown also required an extraordinary amount of coordination, and we wouldn’t have been successful without the public’s water-saving help and the cooperation and support of our affected member agencies.”
Hagekhalil added that customers “must still continue saving as much water as possible to help our region through this ongoing historic drought.”