By Adam Nagourney, September 1, 2014
The site of a water main rupture last month in Echo Park, a Los Angeles neighborhood.
LOS
ANGELES — The scene was apocalyptic: a torrent of water from a
ruptured pipe valve bursting through Sunset Boulevard, hurling chunks of
asphalt 40 feet into the air as it closed down the celebrated
thoroughfare and inundated the campus of the University of California,
Los Angeles. By the time emergency crews patched the pipe, 20 million
gallons of water had cascaded across the college grounds.
The failure of this 90-year-old water main, which happened in July
in the midst of a historic drought, no less, was hardly an isolated
episode for Los Angeles. Instead, it was the latest sign of what
officials here described as a continuing breakdown of the public works
skeleton of the second-largest city in the nation: its roads, sidewalks
and water system.
With
each day, it seems, another accident illustrates the cost of deferred
maintenance on public works, while offering a frustrating reminder to
this cash-strained municipality of the daunting task it faces in dealing
with the estimated $8.1 billion it would take to do the necessary
repairs. The city’s total annual budget is about $26 billion.
Los
Angeles’s problems reflect the challenges many American cities face
after years of recession-era belt-tightening prompted them to delay
basic maintenance. But the sheer size of Los Angeles, its reliance on
the automobile and, perhaps most important, the stringent voter-imposed
restrictions on the government’s ability to raise taxes have turned the
region into a symbol of the nation’s infrastructure woes.
“It’s
part of a pattern of failing to provide for the future,” said Donald
Shoup, a professor of urban planning at U.C.L.A. “Our roads used to be
better than the East Coast; now they are worse. I grew up here. Things
are dramatically different now than they used to be.”
There are constant reminders of the day-to-day burdens that the dilapidating infrastructure poses here.
The
city is battling a class-action lawsuit from advocates for disabled
people because of broken sidewalks that are almost impossible to
navigate in a wheelchair, and challenging for all pedestrians trying
simply to make it home. The average car owner here spends $832 a year
for repairs related to the bad roads, the highest in the nation,
according to a study by TRIP,
a nonprofit transportation research group based in Washington. Families
here routinely spring for expensive strollers to handle treacherous
sidewalks.
City
officials estimate that it would cost at least $3.6 billion to fix the
worst roads, $1.5 billion to repair the sidewalks and $3 billion to
replace aging water pipes.
“From
a ratepayer’s point of view, it can appear overwhelming,” said H. David
Nahai, an environmental lawyer and the former head of the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power. “We need increases for the streets and
the sidewalks. We need increases for the water structure. Pretty much
right now we are in a time of transition. That can be frightening.”
The
problem is exacerbated by cutbacks in federal spending on public works.
“The sense is that more and more, we are going to be doing things
alone,” said the mayor, Eric Garcetti.
Close
to 40 percent of the region’s 6,500 miles of roads and highways are
graded D or F, meaning they are in such bad shape that for now city
officials are concentrating maintenance efforts on roads that are in
better shape, and thus less costly to fix. More than 4,000 of the 10,750
miles of sidewalks are in severe disrepair, according to Los Angeles
city officials.
More
than 10 percent of the 7,200 miles of water pipes were built 90 years
ago. The average age of a city pipe is 58, compared with an optimal life
span of 100 years. While that may not sound so bad, at the current
level of funding it would take the Department of Water and Power 315
years to replace them.
Marcie
L. Edwards, the general manager of the department, said that the pipes
were not in as dire shape as those in some other cities, and that the
department had spent more on replacing pipes. Even with more money, she
said, there are limits on how fast her department can move.
“Our
system is by no means falling apart,” Ms. Edwards said. “We live in a
very densely populated environment. These are big jobs that are
incredibly impactful on neighborhoods and congested streets.”
Still,
the water main break was unsettling because, unlike the war-zone-like
patches of streets and sidewalks that have been cast asunder by tree
roots in some neighborhoods here, this was a hidden problem until it was
revealed in a geyser to motorists waiting at a traffic light. As such,
it has become a symbol of the larger problem.
“People
don’t think about the fact that there are pipes under the ground that
are 100 years old until one blows,” said Mike Eveloff, a leader of Fix the City, a civic group pushing for repairs. “You don’t hear a politician say, ‘I’m going to make your pipes work.’ ”
And
here, as in other cities, the demand for public works comes as the
costs of municipal pension plans are shooting up — a confluence that has
alarmed business leaders.
“Once
those payments are made, there’s not much money left, if any, to invest
in infrastructure,” said Gary L. Toebben, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.
The
challenge also coincides with a push by city leaders to move Los
Angeles away from its historic reliance on cars, with heavy investment
in its expanding mass-transit system and bicycle lanes. In an interview,
Mayor Garcetti said that any public works campaign would have to factor
in that change.
“We
have to build a city that people can be happy to walk in and drive in,
but we also have to account for the transit revolution that’s coming,”
he said. “If we spend billions and billions on car-only infrastructure —
ignoring pedestrian, bicycle and transit users — we may look back 10
years from now and say, ‘Whoops, maybe we should have tied all those
things together.’ ”
California
is also known for being averse to taxes. Earlier this year, city
officials debated asking voters to approve a plan to add half a cent to
the 9-cent city sales tax. That would raise enough for the $3.6 billion
in road reconstruction but just $640 million of the $1.5 billion needed
for sidewalk repairs.
City
Council leaders and Mr. Garcetti decided against putting anything
before voters, probably until November 2016, to give the city more time
to come up with a plan that has a chance of winning.
“I
think people quite frankly are paying enough taxes right now,” said
Mitchell Englander, a Republican councilman and leader of the repair
effort. “We’ve got to do things differently. They don’t trust
politicians.”
Kevin James, a conservative talk-show host who ran for mayor last year and was appointed by Mr. Garcetti to lead the Board of Public Works, said a sales-tax increase was needed to deal with a serious threat to the city’s well-being.
“A
lot of people are going to say they feel overtaxed,” Mr. James said.
“I’m not saying we’re not. But it means going to the voters, as I am
prepared to do on behalf of Mayor Garcetti, to make the economic
argument that $26 a year, which is what you would spend on a half-cent
sales tax increase, is a lot better than $830 a year to fix your car.”
Funds
to replace water pipes would come, presumably, if the Department of
Water and Power gained approval from the City Council to increase water
rates. Because of the drought, the typical city resident’s monthly bill
for water has risen to $60, from $34.85 in the fall of 2011, reflecting
the higher cost the department had to pay to purchase water.
“The
longer we wait, the more expensive it’s all going to be.” said Mr.
Nahai, the former head of the Department of Water and Power.