Do You Know Who Sells Your Water?

Over the past few weeks I have been knocking on doors across La Crescenta as a candidate for the Foothill Municipal Water District (FMWD or Foothill) board. At one doorstep a kind gentleman asked whether I was running to be in charge of Foothill Boulevard. I laughed and then I realized he was far from alone. Fewer than one in 10 of the neighbors I have met know who or what is Foothill.

That is not a criticism of anyone. Foothill is a wholesale agency that works quietly in the background and most of us never have reason to think about it. But it is worth knowing because it sits at the top of a chain that ends at your kitchen faucet. 

Foothill sells water to the Crescenta Valley Water District and the Crescenta Valley Water District sells it to your home. Foothill stretches from La Crescenta into La Cañada and then into Altadena, a community that tragically made global news due to the January 2025 firestorms.  

Foothill was created in 1952 to bring imported water from the Metropolitan Water District to our corner of the foothills. That water travels from the Sierra snowpack and the Colorado River – and we needed it then because the postwar boom was adding families faster than local supplies could keep up. The people who built that system made a long-term bet on neighbors they would never meet. Today eight small, “mom and pop” retail water providers depend on Foothill and each one has its own board, staff, equipment and rules. (Eight sounds like a lot because it is.)

Years ago, during my first week working at the Crescenta Valley Water District, I learned what that arrangement costs. The operations manager was giving me a tour of the infrastructure when a pump went out. What followed was a week of chasing the root cause. District and Foothill staff and contractors cannot touch each other’s equipment for legal liability reasons, so every step meant handoffs, coordination and a lot of waiting around. When the dust settled, the culprit was a blown fuse. That should have been a $50 fix but instead it cost more than a hundred times that in staff time and contractor fees.

Nobody in that story did anything wrong. Everyone was doing their job within the boundaries the system gave them – and that is exactly the point. The boundaries themselves were the expensive part. A fuse is a small thing, but multiply that kind of friction over many years across every repair, purchase and planning decision and you begin to see where a share of your water bill goes. You also begin to see the better ideas that never get tried because no single agency owns the whole problem.

Consider what is coming. Most of our pipes went into the ground about seven decades ago, which means they are approaching the end of their useful lives. The cost of pipe, pumps and equipment has climbed sharply. Extreme weather, from atmospheric rivers to the heat and fires we all know too well, tests our system in ways its designers never imagined and we need to keep water flowing and hydrants working when an emergency hits. Meeting all of that with eight small retailers and a wholesaler, each with separate staff and budgets, asks a great deal of every one of them.

Imagine a more consolidated water system with more capacity to manage and control costs. One team could look at the whole system at once, replace aging pipes in a sensible order, share equipment and expertise, and respond to an emergency without first sorting out whose valve is whose. A blown fuse would be a $50 fix again. 

Consolidation does not have to mean losing our local voice; it means designing a structure that keeps decisions close to home while removing the walls between us.

Our community has already weighed in on this. I remember a member of the crowd at the parcel charge hearing saying that consolidation might be the best thing to come out of that sometimes contentious discussion, and I remember a community poll showing roughly 80% of ratepayers in favor of this. 

These are not easy questions and the folks serving on our water boards are capable professionals who want to get this right. My sincere hope is that they take the long view and tackle the generational issues in front of us now, rather than leaving them to the next board … and the one after that.

It’s also an issue that is already here and needs a clear answer. The state has commissioned a formal study of consolidation in the wake of the Altadena fires. So here is my invitation: I would like to hear where every candidate for the Crescenta Valley Water District and the Foothill Municipal Water District stands on consolidation. If you are running, please tell your neighbors in plain language whether you support it, what it should look like and how you would get there. I hope the CV Weekly will share your answers.

Patrick’s a husband, father, son, brother, avid cyclist, fervent reader, enjoyer of adventures, lover of board games and the author of “A New California Dream.” He is a candidate for the Foothill Municipal Water District board and writes for CV Weekly in his personal capacity. This piece was authored in collaboration with generative artificial intelligence.