The Verdugo Wash is a small flood control channel that takes rainwater from the foothills above Glendale to the L.A. River, and 30 miles out to the Pacific Ocean.

When you visit the wash, as I recently did, you can see the massive chasm between rhetoric and reality in California water.

Since 2017, the Crescenta Valley Water District has been pursuing the sort of project that anyone who is anyone in California water says they want.

Crescenta Valley, which serves 35,000 people in mostly unincorporated neighborhoods between Glendale and La Cañada-Flintridge, wants to capture ocean-bound rainwater from the Verdugo Wash and use it to recharge local groundwater supplies. Verdugo Wash doesn’t carry a lot of water, but capturing it would provide one-sixth of the total water supply for the small district.

Stormwater capture and groundwater recharge are two pillars of the new State Water Plan, released with great fanfare this spring by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The California Department of Water Resources has championed local projects like Crescenta Valley’s through its “Go Golden” initiative. And Los Angeles County, where you’ll find Verdugo Wash, has a new Water Plan that emphasizes local collaborations on “sustainable water resources.”

The state, county, and neighboring local governments have been supporters and collaborators in the Verdugo Wash project.

Unfortunately, there’s one holdout: the city of Los Angeles.

Yes, L.A. talks big about launching its own stormwater capture projects, and has set a goal of achieving “zero wasted water” by 2050, as part of its own “Green New Deal.”

But, in the Verdugo Wash case, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power—and our ancient system of water rights—stands in the way.

LADWP maintains, citing a mid-1970s court decision, that all rain that runs into the L.A. River belongs to L.A., including the stormwater that ends up in Verdugo Wash.

LADWP could let Crescenta Valley Water District capture some of that water and have its project. LADWP itself lets it run out to sea.

But instead of doing the right thing—and backing up rhetoric with action—LADWP is blocking the small project, because it fears the precedent of giving up any rainwater. In the process, LADWP repeats its notorious history of appropriating the water of other places and people.

Maintaining that it owns the Verdugo Wash water, LADWP insists that Crescenta Valley, a smaller agency with limited resources, must replace any stormwater it captures by purchasing water for LADWP from other sources. In email correspondence with the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper, DWP suggested that Crescenta Valley buy the water from the Metropolitan Water District, which supplements the supplies of water agencies around Southern California.

That means Crescenta Valley would effectively be taking water from the Colorado River, which is drying up under pressure from Western states, to replace water it merely seeks to recycle from its own Verdugo Wash.

This isn’t the only way that LADWP doesn’t live up to its words. LADWP’s promised “self-sufficiency” has it seeking to quadruple the amount of water it draws from the Owens Valley in the Eastern Sierras. That move has drawn protests from environmentalists across the state.

“It’s the there-it-is-take-it mentality,” says the Crescenta Valley Water District staffer Patrick Atwater. That’s a reference to the famously short speech given by William Mulholland, the civil engineer behind L.A.’s water infrastructure, at the 1913 opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

Atwater, whom I’ve known for years because of his work in improving California water data, met me at a section of Verdugo Wash where much of the infrastructure would be built, at Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park, to discuss the $3.3 million project.

Crescenta Valley wants to capture more stormwater and restore its groundwater supply, which had been reduced by droughts. The project is an efficient, environmental way to do both.

The project would set up two flexible barriers on the wash, one near the dog park and the other near a baseball field. The dams could be inflated when it’s raining to capture some of the flow (the rest would still go to the river and the ocean).

Much of the cost of the project would come from building new pipe to take the captured stormwater to the district’s groundwater production wells about a mile away. Every gallon of water collected would be a gallon of water that didn’t have to come from the Colorado River or another stressed water source. Capturing stormwater is cheaper than buying imported water, which is becoming more expensive. Crescenta Valley spends approximately $3 million on imported water a year; next year’s budget devotes $3.8 million to imports.

“It’s obvious that this is what the future of water should look like,” says James Lee, general manager of Crescenta Valley Water District. “It’s what everyone is telling us to do.”

Lee says the technology is not novel. If it wasn’t being blocked by L.A. water rights, permitting should happen quickly. But the project is unlikely to be built until water policy in Los Angeles, and in California, catches up with reality.