Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
Outcome
LADWP agreed to comprehensively inspect nearly 100 drinking water reservoirs and storage tanks and clean more than 50 of them by December 31, 2031, after EPA found unprotected openings and inconsistent cleaning and inspection schedules that violated Safe Drinking Water Act maintenance requirements.
Details
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — Drinking Water Reservoir Maintenance Violations (2025)
Outcome: LADWP agreed under a consent order to comprehensively inspect nearly 100 drinking water reservoirs and storage tanks and clean more than 50 by December 31, 2031, resolving Safe Drinking Water Act violations including unprotected tank openings and inconsistent cleaning and inspection schedules identified during a July 2024 EPA inspection.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), the largest municipal water and power utility in the United States serving approximately 4 million customers in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, operates an extensive network of drinking water storage reservoirs and tanks distributed throughout the city's complex topography. An EPA inspection in July 2024 identified violations of Safe Drinking Water Act maintenance requirements, including unprotected openings at storage facilities that could allow contamination of stored drinking water, and inconsistent cleaning and inspection schedules across the network of approximately 100 reservoirs.
The consent order, issued December 11, 2025, requires LADWP to complete comprehensive inspections of all nearly 100 drinking water reservoirs and storage tanks and to clean more than 50 of them by December 31, 2031. LADWP had already inspected and cleaned 13 reservoirs since the July 2024 inspection by the time the consent order was announced. The 2031 deadline reflects the logistical challenges of inspecting and cleaning a geographically dispersed network of large storage structures in an active urban water system that cannot be taken offline simultaneously.
LADWP serves a water system built over more than a century, with storage infrastructure spanning a wide range of ages and maintenance histories. The reservoir network is critical to Los Angeles's water supply resilience, providing storage capacity for the multiple water sources (Metropolitan Water District, Los Angeles Aqueduct, local groundwater) that feed the city's distribution system. Contamination of open or inadequately maintained reservoirs represents a direct public health risk at a scale affecting millions of consumers.
Primary Source: EPA Orders LADWP to Inspect 100 Drinking Water Reservoirs and Tanks to Prevent Contamination Risks | US EPA
How Crucible Prevents This
LADWP's violations — unprotected openings and inconsistent cleaning and inspection schedules across nearly 100 reservoirs — reflect a facility management program that lacks systematic tracking of inspection obligations. Crucible's compliance calendar tracking reservoir inspection schedules, cleaning intervals, and opening protection verification, applied at the operational level of a utility managing 100 storage facilities, is exactly the type of structured monitoring that prevents SDWA maintenance violations. The 2031 compliance deadline spans six years, requiring institutional memory that persists across department leadership changes.
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