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By comparison, less than 5% of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s service area suffered damage.

However, further up in the foothills, Las Flores’s infrastructure suffered significant damage, leaving the company unable to provide any water to large portions of its service area — let alone ensure the water was safe.

Focusing on problem sites has shown to be sufficient to affect the whole service area, he said.

“If the technology works and they can bring it to market, and we can afford to bring the water into our service area, then that would be great,” Prichard said.

The existing infrastructure does “not provide sufficient capacity to provide fire flow protection for the service area,” according to a public works study published last fall.