How does LA County prepare for big rain storms?

LA County prepares for more rain

Los Angeles County is preparing for yet another round of rain storms. LA County Public Works discusses what those preparations look like

LOS ANGELES - More rain is coming to Southern California, and when we say those words, they mean a lot to Mark Pestrella and Ray Tremblay. Pestrella heads up LA County Public Works, while Tremblay works with LA County's Sanitation Districts.

As the rain moves in, Pestrella says "we're lit up and ready to go."

Forecasts of rain and snow keep Pestrella up at night thinking about what his department has to do. And, right now, he says, "We're looking at the forecast right now, and this storm coming up is going to be a cold one. So, we're going to have snow. So, we're prepping the mountain obstacles to do snow clearance in the San Gabriel Mountains."

They're continuing to work on trouble spots like where the Malibu slide happened at PCH and Big Rock.

"We are monitoring that and clearing away the debris," Pestrella said.

While they prepare for new snow in the mountains, they've got their action plans in motion for the rain in the valleys and along the coast.

"We're doing pickup pieces down here. We're cleaning up our debris basins," Pestrella said. "We're getting sediment out of the way, and we're preparing our channels to make the flow go, and we're getting our valuable spreading grounds ready to suck up more water."

How Los Angeles captures storm water

After an atmospheric river storm dumped historic amounts of rain on the Los Angeles area, the county has been able to collect a lot of that water, enough to serve half a million people for an entire year.

While all of that is going on, Tremblay said the sanitation district is working to keep any storm water out of the sewage system.

"We seal all the manholes and all the maintenance points where the water can get in to keep it out, so we can just concentrate on treating sewers," Tremblay said.

At the moment, his department depends on the public for information on where there are problems but, Tremblay says, right now they're in the process of putting sensors into the sewer system so someday they'll be able to monitor sewer problems without calls from the public, which Tremblay said is "the goal."