The Metropolitan Water District, meanwhile, recently announced that it will increase rates and property taxes throughout the region over the next two years to help cover the cost of climate change adaptations, water imports and treatment, and revenue declines.

Collins said the city’s budget deficit may not affect the DWP directly, as the agency has its own budget, but it could affect resources, staffing or other support the DWP receives from city departments.

“We are not impacted directly by those challenges, but certainly, as a member of the city family, the expectation is that we are going to be even more diligent in ensuring that we are investing the ratepayer dollars in the most responsible fashion,” Collins said.

Similarly, Metropolitan’s rate hikes could trickle down to DWP customers, he said; however, the DWP expects to purchase only a small amount of water from the wholesaler this year given its surplus of supplies.

There are other developments on the horizon as well, including progress at the state level that will benefit Los Angeles, Gold said.

Among them is a statewide ban on watering non-functional turf, which is expected to lead to considerable water savings. A proposed regulation known as “ Making Conservation a California Way of Life” would develop a regulatory framework for achieving long-term water use efficiency and is expected to be voted on by the State Resources Control Board this summer.

“Those actions take years to occur, and that’s something that I hope everybody understands, is that you can’t build climate resilience overnight,” Gold said.

Collins said California’s back-to-back wet winters should leave the city in good shape for a least two years. “Now it’s matter of managing that supply, managing our demands, and building more projects that are going to allow us to have even more access and even more resiliency in our system,” he said.

However, should the state face another drought that stretches three, four or more years, it’s not impossible that residents could see brown lawns and strict rules once again, he said.

That possibility looks increasingly likely as the La Niña outlook strengthens. There is a 65% chance that La Niña will develop by August, and an 85% chance it will be here by early winter, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

La Niña was last in place from 2020 to 2023— a window that included the state’s driest three years on record.

In fact, while some of the city’s current surplus can be credited to careful planning and preparation, a lot of it also had to do with luck, Gold said. Mono Lake has seen a 5-foot elevation increase since 2022 thanks to consistent winter storms.

“The miracle was the gift of nature,” he said. “And luckily, Angelenos got to benefit from it.”

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