Asked about the emergency response to California's wildfires, Republican Vice President-elect JD Vance criticized the state's Democratic governor for making "very bad decisions over a very long period of time," and pointed to the condition of the state's reservoirs as an example.
"Some of these reservoirs have been dry for 15, 20 years," Vance said on Fox News Sunday as he spoke about Gov. Gavin Newsom. "The fire hydrants are being reported as going dry while the firefighters are trying to put out these fires. There is a serious lack of competent governance in California, and I think it's part of the reason why these fires have gotten so bad."
During the height of fighting the Palisades fire on Jan. 7 and Jan. 8, water demand outpaced the amount of water flowing to hydrants, and some hydrants went dry. A nearby city reservoir was empty for repairs when the fire broke out, the Los Angeles Times reported Jan. 10.
But Vance's description of decades-long dry reservoirs is misleading. Experts on California's water management told us they were not aware of any major reservoir that has been dry for 15 years or more. The state-managed reservoirs in Southern California are, in general, at or above their historic average storage for January.
The Santa Ynez reservoir that supplies drinking water to Los Angeles' local system has been empty since February 2024 because it needed repairs. The reservoir can hold up to 117 million gallons. But it's managed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, not the state, and it's used primarily for drinking water.
Had the reservoir been full, it may have supplied more water pressure to the Pacific Palisades during the height of the firefighting and slowed the rate at which hydrants ran dry, said Steve Margulis, the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering chair at the University of California, Los Angeles.
But that reservoir hasn't been closed for 15 years, so it's unclear which reservoirs Vance was referring to.
California has close to 1,500 surface reservoirs, a 2018 Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy Center report said. Most are small and managed by local governments, said Jay Lund, the vice director of the Center for Watershed Sciences and a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California, Davis.
Some reservoirs are intentionally left at low levels or empty, Lund said, because they're used for flood control. But those reservoirs fill during heavy rainfall to prevent flooding.
It's possible that a local reservoir somewhere in the state has been shut down for several years, but we did not find an example, and President-elect Donald Trump and Vance's transition team did not provide examples when PolitiFact reached out for comment.
"I am sure there are very small reservoirs that have been empty for some time, for one reason or another," said Thomas Harter, a hydrology professor at the University of California, Davis. "No major reservoirs have been empty for that long."
Small reservoirs that serve local areas outside of Los Angeles have no relation to the city's water system.
Los Angeles' water comes from local aqueducts, groundwater and water purchased from Southern California's Metropolitan Water District. The water district's water is supplied by the Colorado River, groundwater and the State Water Project that moves water from the north to the dryer southern end.
State Water Project Deputy Director John Yarbrough said in a statement to PolitiFact that there are "no dry reservoirs in the State Water Project system." Most of the major reservoirs tracked by the California Department of Water Resources are at or above their historic average storage.
In a Jan. 12 interview with NBC News, Newsom rebutted Trump's criticisms of Northern California water management and described Southern California's reservoirs as "completely full." Although the nearby state reservoirs aren't completely full, they're close. The state-managed reservoirs in Southern California have stores above 75% of their total capacity.
Newsom's critics accused the governor of misleading by not mentioning the local empty Santa Ynez reservoir. After the interviewer noted the empty local reservoir, Newsom said, correctly, that the reservoir is not related to the state and federal water management system that Trump criticized early in the wildfire response.
Newsom on Jan. 10 called for an investigation into why the Santa Ynez reservoir was empty when the Palisades fire broke out. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said in a Jan. 11 press release it will conduct an investigation into water resiliency and how to better respond to climate-related disasters.
Regardless of the amount of water in the pipes, though, hydrants and local water infrastructure are built for routine structure fires, not large wildfires that consume entire neighborhoods. The water may have slowed the fire in some places, but experts said it likely would not have dramatically contained the fire.
Margulis told us it's unclear how much that extra water would have helped, and the reservoir's absence should be part of a post-fire investigation.
"Any additional reservoir would have helped maintain supply and pressure in the area that draws water from it for a longer period of time, but to what extent remains to be determined," he said. "However, given the conditions, once the fire was ignited and started to spread quickly, it is unlikely that the extra supply would have made a major difference in containing it."
The Department of Water and Power in February 2024 shut down the Santa Ynez reservoir because of damage to its cover. The reservoir supplies drinking water to the city, so it's subject to environmental regulations to prevent contamination.
The department said the repairs are "subject to the city charter's competitive bidding process which requires time." The Los Angeles Times reported a $130,000 contract was issued to a Lakeside firm to repair the cover.
Upcoming investigations may determine that local government or management shortcomings contributed to a delay in repairing the reservoir. But the reservoir was shut down for less than a year, not 15 years or more. And it's not indicative of a statewide problem with reservoirs.
Vance said that some reservoirs in California "have been dry for 15, 20 years."
Experts said that statewide, there are no major reservoirs that have been dry for more than 15 years, and most of California's reservoirs are above their historic average storage.
One reservoir that supplies water to the Pacific Palisades area has been shut down for nearly a year, and that may have eased the water pressure shortage during the height of the firefighting.
But Vance's statement is exaggerated. It contains an element of truth, but ignores critical facts. That's our definition for Mostly False.