Lisa Lavelle’s city is completely surrounded by water.
But to the Avalon city councilwoman, it’s the lack of fresh water that troubles her, and she hopes the next member of Congress representing Avalon and all of Catalina Island will make it a defining issue.
With new congressional maps in California this year, Lavelle and her islander constituents aren’t the only ones wondering who their new representative will be and whether he or she will address longstanding but critical issues.
“It used to make me laugh to see people with lawns in more affluent neighborhoods on the mainland, and they would be like, ‘Well, I can’t water my grass,’” said Lavelle, who moved to the island when she was five in 1986. “And I was like, I can’t make spaghetti tonight.”
Rep. Alan Lowenthall, a Democrat who has represented the 47th District for nine years, is retiring. The new 42nd District includes Downey, Huntington Park and Bell Gardens and no longer covers the cities of Garden Grove, Stanton and Westminster. But it’s Catalina, which is about 30 miles off the coast of Long Beach, that’s the most unique territory in the new 42nd District.
The new 42nd District is 54% Democratic and all but certain to remain in Democratic control. This is why Robert Garcia, the current mayor of Long Beach and a Democrat with name recognition, is favored in the polls .
Garcia, who is leading five other Democratic candidates in fundraising by a wide margin, said in an interview he thinks Avalon is part of the broader Long Beach community. John Briscoe, who is leading Republicans in funding, will appear on the Ballot for the fifth time in the district with a democratic majority of 54%.
He says if he is elected as member of Congress, he will advocate to make sure that money from the recent federal infrastructure bill is used in part toward Catalina’s unique island needs.
“If there are billions of dollars for water projects, we’ve got to make sure that some of those recent resources make it back to Catalina,” Garcia said.
Garcia has also been endorsed by Lowenthal and all five Avalon council members, including Lavelle.
Lowenthal, who has represented Avalon for over 20 years, says there is no quick fix for the imperative need for freshwater. The lack of fresh water is not a new issue, but one that has worsened over the years for residents, locals said, and it’s causing serious infrastructure damage.
Avalon’s nearly 4,000 residents have always used salt water in their toilets due to the lack of fresh water, and now these pipes are ruined or have completely vanished, something that happens as infrastructure ages, according to Lavelle.
That led to human waste trickling into the city’s groundwater and filtering through the sand into Avalon Bay – making it one of the most polluted beaches in the state, according to Los Angeles Times reporting from 2011.
That problem was a wakeup call to the city, and now the beaches are “a huge success story,” according to Avalon City Manager Dave Maistros. He said that the city devoted significant funding to the issue and since then the beaches have received high grades from environmental groups.
“The quick and aggressive commitment to address such an environmental issue by a small town with a small budget should be a case study for environmental awareness and crisis management,” Maistros told Annenberg Media in an email after this story was published.
Most Avalon residents turn off the water while they soap up in the shower and brush their teeth, officials said. Some restaurants have stopped serving tap water and begun serving food on paper plates to reduce dishwashing. Some hotels have even shipped their towels and sheets to be laundered on the mainland by Catalina Express at a costly rate. Water costs five times more per gallon compared to the mainland, and residents have been forced to cut back their water usage by more than 50 percent or face a $250 fine, Lavelle said.
Southern California Edison, an electricity company, has been providing water services to the island since 1962. Lowenthal says that the electricity company initially began doing so because no other company was willing to step in.
Despite the scarcity and already high cost of water, Edison filed a General Rate Case application to address the cost of operating and maintaining utilities with the California Public Utilities Commission to increase water rates in October 2020.
Lowenthal says there were no earmarks for Avalon in President Joe Biden’s recent bipartisan infrastructure law, but that he is working with Avalon on applying for various grant programs available under it.
While Lowenthal has advocated for better funding for the island by supporting a funding measure working its way through Congress, that proposal does not address the imperative need for fresh water on the island.
Visitors don’t get much water either. Every hotel and rental residence on the island is covered with signs about using as little water as possible and water usage limits. With hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, the island requires more water in the summer for tourists, which may affect the island’s attraction as a summer destination.
These issues did not come up when independent citizen commissioners drew new political boundaries as part of the decennial redistricting process prompted by the U.S. Census figures. The commissioners use a variety of factors when reconfiguring congressional, state and local districts, and sometimes make decisions that prompt confusion or outright anger from voters.
Long Beach could not be more different — with a population of just under 470,000 and its main industry coming from the port. Long Beach is 50% White, 13% Asian, 13% Black and 16% other races, while Avalon is 37% Hispanic, 44% White and 16% other. And these numbers don’t reflect the number of undocumented or seasonal workers who live on the island.
Lavelle, the Avalon councilwoman, said it is extremely important for her city to be drawn in the same district as Long Beach because the cities, though wildly different, share many of the same amenities including the school district, city tax-subsidized transportation including half-priced boats to the mainland, and port access. The biggest difference is that Long Beach can pipe in water.
“While there are controls in Long Beach in terms of how much water you can use…it is so far worse in Avalon and the people there struggle so much more,” Lowenthal said.
Catalina may be a popular tourist destination that coastal Los Angeles can see across the water, but when it comes to politics, the people who live there sometimes feel left behind.
In perhaps a metaphor for her town’s forgotten status, when Lavelle showed up to the redistricting commission’s meeting to testify, Avalon wasn’t even on the map.
“They literally leave us off the map often,” Lavelle said. “It’s like we’re the red-headed step child of Southern California – and sometimes we’re okay with that, leave us out of it. But most of the time it’s like, no, no, no, you need to remember that we’re out here.”
American Chewing gum industrialist William Wrigley Jr. bought nearly every share of Santa Catalina Island Company and invested millions to create a “playground for all” in 1919. The island was a popular hot spot for celebrities in the early 1900s. The island is just shy of 8 miles long and encompasses many environmentalist organizations including the USC Wrigley Institute for environmental studies.
The Wrigley family had not originally set up infrastructure throughout the island because only 5% of the grounds were open for purchase.
“California doesn’t really appreciate how expensive it is to live on an island,” Lowenthal explained. “People don’t have the resources and the rest of the state really doesn’t have the ability to deal with an island that’s over 20 miles off the shore, yet is part of California.”
Update: This story has been updated to include clearer information about the state of the beaches in Avalon due to old infrastructure and saltwater going through the pipes. A previous correction to the story called the information inaccurate. It was accurate, but outdated.