Storms have battered California several times to start the year. In February, record rainfall swept the Golden State. This month, snow has hammered the Sierra Nevada mountains with even more forecasted.

Rain has deluged Californian cities and much of the rainwater washes away unused, frustrating conservationists and environmental groups.

But Los Angeles is doing something different; it is a sponge city, a form of infrastructural planning that captures water in urban areas. In the first week of February alone it caught enough rainwater to supply more than 100,000 households with water for a whole year, according to Wired.

For more on Los Angeles’ sponge city status and how it works, host Peter O’Dowd speaks to the city’s Department of Water and Power’s watershed chief Art Castro.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.