Water providers across California are buying gasoline- and diesel-powered generators, arranging for fuel deliveries, and asking customers to cut back on showers during power outages triggered by electric utilities trying to avoid wildfires.

The outages are affecting both rural areas like Sonoma’s wine country, and sprawling urban centers like Los Angeles, where suppliers provide water for households and businesses—as well as fire departments battling wildfires.

“Every water supplier needs electricity in order to pump water where it needs to go and to treat water,” said Shannon Dean, corporate communications director for California Water Service, which has nearly 485,000 customers across much of the state, and has had to deal with power outages.

Read the complete story in Bloomberg Environment.

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