At first it seemed that Los Angeles could save itself simply by sticking a gilded finger in the dike at Hyperion: a $2.3 billion renovation. But anxious engineering reports to the Mayor, immediately leaked to the press, revealed that the entire system was on the verge of collapse. As the Times caustically observed, ‘planning procedures have been so slack that nobody made that most basic connection between population growth and the carrying capacity of a sewage system’. Although the old trunk sewers were large enough to accommodate the ten million gallons of new flow added each year by urbanization, the treatment plants had exhausted their capacity. The Mayor’s attempt to abate the crisis through voluntary water conservation was ignored, especially in affluent, ‘slow-growth’ Westside and Valley neighborhoods with their swimming pools and acre-sized lawns.