California Conspiracy

At that moment, Chris Plakos was a little embarrassed. The communications manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was looking for a river he couldn't find. We were traveling along a road 200 miles from Los Angeles, in the Owens Valley, which parallels the Sierra Nevada Mountains for about 100 miles. Prax's employer owned most of the valley, which he had acquired decades earlier through what might be called ruthless means. Prax wanted to tell me that these days, municipal utilities are more enlightened about the area and its residents.

We know the river is to the east of us, so it should be simple to point the rental SUV in that direction. But we were caught in a whiteout, not snow but salt, blowing a dry lake bed to the south. Clouds contain tiny particles of nickel, cadmium and arsenic, and high doses of nickel, cadmium and arsenic have been shown to cause cancer in animals.

We rolled up the windows very tight.

Plakos is also embarrassed because the salting out dates back to his employer's past policies and, in a historic shift after decades of animosity and animosity, recently agreed to Do something about this problem. So he doesn't need this potentially toxic air pollution right now. These dust storms, which have long plagued the area, arise in Owens Lake whenever the winds are so strong. Once 110 square miles of shallow, salty water that still supports abundant grasses, birds, and other wildlife, decades ago Los Angeles' seemingly bottomless demand for water drained the lake and turned it into a The vast, dusty, cracked white high desert. It’s the most glaring casualty in the battle for water that has transformed Los Angeles into a metropolis — a battle that’s about to begin anew as the city eyes untapped water sources beneath the Mojave Desert.

Ultimately, it’s not the mild climate, nor the $31 billion the entertainment industry generates for Los Angeles each year, that makes Los Angeles possible. It's water. Without it, this newer town in the 1860s was known as a "mean little dump" (pop). 13,000 years) will never develop into the second most populous city in the United States.

Los Angeles’ 19th-century porters knew that the city’s health and prosperity depended on its supply of fresh water. Los Angeles is located on a semi-arid coastal plain, surrounded by desert on three sides and the Pacific Ocean on four sides. Fresh water is limited to the meager flow of the Los Angeles River (now a much-maligned concrete channel) and the area's average rainfall of 15 inches per year.

The Head of Los Angeles is located just north of Owens Lake and the small town of Independence, off US 395, along a mile of bad road. It consists of two 20-foot-long concrete blocks. At 4,000 feet above sea level on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Mountains, the Owens River, which once meandered throughout the valley and flowed into Owens Lake, suddenly hit a concrete barricade. It was then directed into a man-made, arrow-straight dirt channel.

This is the entrance to the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Nearly a century ago, an army of 5,000 men dug 233 miles of canals and tunnels using dynamite, steam shovels, dredges and mules. They carved aqueducts through unforgiving terrain, laid pipes across scorching deserts, and climbed over, and often through, solid Sierra rock. Completed in 1913, the aqueduct still delivers 315 million gallons of water per day to thirsty Angelinos.

You might think this engineering marvel is noteworthy. After all, it is responsible in large part for what Southern California is today and for the ever-innovating city that has shaped so much of American life and world culture. But there are no roadside attractions, no plaques, no tourists. Just the wind, the sound of gurgling water, and occasionally the distant whine of a car speeding on Highway 395. The only sign i realized was that several streams flowing from the Serra could be used to generate electricity. Imagine a 20 mile long aqueduct running from the mountains down to Los Angeles and then launching it "for free"! Over the next 20 years, as his civic interests combined with his personal financial interests, Eaton became increasingly evangelical about the Owens Valley water.

In September 1904, he took Mulholland to Owens Valley with only "a mule team, a piece of cardboard and a glass of whiskey," Mulholland later recalled.

Despite the snoring, it was the water, not the whiskey, that convinced the Mulhoran. He readily agreed to Eaton's proposal to build an aqueduct. Meanwhile, Eaton, without disclosing city plans, purchased water from Owens Valley ranchers and farmers whose ranches bordered the river. He also purchased a 23,000-acre cattle ranch in Long Valley, much of which he hoped to sell to the city at a handsome profit for use as a diversion reservoir.

Historians have different motives for Eton. Some say he defrauded the residents of Owens Valley. Others say his purchases, while dodgy, were justified because they benefited the city, which lacked the funds to purchase the land before voters later approved a $1.5 million bond measure. Eaton denied his duplicity until his death.

The charges against John Eaton, the grandson of John Eaton, who until a year ago lived on the last acre of land in the Long Valley inherited from his father, Harold Eaton, who Thinking there was no need for his grandfather to do double dealing anymore. “People have been coming to him to sell their properties,” he said. “They see him as a crazy millionaire who wanted to be a cattle baron but foolishly overpaid for land. They want to escape, "It's a hard life because the growing season in the valley is short and the local gold and silver mines are mined. This is the market for their production. Of course, if the seller knows that the buyer behind the scenes is Los Angeles City, they wouldn't have sold the land so cheaply, if that were the case.

In any case, when ranchers and farmers learned of the true situation in 1905, they reported in the Los Angeles Times in July. "Titanic's Plan to Give City a River" headlines read. Eaton was so angry that he had to leave town for a while. Under Mulholland's direction, construction of the aqueduct went ahead quickly. The shovel provided electricity, and he built two hydroelectric plants still in use today on creeks that emptied into the Owens River. He also built about 500 miles of roads and laid telephone and telegraph lines across 150 miles of desert. The conditions for the line, which laid 268 miles of pipes to provide workers with drinking water, were severe. Temperatures in the Mojave Desert could swing 80 degrees in a day, said Raymond Taylor, the aqueduct's medical director. At that time, he said: “In winter, the wind is biting, and in summer it is unbearably hot. ". During the six years of construction of the aqueduct, 43 people died out of a workforce of around 5,000, a number that some experts say is quite low considering the scope of the project and the rugged terrain.

On November 5, 1913, Los Angeles officials held a grand opening at the aqueduct's terminus in the San Fernando Valley, with fireworks, fireworks and speeches, including a famous brief from Mulholland: "There ," he said as the door opened, "take it.

Eaton did not attend. His years-long dream of a real estate empire came to nothing. Mulholland balked at Eaton's price for the Long Valley land, which most historians believe was worth $100 million, but refused to pay. As a result, the Fold Aqueduct initially had no reservoir in the Long River Valley, and for a time life in the Owens River Valley was largely unaffected by the aqueduct. At the north end of the valley, just above the water point for the aqueduct, so the river still provided a good supply of water, the specialty Valley Hotel Duke still found a market in the local mines, many of which were still in operation.< /p>

But things changed. People continued to flock to Los Angeles, and several years of drought in the 1920s slowed the aqueduct's flow, and the city began pumping groundwater directly from the Owens Valley aquifer. Local farms and ranches closed down due to lack of water. Some Owens Valley farmers sued Los Angeles and others began to purchase water directly from the aqueduct in a checkerboard fashion. Leigh's estate countered by purchasing a farm but not the farm next to it, pitting neighbor against neighbor.

Residents of Owens Valley turned against each other at 1:30 a.m. on May 21, 1924. Take matters into your own hands.

A caravan carrying about 40 people traveled 60 miles south from Bishop, the largest town in the Owens Valley, just north of Lone Pine, destroying the aqueduct's concrete canal. Six months later, a group of Owens Valley residents, led by local banker Mark Watterson, seized the Alabama Water Lock spillway near Lone Pine and opened the gates, sending the precious liquid back to Owens. In the Si River.

Mulholland was furious. He sent two carloads of gun-toting city detectives to break up the siege. In order to prevent ***, the Owens Valley Sheriff warned them not to get into trouble, saying, "I don't believe you will live to tell the story." The detectives backed down. Soon local families arrived at the spillway, some carrying food; picnic blankets were spread out and a grand barbecue ensued. Movie cowboy Tom Mix, who was filming a movie nearby, sent his mariachi band to perform. The media arrived and took photos. Meanwhile, Watson's brother Wilfred, also a banker, went to Los Angeles and appeared before the Los Angeles Joint Clearinghouse Association, a group of bankers , calling for a new delegation to negotiate city payments to Silicon Valley. When the bankers agreed, the siege ended peacefully.

, but negotiations between the delegation and Owens Valley locals, represented by the Watson family, dragged on. In December 1924, Wilfred Watson presented the mission with two invoices, one for $5.3 million in compensation to the ranchers and the other for $12 million to purchase the remaining land in the valley. . The mission refused to pay.

Tensions rise between the city and the valley. Litigation ensued but stalled in the courts. The city purchased more valley land, displacing farmers and destroying more local businesses. Finally, Valley's frustration reached another boiling point. On May 20, 1927, several men detonated explosives outside Mojave, 100 miles north of Los Angeles, destroying part of the aqueduct. Days later, more explosions rocked the aqueduct further north, and again on June 4. A train full of Los Angeles police detectives was sent to guard the aqueduct.

, although detectives had no legal authority to do so, they placed Owens Valley under a *** warrant. Useless. Over the next two months, seven more explosions occurred along the aqueduct from Mojave in the south to Bishop in the north, knocking out pipelines and a power plant and knocking out power lines.

In the end, what undermined the Valley’s spirit were two acts of malfeasance of its own. In August this year, the Watterson brothers were arrested for embezzling public funds; they were later convicted of 36 counts. Some say the brothers were simply trying to stay afloat financially and help others stay afloat by moving money from one business account to another, recording deposits that were never made and debits that were paid. Their defenders pointed out that none of the money stayed in York County. The state's attorney, an Owens Valley native and friend of the brothers, is said to have cried as he delivered his final arguments. The Wattersons were sentenced to ten years in prison in San Quentin, and five of their banks were closed. A sign on one's door called for a truce from David Freeman, then the utility's new general manager and now energy czar to California Gov. Gray Davis. "He just said what the city was doing was wrong, and within weeks we had an agreement," Schad said. "Reluctantly, the city agreed to implement 10 square miles of dust control by 2001 and gradually improve it thereafter." By November 2001, the city agreed to divert some of the valuable water from the aqueduct; by January 2002, , more than 7,600 acres of Owens Lake bed are submerged in several inches of water. But there is more work to be done. In other parts of the lake bed, the city is currently planting more than 2,600 acres of hardy native grasses that can tolerate high salt levels and freezing and sweltering temperatures. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2006, by which time Los Angeles should have implemented dust control measures on more than 14,000 acres of Owens Lake bed, using approximately 50,000 acre-feet of water annually, enough to supply nearly 250,000 people.

If Southern California’s water politics are less chaotic today than they were in Mulholland’s day, controversy continues over the fight to meet the fast-growing region’s water needs.

In the latest furore, water officials representing the greater Los Angeles area have reached a tentative agreement with a private company that owns swaths of the Mojave Desert and controls access to the area’s water-containing layer channel. The company, Cadiz Corporation, plans to serve Southern California by pumping water from the aquifer and using it to store water diverted from the Colorado River. Although approved by the Interior Department, the project still faces opposition from California Senator Dianne Feinstein and some environmentalists. Opponents, in stating their concerns that taking water from the aquifer would damage the fragile desert ecosystem, also noted that the aquifer sits beneath two dry lakes and specifically cited what happened to Owens Lake as an example of what could go wrong.

Perhaps this will be Owen Slack's legacy, Schade said: an object lesson in what not to do. "Hopefully everyone has learned from the mistakes made here."