California water wars

The California Water Wars describes the disputes between Los Angeles, California and the Owens Valley over water rights. The disputes stem from Los Angeles's location in a semi-arid area, and the availability of water from Sierra Nevada runoff in the Owens Valley.

Early views of Owens Valley water diversion

In 1833 Joseph Reddeford Walker led the first known expedition into the area that would later be called the Owens Valley in central California. Walker saw that the valley’s soil conditions were inferior to those on the other side of the Sierra Nevada range and that runoff from the mountains was absorbed into the arid desert ground. After the United States gained control of California in 1848 the first public land survey conducted by A.W. Von Schmidt from 1855 to 1856 was an initial step in securing government control of the valley. Von Schmidt reported that the valley’s soil was not good for agriculture except for the land near streams, and incorrectly stated that the "Owens Valley [was] worthless to the White Man". The potential of the valley, however, was seen in 1859 by Army Captain J.W. Davidson who came in contact with the Paiute Indians and their use of irrigation ditches to divert water from streams. The first settlers downplayed the agriculture achievements of the Paiutes as a validation for forcing them off of their land. Pioneers claimed that the Paiute Indians diverted water to natural vegetation, not crops. Settlers failed to see the significance of the act of diverting water itself, an act that would devastate the Owens Valley in the twentieth century.

Early settlement: land use, water diversion and speculation

Many settlers came to the area for the promise of riches from mining. Once pioneers reached the Owens Valley this dream faded and they took up farming and raising livestock instead. The Homestead Act of 1862 gave pioneers five years to claim and take title of their land for a small filing fee and a charge of $1.25 per acre. The Homestead Act limited the land an individual could own to 160 acres (64.7 ha) in order to create small farms. The Swampland Act of 1850 allowed public lands deemed as swamp and overflow land to be turned over to the state. In 1873 Josiah Earl, the registrar of the newly created Independence Land District, set out to use the Swampland Act to acquire land for the state. He declared that about one third of the valley to be swamp or overflow land, of which more than 40% was already occupied by settlers. This action by the Land District drew so much protest that Earl abandoned his plan, effectively postponing large-scale land speculation in the Owens Valley.

The amount of public land settled by the late 1870s and early 1880s was still relatively small. The Desert Land Act of 1877 allowed individuals to acquire more area, up to 640 acres (259.0 ha), in hopes of drawing more settlers by giving them enough land to make their settlement and land expenses worthwhile, but “included no residency requirements”. The Act resulted in three things: First, since the act gave settlers three years to set up residency and begin to develop irrigation systems, some livestock raisers, especially in the south, saw the act as a way to get free land for three years (longer if their claims went unchecked). Second, most farmers joined collective ditch companies, who built relatively small ditch systems that irrigated only the lower parts of the valley. Third, many claimed land for speculation, never intending to irrigate the land, but hoping to sell it for a profit as irrigation systems on surrounding holdings developed. By 1866 rapid acquisition of land had begun and by the mid 1890s most of the land in the Owens Valley had been claimed. The large number of claims made by land speculators hindered the region’s development because speculators would not participate in developing canals and ditches.

Los Angeles Aqueduct: the beginning of the water wars

The water wars began when Frederick Eaton was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1898, and appointed his friend, William Mulholland, the superintendent of the newly-created Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).

Eaton and Mulholland had a vision of a Los Angeles that would become far bigger than the Los Angeles of the turn of the century. The limiting factor of Los Angeles' growth was water supply. Eaton and Mulholland realized that the Owens Valley had a large amount of runoff from the Sierra Nevada, and a gravity-fed aqueduct could deliver the Owens water to Los Angeles.

Irrigation in the Owens Valley in 1901

Most of the 200 miles (321.9 km) of canals and ditches that constituted the irrigation system in the Owens Valley in 1901 were in the north, while the southern region of the valley was mostly inhabited by people raising livestock. The irrigation systems created by the ditch companies did not have adequate drainage and as a result oversaturated the soil to the point where crops could not be raised. The irrigation systems also significantly lowered the water level in the Owens Lake (a process that was intensified later by the diversion of water through the Los Angeles Aqueduct). Around the turn of the century the northern part of the Owens Valley turned to raising fruit, poultry and dairy. The discovery of new mining fields in the northern region of the valley also aided in an economic turn-around of the area.

The southern region of the Owens Valley greatly differed from the northern region of the valley. In the south the climate was drier, irrigation was less developed and small farms were unable to compete with livestock owners with large land holdings. Most irrigable land in the south of the Owens Valley could not have water diverted to it by small, individual ditch systems. The land in the southern part of the Owens Valley required a system of canals and ditches capable of diverting part of the large Owens River. John Wesley Powell criticized laws that promoted settlement and development on the individual level and suggested that the magnitude of water diversion necessary for successful agriculture could only be achieved though many homesteaders joining together and creating irrigation districts with large-scale aqueduct systems. Each district would create its own rules and regulations for the use and division of the water for the parcels within the district. The failure to create a system of this scale resulted in the limited and inefficient settlement in the southern part of the Owens Valley and made this region increasingly vulnerable and attractive to Los Angeles authorities as a source of water.

Water rights and profit

At the turn of the century, the United States Bureau of Reclamation was planning on building an irrigation system to help the farmers of the Owens Valley. However, the agent of the Bureau was a close friend of Eaton, so Eaton had access to inside information about water rights. Eaton bought land as a private citizen, hoping to sell it back to Los Angeles at a vast profit. Eaton claimed in an interview with the Los Angeles Express in 1905 that he turned over all his water rights to the city of Los Angeles without being paid for them, "except that I retained the cattle which I had been compelled to take in making the deals ... and mountain pasture land of no value except for grazing purposes."

Eaton lobbied Theodore Roosevelt and got the local irrigation system cancelled. Mulholland misled residents of the Owens Valley, by claiming that Los Angeles would take water only for domestic purposes, not for irrigation. By 1905, through purchases and bribery, Los Angeles purchased enough water rights to enable the aqueduct.

Historically, it has been said that the city of Los Angeles forced the Owens Valley farmers out of their lands and paid them below value prices for the lands. However, in the economic prospective, the sale of the land was not unfair or too low. Both parties were able to determine an acceptable sale price through economic negotiations. Based on data from the Census of Agriculture, the price the Owens Valley farmers received was actually higher than any other agricultural lands sold in neighboring counties. At the same time, by analyzing historical data economically, Los Angeles may have been willing to pay more than they actually paid. The farmers were not taken advantage of, but they could have gotten even more.

The aqueduct was sold to the citizens of Los Angeles as vital to the growth of the city. However, unknown to the public, the initial water would be used to irrigate the San Fernando Valley to the north, which was not at the time a part of the city. A syndicate of investors (again, close friends of Eaton, including Harrison Gray Otis) bought up large tracts of land in the San Fernando Valley with this inside information. This syndicate made substantial efforts to the passage of the bond issue that funded the aqueduct, including creating a false drought (by manipulating rainfall totals) and publishing scare articles in the Los Angeles Times, which Otis published.

The building and operation of the aqueduct

Dynamite found during sabotage incidents of Owens Valley Aqueduct, circa 1924

From 1905 through 1913, Mulholland directed the building of the aqueduct. The 233 mile (375 km) Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in November 1913, required more than 2,000 workers and the digging of 164 tunnels. The project has been compared in complexity by Mulholland's granddaughterto building the Panama Canal. Water from the Owens River reached a reservoir in the San Fernando Valley on November 5. At a ceremony that day, Mulholland spoke his famous words about this engineering feat: "There it is. Take it."

After the aqueduct was completed in 1913, the San Fernando investors demanded so much water from the Owens Valley that it started to transform from "The Switzerland of California" into a desert. Inflows to Owens Lake were almost completely diverted, which caused the lake to dry up by 1924. Farmers and ranchers tried to band together to sell water rights to Los Angeles as a group, but again through what historians called "underhanded moves", Los Angeles managed to buy the water rights at a substantially reduced price.

So much water was taken from the valley that the farmers and ranchers rebelled. In 1924, a group of armed ranchers seized the Alabama Gates and dynamited part of the system. This armed rebellion was for naught, and by 1928, Los Angeles owned 90 percent of the water in Owens Valley. Agriculture in the valley was effectively dead.

The second Owens Valley aqueduct

In 1970, LADWP completed a second aqueduct. In 1972, the agency began to divert more surface water and pumped groundwater at the rate of several hundred thousand acre feet a year (several cubic metres per second). Owens Valley springs and seeps dried and disappeared, and groundwater-dependent vegetation began to die.

Because LADWP had never completed an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) addressing the impacts of groundwater pumping, Inyo County sued Los Angeles under the terms of the California Environmental Quality Act. Los Angeles did not stop pumping groundwater, but submitted a short EIR in 1976 and a second one in 1979, both of which were rejected as inadequate by the courts.

In 1991, Inyo County and the City of Los Angeles signed the Inyo-Los Angeles Long Term Water Agreement, which required that groundwater pumping be managed to avoid significant impacts while providing a reliable water supply for Los Angeles, and in 1997, Inyo County, Los Angeles, the Owens Valley Committee, the Sierra Club, and other concerned parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding that specified terms by which the lower Owens River would be rewatered by June 2003 as partial mitigation for damage to the Owens Valley due to groundwater pumping.

In spite of the terms of the Long Term Water Agreement, studies by the Inyo County Water Department have shown that impacts to the valley's groundwater-dependent vegetation (e.g., alkali meadows) continue. Likewise, Los Angeles did not rewater the lower Owens River by the June 2003 deadline. As of December 17 2003, LADWP settled a lawsuit brought by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the Owens Valley Committee, and the Sierra Club. Under the terms of the settlement, deadlines for the Lower Owens River Project were revised. LADWP was to return water to the lower Owens River by 2005. This deadline was missed, but on December 6 2006, a ceremony was held (at the same site where William Mulholland had ceremonially opened the aqueduct and closed the flow through the Owens River) to re-start the flow down the 62 mile (100 km) river. David Nahai, president of the L.A. Water and Power Board, countered Mulholland's words from 1913 and said, "There it is ... take it back."

Groundwater pumping continues at a higher rate than the rate at which water recharges the aquifer, resulting in a long-term trend of desertification in the Owens Valley.

Mono Lake

By the 1930s, the water requirements for Los Angeles continued to increase. LADWP started buying water rights in the Mono Basin (the next basin to the north of the Owens Valley). An extension to the aqueduct was built, which included such engineering feats as tunneling through the Mono Craters (an active volcanic field). By 1941, the extension was finished, and water in various creeks (such as Rush Creek) were diverted into the aqueduct. To satisfy California water law, LADWP set up a fish hatchery on Hot Creek, near Mammoth Lakes, California, ironically, not on a creek that was diverted.

The diverted creeks had previously fed Mono Lake, an inland body of water with no outlet. Mono Lake served as a vital ecosystem link, where gulls and migratory birds would nest. Because the creeks were diverted, the water level in Mono Lake started to fall, exposing tufa formations. The water became more saline and alkaline, threatening the brine shrimp that lived in the lake, as well as the birds that nested on two islands (Negit Island and Paoha Island) in the lake. Falling water levels started making a land bridge to Negit Island, which allowed predators to feed on bird eggs for the first time.

In 1974, David Gaines started to study the biology of Mono Lake. In 1975, while at Stanford, he started to get others interested in the ecosystem of Mono Lake. This led to a 1977 report on the ecosystem of Mono Lake that highlighted dangers caused by the water diversion. In 1978, the Mono Lake Committee was formed to protect Mono Lake. The Committee (and the National Audubon Society) sued LADWP in 1979, arguing that the diversions violated the public trust doctrine, which states that navigable bodies of water must be managed for the benefit of all people. The litigation reached the California Supreme Court by 1983, which ruled in favor of the Committee. Further litigation was initiated in 1984, which claimed that LADWP did not comply with the state fishery protection laws.

Eventually, all of the litigation was adjudicated in 1994, by the California State Water Resources Control Board. In that ruling, LADWP was required to let enough water into Mono Lake to raise the lake level 20 feet (6.1 m) above the then-current level of 25 feet (7.6 m) below the 1941 level. As of 2003, the water level in Mono Lake has risen 9 feet (2.7 m) of the required 20 feet (6.1 m). Los Angeles made up for the lost water through state-funded conservation and recycling projects.

Popular culture

The California Water War events were part of the story in the 1974 film Chinatown.

Publications

• Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner, revised edition, Penguin USA, (1993), ISBN 0140178244

External links

• KNX Newsradio coverage (with video) of the Owens Valley Water Wars and the return of water to the Lower Owens River.
• Documentary on the San Gabriel River, Ya Don't Miss the Water (A five part video that documents the major ecological, political, and social problems of the community - approximately 2 million people surround and use the River's water.)
• NPR report on reintroduction of water into the Owens Valley, December 7, 2006