Dirty Water Date Tuesday, April 23, 2024 - 08:10 PM PST Topic Icky People In my geology class, we've been learning about water tables, water flow, et cetera, and my teacher put on a video (actually, quite a few videos) about the history of water in Los Angeles. I was very shocked to find out about the crooked dealings that we did to get water. This essay offers the whole concise history of the whole deal. To shorten it for people who don't care to read it all (although I recommend you do), here's the gist: Los Angeles at the turn of the (last) century is little more than a couple towns that get their water from the LA river. Its not really enough for the growing population, so they must carefully ration it. Still, people are buying up the land, because its cheap, plentiful, and is just waiting to be re-sold for profit. Owen's Valley, a few hundred miles north-east, is a nice farming valley irrigated by the Owen's River. They have more water than they need, and are happy. Unfortunately, the river floods during the spring, which isn't so great for farming. They are happy when the Reclamation Service is created, whose goal is to damn up rivers and other such 'good' works, hoping that their valley will benefit. Fred Eaton (the mayor of LA) and William Mullholland (the dept. of Water and Power) take a trip up to Owen's valley and decide that the Owen's river would be good for LA. They head back and make plans. Eaton then went back and started quietly buying up the water rights for the river. The farmers agreed, since: 1. They thought he was working for the Reclamation Service 2. The could use the money 3. The river's always gonna be there... Why worry? While he was doing this, other city leaders in on the deal began buying up land in LA, which would be worth mega-bucks after the water came in. Most notably, Moses Sherman, a member on the LA Board of Water Commisioners was part of a land syndicate headed by Harrison Otis, the publisher of the LA Times. (And so the web of conspiracy grows...) In July 29, 1905, the cat was let out of the bag when the LA Times announced the project to build an aqueduct from the Owen's River to LA. Owen's Valley residents were furious. Teddy Roosevelt gave his blessing. The aqueduct was completed in 1913. As LA grew, the city bought even more of the valley to send more water down the pipes. Between 1924 and 1927, Owen's Valley residents periodically dynamited the pipe, and even took over the dam at one point. But Los Angeles sent men with machine guns and that was the end of that. But still Los Angeles grew. So they built another aqueduct in 1935. This one from Hoover dam all the way back to Los Angeles. Arizona actually tried to stop them by sending state troopers with their -own- guns, but to no avail. Nope, still not good enough. So after WWII, they build ANOTHER one, to the creeks feeding Mono Lake. 300 miles away. Thanks to this, Mono Lake starts to dry up, losing 1.6 feet per year and becoming increasingly inhospitible to its inhabitants. As the lake bed became exposed, winds whipped up the alkali salts left over, creating a poisonous dust cloud. The same was happening in Owen's Valley. Residents were suffering from breathing problems from the stuff. In 1989, the Supreme Court intervened and forced LA to start returning water to Mono Lake, in an effort to stabilize/restore it. At that time, the lake was 40 feet below its original level. In 1996 the lake was still 25 feet below its original level, but this is better than nothing. This just goes to show the distance a greedy government will go, forfeiting the rights of people and animal alike for its own use. This is also a reminder as we go into the hot and dry season of summer, that we do not waste water, particularly those of us living in the desert (including Los Angeles). 'Cause bad things can happen... This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=509