Los Angeles’s Quest for Water

Geog 156, Summer 2012

Los Angeles was originally settled by 11 families by the Los Angeles River in 1769 (Historical Timeline). The water needs of the city were met by the reservoir built across the river and a system of ditches and hollowed logs to convey water.  But trade, job opportunities and nice weather of Los Angeles attracted people from other states and elsewhere. Soon, demand outstripped the supply. There was no local source of water left to be harnessed. To safeguard its water future, the city purchased the Los Angeles City Water Company in 1902. William Mullholland was the Superintendent of the Company. At his instigation, water meters were installed in the city to conserve waters. But conservation could not satisfy the water needs of city. In 1904, the Los Angeles River experienced below normal flow conditions, and Mullholand, based on his water supply and demand calculations, concluded that Los Angeles would need twice the amount of water available in the reservoir in near future. Thus, a new source of water was needed. The problem was that there was no local source of water left to be exploited. To grow, Los Angeles would need to overcome its geography to fetch water from distant places.

Lake Owens is located more than 200 hundred miles north of Los Angeles on the eastern side of Sierra Nevada Mountains. This was the nearest source of water to Los Angeles. Mullholand and Fred Eaton surveyed Lake Owens in 1902, and noticed that the flow from Owen River to the lake was getting trapped in the lake, and it had no outlet. They viewed this as a waste of water. While surveying the area, they noticed that lava flow in the ice ages had blocked the flow of river and had created the Owens Lake. But there was a flow path from the ice age abandoned by the river that used to carry the water of river to the mountains just north of Los Angeles. Their genius was in identifying the abandoned flow route of river from the ice age as the new route for the aqueduct that would carry water to the Haiwee valley in the mountains just to the north of Los Angeles. This was the path the river took in the ice ages when it finally drained to the Haiwee valley. This valley would also be the location of Haiwee reservoir. Also, Mullholand reasoned that given the height of water in the Haiwee reservoir, they would be able to build an aqueduct that would carry that water forward from that location to the city under gravity alone. This ingenious gravity fed system would not require any external energy to propel water though the aqueduct, and is considered the smartest thing about the Los Angeles Aqueduct system. In addition, Mullholland concluded that the water coursing through the aqueduct would have large amounts of energy because of the elevation of Haiwee reservoir in the mountains, and this could be used to generate electricity. There are five power generation plants on the way to the city (PBS).

The idea of depriving the people settled in Inyo County of their waters, where Lake Owens was located, was met with protests. The opposition to this export of water was taken by the Senators of Inyo County to the US Congress where it finally made its way to the office of President Teddy Roosevelt. When the meeting ended, Roosevelt made a statement that sealed the fate of project. He said that “it is a hundred or a thousand fold more important to the state and more valuable to the people as a whole infused by the city than if used by the people of the Owens Valley (Page).” Once approved by the President, Los Angeles City immediately floated bonds for $23 million to fund the project. It was overwhelmingly endorsed by the residents of Los Angeles.

The construction was completed in 1913, which was 20 months ahead of schedule. The predominant construction material used was concrete. Steel was expensive because it had to be imported from East Coast using ships that would sail via Cape Horn located at the Southern tip of South America continent. Notice that Panama Canal was still being built - it was completed in 1914, so it was not available for use. It became operational in 1914 with the famous words from Mullholland who told the Mayor at the dedication ceremony - There it is, take it! The Los Angeles aqueduct is 233 miles long, and has a capacity of 485 cfs. Mulholland had estimated that this capacity would be adequate to meet the needs of 260,000 people that he had projected for 1913. The picture shows the aqueduct (Los Angeles Aqueduct). But the same year, the actual population of Los Angeles was estimated to be 485,000 residents. This threw off the planning, and very soon Mullholland was looking for a new source of water to augment the shortfall. Availability of additional water and power in Los Angeles brought unprecedented growth and prosperity to the city. New businesses were built, and to support it new homes sprung up across the Los Angeles basin. But the city soon had to face rough weather. In the 1920s, there were many years of lower than normal snowfall in the Eastern Sierra Mountains where Lake Owens was located. In addition, local residents of Owens valley had starting asserting their rights on water, even though Los Angeles Water and Power owned nearly 95% of the land in the valley.  By 1923, both Los Angeles and Owens Valley residents were facing shortages in water supply. Soon it turned violent, and parts of aqueduct were dynamited starting a protracted battle between the City and Valley.

The Colorado River forms the border between lower parts of California and Nevada and Arizona States. All three states have a claim on the waters of Colorado River. Mulholland now looked east and started examining the feasibility of using the Colorado River as a new source of water supply. In 1923, he initiated a series of surveys to find an optimal alignment of an aqueduct to bring the water of the Colorado River to Los Angeles. In the meantime, an act of the California State created the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). The purpose of MWD was to construct the Colorado River Aqueduct to augment the water supply to Southern California.  In 1931, voters approved bonds of $220 million to fund the aqueduct construction, and work began to bring the water from Colorado River 300 miles to the coast of California. The Hoover Dam was part of the project. The 300 miles long Colorado River Aqueduct was completed in 1941, and MWD began to sell the water with Los Angeles being the main consumer. This helped the City to meet its increased water needs (LADWP).

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power owned the water rights to Parker, Walker, Lee Vining and Rush creeks that drained into the Mono Lake located north of Owens Lake. But it was unable to use the water from the Mono Lake because there was connection available to get the water to the intake of the aqueduct in Owens Lake. The DWP decided to connect the Los Angeles Aqueduct by extending it to the north by 105 miles.  This would supply water for 500,000 people. This resulted in the expansion of the capacity of the aqueduct by 35% to 300 million gallons per day (LADWP).

The Mono Basin project was complete before the United States entered the Second World War.  Los Angeles became an important war production centers, and was set to boom as an international economic center that will meet the needs of Allied nations in the time of war. After the war ended in victory, Los Angeles continued to flourish. In 1950, it had reached a dizzying height of population of two million people. The needs to find additional water for a growing population continued to pose a challenge. While the City had claimed its full Mono Basin entitlement, it discovered it could not divert all that water in a reliable manner without constructing additional aqueduct. Meanwhile, in a legal showdown with Arizona in the Supreme Court in 1963 (Arizona vs. California), California’s entitlement was reduced by more than 50 % (Find Law). Besides, water from the Colorado Aqueduct was expensive. These considerations speeded up the decision to bring more water to Los Angeles from Mono Lake. Accordingly, the Second Los Angeles Aqueduct was planned and construction was completed in 1970.  It takes off at Haiwee Reservoir located to the south of the Owens Lake.  It increased the total (first and second) Los Angeles Aqueduct capacity by 50%.  The newly enhanced aqueducts were able to supply about 430 million gallons a day to Los Angeles.

In 1960, MWD became the largest contractor to California State Water Project (SWP). The original purpose of the SWP project was to bring water to Southern California. SWP is the largest man made conveyance system in the world. It was funded by the people of State and is considered a marvel of engineering. It uses a gargantuan system of pumps, reservoirs and aqueducts to move massive amounts of water from the San Joaquin Valley to Southern California. It uses more than 5 million units of energy in a year to move the water. To understand why it needs so much of energy, it is important to understand the special geography of Southern California that the SVP has to negotiate while bringing water from the Bay Area. Long time ago a tectonic movement along the San Andreas Fault caused movements in North American and Pacific plates, and raised the crust of earth to form the Transverse Range of mountains running in the east-west direction. This orientation is rare, as most mountain ranges run north-south. See the picture (Tehachapi Mountains). The Transverse Range meets the Tehachapi Mountains in the north, and this configuration completely separates Los Angeles from San Joaquin Central Valley. This barrier prevents water from snow capped western ranges of Sierra Nevada Mountains to flow towards Los Angeles. Consequently, aqueducts from bay area need to climb the Tehachapi Mountains to bring water to Southern California.

Along the way waters carried by SWP are used for irrigation and municipal purposes. Actually, 85% of the water goes towards irrigation in Central Valley, and only 15% is available to the residents of Southern California. The City of Los Angeles buys this water from MWD whenever needed (LADWP). As population of Los Angeles increases and as Arizona starts consuming more of its water entitlements (it is not 100% currently, so Los Angeles gets the surplus), the share of SWP water in Los Angles water supply mix is likely to increase. Currently about 70% of the city’s water comes from the Eastern Sierra basins that includes waters from Los Angeles Aqueducts.  Groundwater wells bored in the San Fernando Valley and other local basins supply account for 15%, and the rest is made up by purchases from MWD.  The picture above shows all sources of water to the city of Los Angeles (Sources of Supply).

With water supply maximized, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has initiated number of conservation programs. The per capita consumption of water in LA is half of Sacramento. Even though as the population of Los Angeles has increased, the water usage since the eighties has remained the same. This has been made possible by conserving water supplies coming to the city.

Historians have remarked that Los Angeles is the most exquisite water garden ever invented (Reisner). Transfers of waters from where they are to where they should be by building massive water conveyance structures, has changed the hydrology and economics of regions. It has made it possible for Los Angeles to grow almost uninterrupted, and in the process has accomplished a miracle of growth that few thought was feasible. Los Angeles has a burgeoning technology, services and entertainment industry. They contribute to the prosperity and jobs in the city.

The quest for water has  made Southern California one of the mostly dense populations in the nation, so this has contribued to the economic growth of California. In my opinion, this progress has come at a steep price. The construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct effectively eliminated the Owens Valley as a viable farming community, and devastated the Owens Lake ecosystem (Facts and History). Inyo County, where these lakes were located, remains impoverished. Lake Owens became a dry bed of salt that would become air borne when winds blew in the area. In 1987, the Environmental Protection Agency declared Owens lakebed to be the worst dust pollution problem in the United States, affecting around 50,000 people ( Air Actions). Recent efforts towards restoration of the lake have produced some positive results, and migratory birds have started returning to the lake. But the restoration efforts have been limited, and much more needs to be done. The Mono Lake has also dried, and now shows the famous salt structures, also known as “tufa” towers. Both Mono and Owens Lake were important to migratory birds. The dried lakes have upset their ecosystem. Restoration requires the city to leave more water in the Owens Valley, which means it must pay for more water conservation in Los Angeles, plus purchase more water from the Metropolitan Water District (Dream, Dust and Birds). This will raise the cost of water.

In its quest for more water to grow beyond the limits of nature, and using water systems that require energy to move water, Los Angeles has tied its fate to the price of energy. The State Water Project is the single largest user of energy in the State (State Water). As energy becomes expensive as is happening now, water will become more expensive. The LADW and MWD are both reluctant to increase price of water for farmers, as a result city consumers will end up absorbing most of the escalation in costs. For example, DWP has recently proposed an increase in the rate for consumers by 11% for next two years through 2014 (Local). If this pattern continues, Los Angeles residents could expect their utility bills to double in less than 5 years.

The operation and maintenance costs of the water infrastructure also appear to be unsustainable (Brecht). Most of the dams have a life of 100 years because of silting and other factors. Similar limits of life span apply to pipes and other materials used in construction. The First Los Angeles Aqueduct is already close to its 100 years of operation. It is not clear how the replacement of these structures is going to be funded. California has a low credit rating, and it will be difficult to raise funds at reasonable rates by selling bonds.

Since water is cheap for farmers in the Central Valley, they have never learned to conserve, because it is does not make any economic sense. This is understandable if DWP continues to pass on the escalation in price to the residents to subsidize the price of water for farmers. Excessive irrigation has turned the soil saline, and millions of acres of farms have lost their productivity. Wetlands in the region are gone. When the California Aqueduct was built, it was supposed to bring water to the stakeholders in Southern California. That turned out to be a façade. Thus, the real beneficiaries were the rich farmers in the Central Valley who benefitted at the expense of vanishing small family based farmers in the valley who could not compete with big farmers, and the residents of Southern California. These big farmers, as much they may dislike big government, could not dream of building such fantastic dams and delivery structures because of their prohibitive costs. The California Aqueduct was a windfall for them.

There have been many theories as to why these massive public projects were built when their sustainability was so questionable. Marc Reisner suggests that President Teddy Roosevelt and President Franklin Roosevelt were acutely aware of the limits of capitalism. In those days, communism was also sweeping the world. Following the depression in 1930s, Americans had lost faith in capitalism, and were looking for alternatives. There was massive unemployment, and these large public projects were thought to be few tools at disposal to the policy makers to address the problem at hand. Indeed, these public projects created lots of well paying jobs. Late in the 1930s when the war started, President Franklin Roosevelt thought that the chances of US to be sucked in the Second World War were great. He also surmised that this war will not be won by battle strategies, but by production capacities. Nations with surplus manufacturing capacities will come out ahead. Germany was a big manufacturing center in Europe. Japan was such a center in Asia. With both countries ravaged by wars, United States would be the only viable option to manufacture weapons, ships and airplanes. All this manufacturing required energy, and President Roosevelt was committed to building large surpluses in hydropower using large scale dams. Another theory suggests that was another interesting reason as well for taking up large public projects. Governor Pat Brown of California and other politicians in Sacramento did not want people from southern California to come to northern California just to access water (Reisner pp392). Immigration could impact the demographics of their congressional districts in unexpected ways, and would have muddled their electoral chances. They would rather have water sent to people in the south rather than them moving up to north.

Works Cited

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Brecht, Lyle. "Long Distance Water Transfers via Pipelines Are Not Necessarily Sustainable." Scribd. N.p., 6 July 2010. Web. 16 Sept. 2012. <http://www.scribd.com/doc/33937397/Long-Distance-Water-Transfers-via-Pipelines-are-not-Necessarily-Sustainable>.

"Dreams, Dust and Birds: The Trashing of Owens Lake." Dreams and Dust in Owens Lake, California: Places: Design Observer. N.p., 24 Jan. 2011. Web. 14 Sept. 2012. <http://places.designobserver.com/feature/dreams-dust-and-birds-the-trashing-of-owens-lake/23328/>.

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N.p., n.d. Web. <(Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Owens Lake Habitat Management Plan, March 2010, 39-40.)>.

Page, David T. Explorer's Guide Yosemite & the Southern Sierra Nevada: Includes Mammoth ... N.p.: Countryman, n.d. 132. Print.

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Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin, 1987. Print.

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"Tehachapi Mountains." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 13 Sept. 2012. Web. 16 Sept. 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehachapi_Mountains>.