California Water Wars

Conflict over water rights in California between 1902 and 2006... The California water wars were a series of political conflicts between the city of Los Angeles and farmers and ranchers in the Owens Valley of Eastern California over water rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars

As Los Angeles expanded during the late 19th century, it began outgrowing its water supply. Fred Eaton, mayor of Los Angeles, promoted a plan to take water from Owens Valley to Los Angeles via an aqueduct. The aqueduct construction was overseen by William Mulholland and was finished in 1913. The water rights were acquired through political fighting and, as described by one author, "chicanery, subterfuge ... and a strategy of lies"

Water from the Owens River started being diverted to Los Angeles in 1913, precipitating conflict and eventual ruin of the valley's economy. By the 1920s, so much water was diverted from the Owens Valley that agriculture became difficult. This led to the farmers trying to destroy the aqueduct in 1924. Los Angeles prevailed and kept the water flowing. By 1926, Owens Lake at the bottom of Owens Valley was completely dry due to water diversion.

The water needs of Los Angeles kept growing. In 1941, Los Angeles diverted water that previously fed Mono Lake, north of Owens Valley, into the aqueduct. Mono Lake's ecosystem for migrating birds was threatened by dropping water levels. Between 1979 and 1994, David Gaines and the Mono Lake Committee engaged in litigation with Los Angeles. The litigation forced Los Angeles to stop diverting water from around Mono Lake, which has started to rise back to a level that can support its ecosystem.

Owens Valley context

In 1861, Samuel Addison Bishop and other ranchers started to raise cattle on the luxuriant grasses that grew in the Owens Valley. The ranchers came into conflict with the Paiutes over land and water use, and most of the Paiutes were driven away from the valley by the U.S. Army in 1863 during the Owens Valley Indian War.

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.

Los Angeles Aqueduct

Frederick Eaton and William Mulholland were two of the more visible principals in the California water wars. They were friends, having worked together in the private Los Angeles Water Company in the 1880s. In 1886, Eaton became City Engineer and Mulholland became superintendent of the Water Company. In 1898, Eaton was elected mayor of Los Angeles and was instrumental in converting the Water Company to city control in 1902. When the company became the Los Angeles Water Department, Mulholland continued to be superintendent, due to his extensive knowledge of the water system.

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.

Obtaining water rights 1902–1907

At the start of the 20th century, the United States Bureau of Reclamation, at the time known as the United States Reclamation Service, was planning on building an irrigation system to help the farmers of the Owens Valley, which would block Los Angeles from diverting the water.
From 1902 to 1905, Eaton and Mulholland used underhanded methods to obtain water rights and block the Bureau of Reclamation

*Mulholland misled Los Angeles public opinion by dramatically understating the amount of water locally available for Los Angeles's growth.: 73  Mulholland also misled residents of the Owens Valley: he indicated that Los Angeles would only use unused flows in the Owens Valley, while planning on using the full water rights to fill the aquifer of the San Fernando Valley.: 73

By 1907, Eaton was busy acquiring key water rights and traveling to Washington to meet with advisers of Teddy Roosevelt to convince them that the water of the Owens River would do more good flowing through faucets in Los Angeles than it would if used on Owens Valley fields and orchards.... Roosevelt decided in favor of Los Angeles.*

The aqueduct was sold to the citizens of Los Angeles as vital to the growth of the city. 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.: 74–76 : 152  From a hydrological point of view, the San Fernando Valley was ideal: its aquifer could serve as free water storage without evaporation.: 73  One obstacle to the irrigation was the Los Angeles City Charter, which prohibited the sale, lease, or other use of the city's water without a two-thirds approval by the voters.: 18  This charter limitation would be avoided through the annexation of a large portion of the San Fernando Valley to the city.: 133  The annexation would also raise the debt limit of Los Angeles, which allowed the financing of the aqueduct.

The San Fernando land syndicate were a group of wealthy investors who bought up large tracts of land in the San Fernando Valley with secret inside information from Eaton. The syndicate included friends of Eaton, such as Harrison Gray Otis and Henry E. Huntington. This syndicate made substantial efforts to support passage of the bond issue that funded the aqueduct. These efforts are reported to have included the dumping of water from Los Angeles reservoirs into the sewers (thereby creating a false drought) and by publishing scare articles in the Los Angeles Times, which Otis published.: 185 : 152  Remi Nadeau, a historian and author,: 102  disputed that water was dumped from reservoirs, because the sewer system may not have been connected to the reservoirs. The syndicate did unify the business community behind the aqueduct, and its purchases were public by the time the vote on the aqueduct was taken.

The building and operation of the aqueduct 1908–1928

From 1907 through 1913, Mulholland directed the building of the aqueduct. The 233-mile (375 km) Los Angeles Aqueduct, inaugurated in November 1913, required more than 2,000 workers and the digging of 164 tunnels.:

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. Mulholland was blocked from obtaining additional water from the Colorado River, so decided to take all available water from the Owens Valley.: 89

By 1924, farmers and ranchers rebelled. A series of provocations by Mulholland were, in turn, followed by corresponding threats from local farmers, and the destruction of Los Angeles property.: 93  Finally, a group of armed ranchers seized the Alabama Gates and dynamited part of the system, letting water return to the Owens River.

In August 1927, when the conflict was at its height, the Inyo County bank collapsed, which massively undermined valley resistance. An audit revealed that there were shortages in both cash in the vault and amounts shown on the books. The Watterson brothers were indicted for embezzlement, then tried and convicted on thirty-six counts. Since all local business had been transacted through their bank, the closure left merchants and customers with little more than the small amount of money they had on hand.

In the face of the collapse of resistance and of the Owens Valley economy, the attacks on the aqueduct ceased.

By 1928, Los Angeles owned 90 percent of the water in Owens Valley and agriculture interests in the region were effectively dead.

The second Owens Valley Aqueduct, 1970–present

*In 1970, LADWP completed a second aqueduct.: 539  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 meters 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.*

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).: 38  An extension to the aqueduct was built, which included such engineering feats as tunneling through the Mono Craters (an active volcanic field).

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

Central Valley

In February 2014, after three consecutive years of below-normal rainfall, California faced its most severe drought emergency in decades with fish populations in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta in unprecedented crisis due to the decades of large-scale water exports from Northern California to south of the Delta via state and federal water projects

Documentaries and fiction

*The California water wars were among the subjects discussed in Cadillac Desert, a 1984 nonfiction book by Marc Reisner about land development and water policy in the western United States. The book was made into a four-part documentary of the same name in 1997.

The 1974 Chinatown film was inspired by the California water wars and features a fictionalized version of the conflict as a central plot element.*