Owens Valley and the DWP--It’s Still ‘Them and Us’

Even today, there are folks in the Owens Valley who might try to blame the recent earthquakes on the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power--maybe even take those water boys to court and make them prove they were not responsible.

Very little happens in the remote and isolated Owens Valley and Mono Basin that is not, in some way, connected to the Department of Water and Power.

The news of the day along the eastern Sierra may deal with DWP’s sale of a choice business lot in Bishop, with various lawsuits involving the city and the level of Mono Lake or the city’s plan to increase the capacity of Crowley Lake, new water flows on the lower Owens River or water needs at growing Mammoth Lakes.

One hot item is that the California gulls are busy nesting on Negit Island in Mono Lake, in part because Los Angeles has been ordered by the courts to keep Rush Creek flowing into the lake rather than down the 338-mile long aqueduct.

There is a peace of sorts along the eastern Sierra, almost three-quarters of a century after Los Angeles water prophet William Mulholland opened the aqueduct in Los Angeles and told city fathers, assorted barons and 40,000 Angelenos: “There it is! Take it!”

Certainly, violent animosity has cooled over the years--there have been no recent bombings of the aqueduct, and Water and Power officials traverse Inyo and Mono back roads in their gray pickups without fear of dry-gulching. The city and Inyo County are well into a cooperative four-year plan of joint management of the Owens Valley ground-water sysmtem and the city has undertaken an 18-point valley “enhancement” program.

The flash points for the city’s most immediate problems lie to the north: the level of Mono Lake and the proposed raising of the dam at Crowley Lake--without an environmental impact report, if DWP can get away with it.

An incident near the community of Independence in July illustrates the tentative nature of the Owens Valley-Los Angeles truce. It was a minor triumph for the valley: DWP was actually turning some of its “stolen” water back into the Owens River.

Officials opened a valve on the Los Angeles Aqueduct to allow captured Sierra water to flow freely back into the old, dry Owens River channel. The water would run for 25 miles, creating a bass and catfish fishery. But then the revived river would die again, percolating back into the dusty Owens Valley earth, only to be pumped out later by Los Angeles.

Inyo County Supervisor Larry Calkins tartly observed that the city was not giving the water back: “They’re lending it.” Here along the towering east wall of the Sierra, capped by Mt. Whitney at 14,495 feet, even cooperative progress can be a struggle, usually involving some court stipulation from Sacramento or San Francisco. Every move seems to be made grudgingly, with the players careful to keep an ace in reserve. It is an eight-decade history of the snake-bitten keeping a nervous eye out for the next strike.

In spite of the legend of the Los Angeles “rape” of the Owens Valley, the citizens of Inyo and Mono counties--some 27,000 of them spread over an area the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut--are by no means the only ones who feel snake-bitten. Water and Power officials, who battle their own budget auditors back in Los Angeles, see the eastern Sierra not merely as a giant natural spring that provides the city with 80% of its water supply, but a money sump into which Los Angeles sinks dollar after dollar with precious little return in the form of good will or appreciation. Create a local assessment district and the first move may be to see how much Water and Power land can be taxed. Need a park? Get Water and Power to lease the land, cheap. Got a problem with DWP? File a lawsuit.

The department is the overwhelming economic force along the eastern Sierra--it owns 307,000 acres of the best land--the land, that is, that has the water. Technically, the department controls nary a vote here. But the economic power is always present. If, for instance, Inyo and Mono counties are able to wrest away too much water through legal cunning, there is always the threat of the city cutting off the water it allocates to local ranches--ranches leased from the city.

Under Duane Georgeson, the DWP assistant general manager in charge of the water system, the department is better than it used to be in acknowledging the damage Los Angeles’ water diversions might have done, or could do, to the Owens Valley and the Mono Basin; and in recognizing the city’s responsibility to make amends--up to a point. Still, the us-and-them attitude often prevails, all the way up to Mayor Tom Bradley. When Bradley, appearing as a candidate for governor, promised last spring he would not seek another drop of water from Northern California without absolute environmental protection for the north, he was asked if that same standard applied to the eastern Sierra. “It applies only to the State Water Project,” he retorted.

There have been changes, and more may come about through evolution of California water law to emphasize the environmental value of water at the possible expense of traditional water rights--a key to DWP power in the eastern Sierra. But in many ways, Los Angeles still battles change and still treats the eastern Sierra as its very own fiefdom, a DWP Brigadoon that is somehow apart from the rest of California.

Some eastern Sierrans acknowledge privately that the area stays the way it is only because Los Angeles tied up so much land decades ago--forestalling development and population growth. But they also chafe about their future being so inextricably linked to--and perhaps limited by--a ponderous, defensive water bureaucracy that continues to act more like a despot than a partner. A more enlightened, cooperative Los Angeles might not gain the city any more water than it now squeezes from the eastern Sierra, but in terms of moral standing, good will and public image, the city has little to lose.

For starters, DWP could end its absolute resistance to environmental impact assessments on its operations. Then the city might volunteer to involve itself in the eastern Sierra’s social, educational, economic and cultural life through a variety of truly cooperative projects.

Back in 1913, when the water first flowed to Los Angeles, Mulholland exclaimed, “Well, it’s finished!” But today, much of the DWP’s job still lies ahead.