DWP Comes to the Rescue

This is not exactly soap opera drama, but Southern Inyo Hospital up in Lone Pine has undergone a dramatic rescue and recovery after being on the critical list and about to expire for lack of funds. Riding to the rescue were the guys who, according to Owens Valley legend, wear the black hats: the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

DWP’s governing board, the city Board of Water and Power Commissioners, has helped save the hospital with a $100,000 grant. The Los Angeles donation makes the hospital eligible for an additional $144,000 in state matching funds. So the future of the hospital seems assured for now.

The only condition of the city grant is that the hospital maintain emergency medical facilities for treatment of department employees who may become injured or seriously ill. The Lone Pine hospital is the only such medical facility along a 200-mile stretch of U.S. 395 along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada. It would provide service to an estimated 150 DWP employees, plus dependents. And, of course, the hospital is important to the hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles area residents who visit the eastern Sierra.

No one knows how long DWP may bear the stigma of its Chinatown syndrome, stemming from its early-century grab of Owens Valley water. But solid gestures such as this certainly do the department’s image no harm.