Armistice With Eden

The Owens Valley was California’s Eden, according to a promotional booklet published in 1912 by the Inyo Register in Bishop. Extolled in lush detail were the richness of the earth and the bounty of the water supply: “Its several hundred thousand acres of land are all fertile, and it is blessed with a water supply more generous than is given to any other equal area in California.”

But even then Eden was doomed to become a virtual wasteland, with the eastern Sierra valley’s precious water usurped by boisterous, booming Los Angeles 250 miles to the south through a dark process that has since evolved into legend. Seventy-five years ago today, the first Owens River water arrived at the southern end of the Los Angeles Aqueduct near Sylmar, tumbling down the Owensmouth Cascades to the cheers of thousands. William Mulholland, the tireless genius who made it possible, turned to city fathers and declared: “There it is. Take it.”

The event assured Los Angeles’ future, but not without controversy that continues today. In the Owens Valley, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power continued to purchase ranchland to make its water rights even more secure. In the 1920s, bitter valley residents fought back, seizing the Alabama headgates for a time and dynamiting the aqueduct. Legend grew upon legend.

Water and Power still is buying valley land, and now owns most of those several hundred thousand acres and considerable property in Inyo County’s towns. The Owens Valley is a Los Angeles colony virtually frozen in time.

There are no more bombings. The battle has moved into the courts and onto negotiating tables in both Inyo County and Mono County to the north, where environmentalists are challenging the city’s taking of stream water that normally feeds dwindling Mono Lake. Los Angeles finds itself on the defensive as its lawyers fight to preserve historic levels of stream diversions and groundwater pumping for export to the city. The Owens Valley-Mono Basin system still gives Los Angeles about two-thirds its total water supply.

Relations with the Owens Valley are peaceful at the moment. There is an armistice as negotiators try to agree on a long-range plan for Los Angeles’ pumping of groundwater from the valley. An interim accord has provided for a variety of L.A.-financed environmental-enhancement projects to restore some of the vegetation lost because of lowered groundwater tables. The department has tried harder in recent years to be a helpful neighbor through such things as offering land for activities like Little League baseball and the Boy Scouts’ Christmas tree lot. “I’ve never known them to refuse anything like that,” says a veteran observer.

Still, tensions are not far below the surface. If Inyo County and the department cannot agree on a pumping plan by April, the legal wars will flare again. Inyo will try to assert control over pumping levels, to be decided in the courts. “There’s still an undercurrent of resentment and hostility,” another valley observer says. Those eager for economic growth want more property for new business and light manufacturing. But Los Angeles owns most of the land, and is slow to sell. Ironically, many in the valley would like to keep it relatively undeveloped to enhance the area’s tourist economy.

While Water and Power officials try to be good neighbors, the city’s lawyers fight to the last comma to preserve their water rights. That is their duty. There is no question, however, that the best interests of both Los Angeles and the Owens Valley rest in a negotiated settlement. While it will not be convenient or cheap, Los Angeles can and must find water elsewhere to make up for cuts in Owens and Mono supplies. Virtually every court decision so far indicates that this is what Los Angeles will have to do in any event.

For the Owens Valley and its 18,000 residents, the stakes go beyond just the water. The valley is fighting, rightfully, to regain some measure of control over its own destiny.