Still Waters on Battlefields Run Deep

In California, water wars tend to have the lives of vampires. They refuse to die, feeding off the bitterness, outlasting whole generations of bureaucrats and lawyers. That’s why the recent news from Owens Valley and Mono Lake seems so remarkable. The oldest and meanest vampire of them all suddenly looks creaky in the knees.

This, of course, is Los Angeles’ war. It’s the war that got Los Angeles enough water to grow into the dominant urban beast of the West Coast. And it’s the war that gave the city its reputation as a bloodless opportunist, a colonizer of communities weaker than itself.

Out here in the Owens Valley, no one has put up historical markers at any of the battlefields. They should. There are places like the Alabama Gates, the concrete sluiceway where hundreds of farmers threatened to shut down the aqueduct. There’s the site of the old Watterson bank, whose owners resisted Los Angeles’ takeover until the city instigated a timely audit of their books. The Wattersons were hauled off to San Quentin.

And there’s the aqueduct itself. Gleaming steel, it runs like a huge straw through the valley. The markers might show the spots where the aqueduct was dynamited half a dozen times in the ‘20s and then once again in the ‘70s.

With that history, anyone suggesting the end of this struggle is running a serious risk of looking the fool. So let me quickly submit my evidence:

Early this month the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power agreed to a plan that would make the extraction of water from Owens Valley a joint venture with valley residents. Inyo County, which has long led the fight against the city, would have an equal voice in determining whether the water exports are threatening vegetation or wildlife.

At Mono Lake, the city pledged last week to support legislation aimed at preserving the lake. As city officials know, the only way to accomplish that goal is to reduce the city’s diversions of streams that feed the lake with fresh water. It will mean somewhat less water flowing to the city, more water to the lake.

Clearly, these proposals must travel a great distance before they become reality. But clearly also, the city has accepted the necessity of absorbing some losses in its water supply--maybe 10%, maybe less--to do the right thing in the eastern Sierra. Los Angeles is suing for peace.

And just why is interesting. It would be nice to think that these events represent a greening of the DWP, or at least a recognition by its leadership that the old days of the water barons are gone forever. But that hardly seems to be the case.

The fact is, Los Angeles came to its position of sweet reason because it has little choice. Over the last decade the courts have pounded the city in case after case involving its Owens-Mono behavior, and they are threatening to pound some more. The city discovered compromise only when its legal powers in the eastern Sierra proved to be much less than it had hoped.

But let’s not flail at the DWP here. This is supposed to be a good news column. No matter what pushed the DWP into the spirit of accommodation, it got there.

And there could be better news yet. It’s possible that this half-century of struggle--if it’s resolved--might leave the eastern Sierra with the best of all worlds. After all, the city’s monolithic presence in Owens Valley kept it as free of commercial development as any national park. Even today you can ride up U.S. 395 and see nothing but the great wall of the Sierra on the west and the open chaparral of the Valley on the right. It is a dazzling scene.

On the 300,000 acres of city lands there are no billboards, no Denny’s. You can hunt and fish those lands or just drive down a quiet road and sit. The city will not send out goons to throw you off.

That part has always been there, of course. The flip side, the intolerable part, was the powerlessness imposed on the valley people from without. I remember driving up 395 a decade ago and seeing clumps of dead and dying trees dotting the valley. The locals all believed that the trees were dying of thirst, that the city’s water extraction was killing the valley. So they had tied big red ribbons on the branches of the dead trees. It was a sign of mourning, and it was all they could do.

Now, in 1989, maybe that’s changing. It will take a while before we know. As someone else said in different circumstances, this is not the end, nor is it the beginning of the end. But it just may be the end of the beginning.