L. A. Admits to Harming Owens Valley Environment

The city of Los Angeles acknowledged Friday that its Department of Water and Power has inflicted serious environmental harm on the remote Owens Valley, the city’s main source of water since 1913.

In a study prepared to satisfy a 17-year-old court ruling, Los Angeles admitted that wetlands and springs have dried up in the Eastern Sierra valley, and that trees and brush have died of thirst on more than 1,000 acres.

Another 1,080 acres of former crop land where Los Angeles halted farming to save water has failed to regenerate native plants. Dust blowing off the valley’s denuded areas has caused serious air-quality problems, the study found.

Local residents and other critics contend that the damaged acreage is far higher.

The study covers only environmental harm since 1970, when Los Angeles opened its second aqueduct to convey Owens Valley water 250 miles across the Mojave Desert. The first aqueduct, an open channel designed by famed engineer William Mulholland, has operated since 1913. Both flow by gravity and deliver water to a reservoir in Sylmar.

Completion of the second aqueduct, a pipeline filled mostly with ground water pumped from huge well fields, set off a lengthy legal fight that led to Friday’s study.

In a 1972 lawsuit, Inyo County charged that Los Angeles wells supplying the second aqueduct devastated the valley by lowering the water table, causing widespread death of trees and marshes. In 1973, a state Court of Appeal ordered Los Angeles to file an environmental impact report. Los Angeles prepared studies in 1976 and 1979, but the court found both inadequate.

The report released Friday was prepared jointly by Los Angeles and Inyo County, which since 1984 have been attempting to negotiate a settlement of their legal differences.

“I think the EIR is honest, straightforward and legally adequate,” said Greg James, director of the Inyo County water department.

Other impacts noted by the study include the depletion of privately owned wells due to the Los Angeles pumps. Near Laws, a small town east of Bishop, the water level in some wells has fallen to 35 feet; six feet used to be common, the study said.

To reduce the environmental toll, Los Angeles has released water onto pasture land, improved lakes and taken a variety of other steps. In an effort to reduce the blowing dust, alfalfa has been planted in some areas, the study said.

Efforts are also under way to reintroduce native vegetation in some parts of the valley, but the study said that remains experimental with unknown prospects for success.

The study does not examine the destruction of Owens Lake, which was a 100-square-mile desert lake south of Lone Pine plied by ore barges and ferries. It gradually dried up after Los Angeles diverted its main source of fresh water, the Owens River.

In recent years, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has found that the fine silt and dust that blows off the lake bed--sometimes in huge clouds that carry the dust as far as San Bernardino and Bakersfield--is a threat to human health. But the lake had dried up well before the second Los Angeles aqueduct was opened.