THE CALIFORNIA DROUGHT : Trout May Pose Threat to City Water Source : Accident: A pipeline rupture near Bishop could bring fish back to a dry river gorge. If that occurs, state law could block exportation.

The lifeline carrying Eastern Sierra water to the city of Los Angeles was broken this week by a violent pipeline rupture near Bishop, and an ironic side effect of the accident could threaten the city’s best water source, officials in Los Angeles and the Owens Valley said Thursday.

If the break allows a trout fishery to take hold in the usually-dry Owens River Gorge, Los Angeles may lose some of its controversial, decades-old rights to the water. State law forbids destroying fish habitat in order to export water from the Eastern Sierra.

So as local anglers predicted Thursday that trout would somehow find their way into the gorge, Los Angeles engineers were busy trying to quickly make repairs and keep the gorge dry.

The break occurred Tuesday night when a pressure surge ripped a 20-foot gash in a penstock--the pressurized pipeline into a power turbine--above the Owens River Gorge. The water torrent through the rupture induced sufficient suction to crinkle more than 1,000 feet of heavy steel. Witnesses said the pipe, 96 inches in diameter with walls an inch thick, collapsed like a paper straw.

“It’s the most dramatic pipe failure I’ve ever seen,” said Duane Buccholz, longtime chief of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power operations in the Eastern Sierra.

No one was injured. The cause is under investigation but presumed to be human error or equipment malfunction at a nearby power station.

Since Los Angeles began exporting water from the Owens Valley in the 1910s, bitterness has run high in the Eastern Sierra. There have been occasional violent acts against Los Angeles facilities there--and most recently a rash of equipment thefts--but foul play is not suspected this time.

Reservoir storage and a temporary pipe should ensure normal water deliveries to Los Angeles, Buccholz said. But the city’s efforts to repair the damage will occur against the backdrop of the chance that trout could return to the Owens River Gorge, a revered local fishery until Los Angeles diverted the river into power plants in the 1950s.

“The potential is there for a trophy trout fishery,” said Darrel Wong, a biologist in Bishop with the state Department of Fish and Game who inspected the gorge this week.

Local anglers, who have done battle with the DWP over conditions in the Owens River for decades, say that if water gets into the gorge, trout will migrate up from Pleasant Valley Reservoir. And if they don’t, emotions run high enough that someone could well plant the stream with trout, said Thaddeus Taylor, an inveterate local angler and a member of the Inyo County Water Commission.

“Fish will get in there--you know that they will,” Taylor said Thursday, marveling at what he viewed as the good fortune of anglers and others who have fought with the DWP. “A saboteur could not have done a better job.”

Los Angeles lost a similar battle with the trout before, 40 miles north of the Owens River Gorge near Mono Lake. A wet winter in the early 1980s forced Los Angeles to release water into Rush Creek for the first time in decades. Trout were reintroduced, and courts ended up ordering Los Angeles to forever let enough water into the creek to maintain the fishery.

Los Angeles officials say they intend to hold water out of the gorge and store it in Crowley Lake, a city-owned reservoir, until pipeline repairs are made. In the meantime they will try to send small amounts of water through a temporary channel to keep some water flowing into the Los Angeles Aqueduct and south to the city.

Water will be released into the gorge only as a last resort, if repairs take longer than expected, said Buccholz and others. And there are signs that the process could be lengthy.

War damage in Kuwait has increased demand for steel pipe, especially for a job this size. As much as 3,000 feet of pipe must be repaired or replaced, ranging in diameter from 96 to 102 inches. Once a mill is found that can handle the order, the pipe must be installed in rugged terrain in a remote corner of California.

“It takes some time to do that,” said Leon Brink, the chief of DWP power operations in Bishop. As for cost, the rough estimate is “in the millions of dollars.”

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has postponed a vote that would have put pressure on Los Angeles to resume heavy pumping from underground wells in the Owens Valley.

The vote, which had been scheduled at the MWD board meeting Tuesday, would have asked Los Angeles to start pumping again despite spreading environmental damage from the drought and from past pumping.

Inyo County, which includes the Owens Valley, opposed the request and officials there said a resumption of pumping would all but kill a historic peace pact between Inyo and Los Angeles counties that settled years of litigation over Owens Valley water.

Duane Georgeson, a top Metropolitan Water District official, said Thursday that the vote will be delayed to see if new storms in March drop enough snow in the Sierra Nevada to relieve the statewide water shortage.