Manzanar Internment Camp OKd by Panel as Historic Site

A House of Representatives subcommittee approved a bill Tuesday to make the Manzanar World War II internment camp a national historic site, despite continued misgivings by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which owns the barren property.

DWP Board President Mike Gage said the legislation, amended after a squabble became public last week between the DWP and the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), fails to adequately address the utility’s concerns about water rights.

DWP officials are worried that the transfer could open the door for federal officials to interfere with the utility’s water-gathering operations in the Owens Valley area. “If it came to transferring the land to the federal government the way the bill reads today, we wouldn’t transfer it,” Gage said. “(But) we will continue to work together with the bill’s sponsor.”

Levine said such concerns were adequately met by language added to the bill this week, which specifically states that the city’s water rights would not be affected.

“I’ve been assured there’s no meaningful water rights issue at stake,” Levine said. Last week, Gage also charged that Levine’s staff was trying to “quietly thug” the DWP into turning over Manzanar--one of the first camps in which Japanese-Americans were detained--without cost. But new language in the bill, which was approved on a voice vote by the subcommittee on parks and public lands, would allow the federal Bureau of Land Management to exchange a similar parcel elsewhere for the 500-acre Eastern Sierra scrubland site.