An L.A.-Valley Divorce Won’t Hold Water

Those who propose the secession of the San Fernando Valley from the city of Los Angeles overlook a historical point of momentous significance. Why did the residents of the San Fernando Valley vote in 1915 to join Los Angeles, thereby doubling the city’s size in one move?

The answer is water. In authorizing the withdrawal of federal lands that made possible Los Angeles’ construction of the Los Angeles-Owens Valley Aqueduct, Congress required that the water be for the public use of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles City Charter prohibits the use of Owens Valley water outside the city without approval of the city electorate. Thus to secure unrestricted access to Owens Valley water, San Fernando Valley residents voted to join the city.

Los Angeles, of course, shared the valley’s desire for annexation. First, it ensured that the Los Angeles-Owens Valley Aqueduct, which terminated just north of San Fernando, would be entirely within Los Angeles’ corporate limits. More important, the annexation assured the city’s ability to use Owens River water for irrigation in the valley, without which William Mulholland’s first aqueduct would have proved economically infeasible. Thus annexation enabled the city in effect to store its water rights in the transitory irrigation of valley agriculture, until urban growth, as envisioned by Mulholland and his colleagues, would claim the water for an expanding population.

In the decades following the 1913 completion of the aqueduct, Los Angeles’ reliance on the San Fernando Valley as a water resource has only increased. The city fought for two decades to secure a 1975 California Supreme Court decision protecting its right to water imported from the Owens Valley and stored in the San Fernando Valley ground water basin. The basin continues to form a major Los Angeles water resource, enabling the city to store excess waters of flood years to meet the seasons of drought.

Secession would undo the mutual water dependence of the city and valley. Valley residents would no longer enjoy entitlement to the city’s water supply. If the city elected to sell water to the valley, the city would be enabled under California law to charge a higher rate to account for the city’s capital investment over the decades. Alternatively, a new city in the valley could petition the Metropolitan Water District for membership, igniting a whole new chapter in the spectator sport of Southland water politics.

Los Angeles, on the other hand, would find its principal ground water basin overlain by a separate city--one authorized by a recent California Court of Appeal decision to regulate that basin. With other key Los Angeles water transmission and delivery facilities situated in the new city, delicious new opportunities for municipal mischief at Los Angeles’ expense would arise.

The impact of Valley secession would not be confined south of the Tehachapis. Interference with Los Angeles’ ability to manage its resources throughout its current boundaries could threaten the city’s ability to live up to obligations made and limitations imposed in the Owens Valley and Mono Basin. An MWD enlarged to include a new city covering the San Fernando Valley would create new demands on the State Water Project and Colorado River Aqueduct. These changed conditions could result in increased demands for water from the Sacramento Delta or Colorado River, regions that are demanding that more water be left in place to serve environmental or other local needs.

Before this secession proposal proceeds much further in the Legislature, leaders of both the state and city should look carefully at its implications on California’s and Los Angeles’ most precious resource.