More Study of Dust Storm Curbs Urged

Seeking to avoid a long legal battle, top Owens Valley and Los Angeles officials are recommending a deal that would postpone and reevaluate a controversial plan to force the city to mount a multimillion-dollar project to curb severe dust storms at Owens Lake.

The tentative agreement comes as an Owens Valley pollution board is poised to issue an order Wednesday forcing Los Angeles to return a large portion of its precious water to Owens Lake after 84 years of water diversions have left it bone-dry. When whipped up by winds, tons of fine salty particles fly off the lake, leaving many Owens Valley residents sick with asthma attacks and other respiratory ailments.

Instead of issuing the order, negotiating teams for Los Angeles and the Owens Valley pollution board have recommended that an independent scientific panel be convened to study various solutions for the lake.

Under the terms, the longtime adversaries would “work in good faith” over the next 90 days to draft a plan that would reduce the dust but stop short of achieving national health standards. As a result, the pollution board would seek a five-year extension of a federal clean-air deadline, which means that the dust storms would not be curtailed until 2006.

After what is likely to be an emotional and tense public hearing, the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District board--representing the Owens Valley--will vote Wednesday on whether to accept the new deal or issue its order to Los Angeles. The outcome is unpredictable because the pollution board’s staff is vehemently opposed to the delay and the board remains divided.

The last-minute recommendation--orchestrated by a top Wilson administration official--has angered many Owens Valley residents, who say they have lived with the health threat since options to fix the lake have been studied and debated for 14 years.

If accepted, it would largely be a victory for Los Angeles. Some elected leaders in the Eastern Sierra say they have been backed into a corner by the powerful city’s threat to mount a barrage of lawsuits that could drag on for years.

“There are tremendous risks here,” said David Watson, a Mammoth Lakes councilman who heads the Great Basin air board and led its negotiating team. “The risk is that this is just a delaying tactic, that we’re just still caught in the old adversarialness. But I’m willing to try to move into a cooperative mode on solving a huge public health problem.”

Under the plan originally proposed by the Owens Valley board, Los Angeles would be ordered to cover over one-third of the lake bed--35 square miles--with a mix of shallow pools of water, salt grass and gravel. The city would provide 51,000 acre-feet of water every year.

Construction would cost DWP customers between $91 million and $300 million, plus annual costs of $25 million to replace the lost water with expensive, limited supplies from Northern California’s Bay-Delta or the Colorado River.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials say that a delay is necessary because they believe that the planned dust control solution is “drastic” and scientifically unproven and would violate the city’s long-standing water rights.

“If the [Owens Valley board] acts on July 2, we would be in court on July 3. There is too much money and too much water involved,” said Gerald Gewe, the DWP’s director of water resources. “It’s a problem we all would like to solve, but I cannot recommend to our customers they spend $300 million on [a solution] that is unproven.”

The move to delay came after Michael Kenny, the California Air Resources Board’s executive officer, moderated a seven-hour negotiating session Friday between Los Angeles and Owens Valley officials that at times grew heated.

Kenny urged Owens Valley officials to put off their long-awaited decision as a “cooling-off period.”

“We’re serving as the broker in this thing, and we’re hopeful all sides will stick together,” said state air board spokesman Joe Irwin. “More time is needed for technical work to debate and define . . . technologies that will work.”

But Richard Knox, a Bishop resident and retired DWP manager who has long advocated forcing Los Angeles to return some of its water, believes that the deal is a disingenuous ploy by the city.

“The Air Resources Board joined forces with DWP, and you have some rural politicians on this [Owens Valley] board that are not very sophisticated that came up against a machine that demolished them,” Knox said. “This is going to court anyway, there is no doubt about that. I just don’t trust the city of Los Angeles. It’s time for the city to clean up its act.”

Los Angeles built its aqueduct in 1913, transporting the Owens River’s fresh water more than 200 miles south. With its flow cut off, Owens Lake has been virtually dry since 1930.

During windstorms, salty white crust hurls off the lake, exposing residents of Keeler, Olancha, Ridgecrest and nearby towns to the worst particle pollution in the nation. The particles can penetrate lungs and aggravate lung and heart problems.

Since 1983, the Owens Valley pollution agency has spent $20 million of DWP funds studying options, from construction of fences to refilling the lake. But DWP officials want an independent group of scientists to evaluate whether the pollution plan would work and whether other solutions would cost less and use less water.

The federal Clean Air Act requires states to clean up particle pollution by the end of 2001 or seek a five-year extension from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Under a 1983 state law, Los Angeles must fund “reasonable” measures to study and curb the lake’s dust storms.

Under the new deal, the city and pollution board would explore diverting 20,000 acre-feet of water to be restored to the lower Owens River into Owens Lake instead of letting it flow to Los Angeles. The city, however, has not endorsed that option, and its longtime stance has been that returning any water would violate its rights.

Watson has led efforts to force Los Angeles to curb the dust pollution. But he said Monday that he now favors delay because the request came from Kenny, “who heads one of the top public health agencies in the state,” and because, for the first time, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan sent an aide to negotiate.

“It’s not the solution, of course, we would have liked,” Watson said. “This is a last-ditch attempt to head off an appeals process that gets taken over by the attorneys. We can adopt the very identical [dust-control order] in 90 days if we’re not satisfied that a new working environment has been created with the city.”