L.A., Owens Valley Agree on Plan to Stop Dust Storms

Culminating decades of bitter conflict, the Owens Valley and Los Angeles struck a historic deal Wednesday designed to bring an end to massive dust storms at Owens Lake by 2006.

The battle over the dry lake is the last major hurdle to mending the environmental damage that Los Angeles inflicted when it opened its aqueduct 85 years ago and drained the Owens Valley of its mountain-fed water.

The two sides reached a compromise when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power agreed to begin work at Owens Lake by 2001 and set a firm date--eight years from now--for ensuring that people living near the lake are breathing air that meets federal health standards. In turn, Owens Valley air pollution officials agreed to scale back the improvements they had sought and allow them to be phased in gradually.

“Some folks said it couldn’t be done, some said it wouldn’t be done, but we now have an agreement that it can be done,” said S. David Freeman, general manager of the Los Angeles DWP. “We are now pledged, if the City Council approves this, to stay with the job until the job gets done.”

Ruth Galanter, the council’s lead member on water issues, called the deal a “historic moment” and a “great breakthrough” for Angelenos as well as Owens Valley residents.

“This avoids probably 20 years of litigation,” she said, adding, “I don’t see why anyone would oppose it.”

Officials of the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District also pronounced themselves thrilled with the deal, saying it guarantees that residents of Inyo County and Ridgecrest will finally breathe healthful air--although the pace of improvement will be slower than they originally demanded a year ago.

“It’s a victory,” said Great Basin project manager Ted Schade. “This is a very simple concept, and it provides for [clean-air] attainment, and it provides little or no loopholes for the city.”

Owens Lake is by far the single largest source of particle air pollution in the United States.

For decades, people living in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada have periodically been exposed to giant swirling funnels of toxic white dust that blows off the parched lake.

Particle pollution can cause respiratory infections, asthma attacks and serious--perhaps deadly--complications from respiratory and heart ailments.

The truce in the water wars signals the first time that Los Angeles has agreed to surrender some Owens Valley water without a lengthy court fight.

Under the agreement, 10 square miles of the 110-square mile lake bed will be treated by the end of 2001, an additional 3 1/2 square miles in 2002 and three more in 2003. Then, at least two square miles must be treated every year until the Great Basin air agency determines that federal clean-air standards are met. The plan will be revised in 2003 to see if the pace must be stepped up to achieve the standards by 2006.

Los Angeles can design its dust-control strategy with a mix of three different techniques: shallow flooding of parts of the lake bed, planting vegetation and depositing gravel. The lake will not be refilled, but the first 10 square miles are likely to be permanently covered with a few inches of water, enough to stop the dust, Freeman said.

The project is expected to cost $120 million, and the city might permanently lose about 40,000 acre-feet of water a year--enough to serve 80,000 households, Freeman said. He said he hopes that most can be accomplished with Owens Valley ground water, instead of aqueduct water headed to Los Angeles. But until the project is designed by engineers, the city will not know how much water it will take.

“I view this as solving a problem in a cost-effective manner, and I’m hopeful at least in the next few years that we can absorb it within the existing water rates,” Freeman said. “Financially, the settlement is clearly a victory for the city.”

Final Approval Still to Come

Inyo County Supervisor Michael Dorame, who serves on the Great Basin board, said he believes the plan will achieve healthful air for residents of his area.

“This is a good product,” Dorame said. “People here were expecting that we would have to compromise in some fashion to get started on this, and I don’t think we gave up a great deal to get there.”

His only reservation, Dorame said, is “what may happen with the [Los Angeles] City Council.” If changes are made, the whole deal could fall apart, he warned.

In addition to the council, the plan must get approval from the Great Basin board--expected within two weeks--as well as the California Air Resources Board.

The new plan also hinges on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granting a five-year extension of the Clean Air Act, which requires states to clean up particle pollution by 2001 or seek an extension until 2006.

The debate over Owens Lake, which has raged for nearly 20 years, has focused on how far and how fast Los Angeles must go to stop the lake from polluting the area’s air.

Under the new deal, 22 1/2 square miles of the lake bed will be treated by 2006--plus as much more as is necessary to bring the particle pollution down to levels that meet federal standards.

That compares with 35 square miles that the Great Basin pollution board had ordered Los Angeles to treat by 2001, at a cost of to $300 million. The city, calling that plan exorbitant and technically flawed, had offered to treat only nine square miles. When its offer was refused, the city appealed to the California Air Resources Board.

In May, when the Air Resources Board split 5 to 4 over whose side to take, its chairman, John Dunlap, urged the two sides to work out a quick deal. That’s when negotiations began in earnest.

In a sign of its simplicity, the agreement is defined in slightly over two typed pages.

The major breakthrough in negotiations came when the Los Angeles DWP promised to attain air pollution standards at Owens Lake by the Clean Air Act’s deadline of 2006, officials from both sides said. In the past, the city had always balked at making such a guarantee. In the agreement, the city takes the unprecedented step of waiving its right to sue over the plan.

“We represent people who have long-standing resentment toward [each other], and both sides said to hell with that and decided to work together to solve a legitimate problem,” Galanter said.

Credit for Breaking Impasse

Officials involved in the deal credited Freeman, who took over the helm of DWP last September, with helping to break the logjam.

DWP leaders had long argued that it should not have to give up any of its water supply to comply with the air pollution law. But Freeman, who earlier in his career helped heal the troubled Tennessee Valley Authority and had experience in air pollution disputes, altered that stance when he took over negotiations. He decided, with the advice of B.J. Kirwin, an attorney with Latham & Watkins who specializes in the Clean Air Act, that the city would have to comply with the federal law’s deadlines.

Until now, DWP engineers had focused on the cost to city residents and discounted the health risk to about 40,000 people in the Owens Valley.

Freeman said reading such past comments “made me cringe.”

“Everybody in this country is entitled to healthful air quality,” he said. “The fact that there’s not that many people up there doesn’t make any difference.”

Worth millions of dollars a year, Owens Valley water is one of Los Angeles’ most precious assets--a cheap and reliable source of water in a city that has little of its own.

Owens Valley residents have long had bitter feelings toward Los Angeles, especially the DWP, because city officials around the turn of the century bought up the valley’s valuable water rights using practices considered deceptive. Since then, the Owens Valley has struggled with a sluggish economy and devastated environment, whereas Los Angeles thrived with the water that allowed development of the San Fernando Valley.

The agreement is considered as momentous as earlier agreements by the city to surrender water to Mono Lake and the lower Owens River. Those deals, however, followed legal challenges that dragged on for years.

From filling the lake to building fences, techniques to curb Owens Lake’s particle pollution have been studied and debated for 18 years, at a cost of more than $20 million, and many observers were convinced the issue would wind up in court.

The rural valley usually enjoys blue skies and fresh air. But on windy days, the lake’s salty crust is stirred into tiny particles. As much as 11 tons of particles, laced with arsenic and other toxic metals, blow off the lake in a single day.

In addition to jeopardizing the health of area residents, the dust storms jeopardize flight safety and weapons testing at the China Lake naval base downwind, officials say. Native Americans had threatened to sue the state and city, charging environmental racism.

City officials hope the agreement will transform Los Angeles’ legacy and dampen the scathing accounts written about the environmental damage inflicted on the Owens Valley.

“It’s another step that [the DWP] is taking to be a better neighbor,” Galanter said. Referring to one well-known book by Marc Reisner on Western water wars, she added: “I’ve been reading ‘Cadillac Desert,’ and I want the next chapter to read differently.”

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Truce in the Water Wars

Los Angeles has agreed to curb giant dust storms at Owens Lake by treating part of the dry lake with a mix of water, vegetation and gravel. Under the terms, Los Angeles will repair at least 22 1/2 square miles of a 35-square mile area of the lake bed. This is the timetable:

2001: 10 square miles by end of the year

2002: 3.5 square miles

2003: 3 square miles

2004-2006: 2 square miles each subsequent year through 2006, or until air in towns around the lake meets federal health standards

Source: Memorandum of Agreement Between Los Angeles and the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District