Losing Side in Yesteryear’s Water Wars Now Benefits From DWP

It seems an odd remark for the fourth-generation resident of a place sucked dry by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power: “We’re so grateful we’re on DWP,” said Jeanne Willey, co-owner of the Lone Pine motel.

In one of the paradoxes of life here, the valley’s legendary villain is its white knight in today’s state electricity crisis.

DWP--a public utility that is still regulated and has its own power source, and so is dodging shortages and rate hikes--supplies electricity to about 5,000 homes and businesses in the little towns of this narrow valley, 230 miles north of Los Angeles.

That the historic victim of Los Angeles’ water wars is now its beneficiary reflects the complex relationship between DWP and the region. Over the decades, the valley’s fervent hatred of the department has evolved into something far more nuanced.

The valley’s water is pumped to L.A. faucets. Owens Lake is a parched bed spewing whirlwinds of dust across the landscape. DWP, along with the federal government, owns all but a fraction of the land.

But precisely because of that, the valley is open and undeveloped, a wind-scoured shoehorn of high desert off limits to red-tiled subdivisions and agribusiness.

“What would have been here without the DWP?” wondered Bonnie Allen, who has spent her 76 years in the valley. “They kept it beautiful.”

Newcomers and natives alike speak of the double-edged nature of living in what has sometimes been called a colony of Los Angeles.

Because so many of the valley’s land and water rights were locked up by the DWP in the early 1900s, growth is all but impossible. The towns are tiny. The skinny economy is tied to the DWP, government jobs and the tourists who whiz through on their way to the ski slopes and hiking trails of the Sierra Nevada.

“The majority of [residents] are either slow-growth or no-growth and are very happy we have the kind of vistas and rural landscapes we have,” observed Inyo County Supervisor Julie Bear. “On the other hand, we’re always teetering on economic demise.”

The DWP’s Owens Valley electrical lines date from construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct 90 years ago. Hydro plants were built in canyons to power dredging machines that were digging the waterway, which transports Sierra runoff from the valley to the sinks and lawns of Los Angeles.

The hydro facilities are still in operation, producing enough electricity for about 80,000 homes, said DWP spokesman Chris Plakos. The power goes into DWP’s general electricity pool, which lights not only Los Angeles but also the Owens Valley communities of Big Pine, Lone Pine, Independence and Olancha and part of Bishop.

Outlying areas in the valley get their power from Southern California Edison, one of the big investor-owned utilities that has been pounded by shortages and soaring wholesale energy prices.

Edison’s Owens Valley customers have so far escaped outages. But the possibility of painful rate hikes has some of them eyeing DWP.

“We’re talking about going over to DWP,” said Carol Dickman, who lives in an all-electric house in Keeler, a community of about 100 people who are considering dumping their Edison hookups.

Others aren’t worried. “I have lots of candles,” said Allen, who lives in the part of Bishop served by Edison.

Allen’s father was a cattleman who sold out to DWP early in the last century and then leased grazing land from the department.

At first he was bitter over DWP’s takeover. Then he concluded he was better off leasing than owning his pastureland. “My father got along beautifully with the DWP,” Allen said, recalling that he sometimes invited the department’s leasing agents to dinner.

The people who detested the DWP for grabbing the valley’s water and drying up its farms and ranches are “all dead and gone,” Allen said.

Perhaps not entirely.

Willey has an aunt who is Allen’s age and who remembers how green the valley was; she blames DWP for taking “that away from us.”

But listen some more to Willey and you see how entwined valley life and the DWP have become.

The department helps string Christmas lights in town, opens its land to sportsmen and, by stopping growth, protects the small-town rhythm she so cherishes.

It provides some of the best jobs around--her husband was a DWP welder for 30 years--and DWP workers regularly stay in the 1920s motel she and her sister own.

Dickman, who moved to the valley from Riverside more than 20 years ago, put it this way:

“Some of my best friends work for DWP. [The water diversion] is a done deal. I’m not going to fight it. That lake is never going to get filled.”