H.L. Gibbons; Inyo D.A. Fought DWP Over Owens Valley Water

H.L. “Buck” Gibbons, the former Inyo County district attorney who led the tiny High Desert area’s 19-year David vs. Goliath litigation with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power over excessive pumping of ground water from the Owens Valley, has died. He was 59.

Gibbons, who lived in Bishop, died Wednesday in Chicago, where he had gone to be with his mother after she broke a hip. Gibbons died of a heart attack, said Inyo County Dist. Atty. Phil McDowell, a longtime friend.

The highly respected Gibbons first attracted national attention as a young deputy prosecutor helping to investigate the Charles Manson case. Before the Tate-La Bianca murders in Los Angeles that made Manson and his followers infamous, the so-called “family” had lived at Barker Valley Ranch in Inyo on the edge of the Mojave Desert. Gibbons worked to charge members of the group with car theft and malicious mischief during their stay in Inyo County.

But Gibbons engraved his name in California jurisprudence, as well as intergovernmental diplomacy, with the Owens Valley ground water saga, beginning when he was a deputy and continuing through his tenure as district attorney from 1974 to 1997.

“He had a very active and expansive intellect,” said McDowell, “and even if people disagreed with him they respected him--including the lawyers from L.A.”

Los Angeles and the Owens Valley had wrangled over water since the early 1900s, when city officials quietly bought up the land, then built an aqueduct that started pumping water to the San Fernando Valley in 1913. The megalopolis had drained Owens Lake by 1940.

Gibbons’ era of litigation revolved around a second aqueduct, completed in 1971, that enabled Los Angeles to increase pumping by 50% and take ground water as well as surface water. Los Angeles owned the land, so challenging its right to pump out water appeared somewhat quixotic.

Legal Battle Led to an Agreement

Inyo County sued the DWP nevertheless, complaining not about the city’s right to pump water but about the resulting damage to Inyo’s environment.

Despite some court victories for Inyo County, the issue remained unresolved in 1980. So Gibbons helped draft and win passage of a county ordinance limiting ground water pumping. Los Angeles sued to overturn the new law.

Argument over the cutoff ordinance resulted in a decade of negotiations between Los Angeles lawyers and Gibbons and Inyo-hired private attorney Tony Rossman of San Francisco.

The long wrangle ended in 1991, when the parties signed an agreement permitting Los Angeles to pump as much water as it wanted as long as the pumping caused no environmental damage. Although Inyo officials said protecting their environment came first and money was secondary, Los Angeles still paid a substantial sum to settle the dispute.

Under the agreement worked out by Gibbons, Los Angeles pays Inyo County about $2 million a year to mitigate earlier environmental damage and offset the low tax assessments on DWP-owned land in Owens Valley.

The DWP also had to pay $10 million to reestablish a trout fishery in the Owens River and fund construction of other recreational facilities. Another part of the bargain required that the DWP transfer to Inyo County $4 million worth of water systems that the water agency had operated in the towns of Laws, Independence, Lone Pine and Big Pine.

DWP officials could have struck a favorable deal early on, Gibbons told The Times after it was all over, if they had dealt forthrightly with Inyo County. “But they gave us no evidence of acting in good faith,” he said, “so we went to court, and the courts agreed with us.”

Born in Sioux City, Iowa, Gibbons graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts and Stanford University Law School.

Gibbons was hired as an Inyo deputy district attorney in 1972 and succeeded his boss a couple of years later. After his 1997 retirement, he served on the Inyo County Grand Jury.

He is survived by his wife, Sybil; his mother, Florence Gibbons; two children from his first marriage, Michelle McGuire and Melissa Gibbons; two stepchildren, Devon and Erin Capps; a sister, Diane; and two grandchildren, Megan and Nathan McGuire.

A memorial service will be held Sunday at 2 p.m. at Isaac Walton Park in Bishop. Contributions in his name may be made to the Bishop Union High School for a college scholarship fund.