Hahn’s Pre-Owned Vision

There’s a symmetrical irony to the Owens Valley story 100 years later. In the first chapters, Los Angeles secretly bought up much of the land in the 100-mile-long valley in order to drain its water and fuel Southern California development. By siphoning the valley’s natural water sources to spawn unnatural growth, Los Angeles paid a steep price in sprawl, traffic and smog. Yet the valley east of the Sierra remains largely pristine, if largely waterless. One of its larger towns, Lone Pine, was named among the best places to live in Men’s Journal two years ago.

So it’s hard to imagine a better ending to this story than the current L.A. proposal to preserve 320,000 acres of the land it bought, while allowing expansion room for Lone Pine and three other towns, under the management of a private conservancy. In exchange, L.A. would get $35 million in state bond money, along with continued water rights.

It’s also hard to imagine a clumsier way for a mayor to promulgate such a noble idea than to kill the valley preservation plan promoted by two L.A. councilmen and then revive it this week as “his vision.” Yet L.A. Mayor James K. Hahn, running for reelection in March, did exactly that.

The basic proposal is solid -- just as it was last month when council President Alex Padilla and Councilman Tony Cardenas brought it up, and in fact, three years ago when David Freeman, then general manager of the Department of Water and Power, proposed it. Then-Mayor Richard Riordan killed that plan, much as Hahn criticized and killed the council initiative two weeks ago.

Then on Tuesday, the mayor unveiled virtually the same Owens Valley preservation initiative. He never disliked the concept, Deputy Mayor Doane Liu said, but felt the council lacked the authority to go forward with it. Liu also said Hahn had been working on the idea for a year. If that’s true, the mayor could have made more friends two weeks ago by telling the councilmen, “Hey, great idea, let’s make it a reality together.”

Fortunately, Padilla and Cardenas, with a bigger vision than Hahn’s, plan to support the proposal despite the blindsiding and halo-snatching.

There are a thousand or so details to be worked out. Hahn still faces suspicion from Owens Valley residents, who don’t trust Los Angeles, even as a penitent. Their skepticism has been fed by the long wait for a promised restoration of the lower Owens River and lake. For the land conservation to succeed, the electioneering mayor will have to prove that he can communicate more openly, and share glory more graciously, than he has done this week. He can start by inviting valley stakeholders not just to give their opinions at meetings but to sit at the table of decision-makers as equals.