Water Returns to Owens River, Reclaiming "the Switzerland of California" from the Desert

By Courtney Walker

In the early 1900s, agents of the City of Los Angeles, posing as businessmen and ranchers, bought hundreds of thousands of acres of the Owens River Valley land and water rights, so that the city could turn itself into a bustling metropolis. This is a story of stealth and deception that was the inspiration for the 1974 movie "Chinatown" and numerous books and movies.

On December 6, 2006, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa turned a control knob to open a steel gate at the diversion dam to redirect the water flowing through the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct back into the Lower Owens River. This reclamation effort would conclude the most notorious and well-known water war in America’s history. The water has flowed into the Aqueduct since 1913. A boom in the 1960s prompted the DWP to pump out the city’s groundwater. The Second Los Angeles Aqueduct was opened in 1970.

Once called "The Switzerland of California", Owens Valley was turned into a desert. The city also drained the Owens Lake, which left behind a vast salt flat that is laced with heavy metals, leaving the flat prone to choking dust that spreads across the valley on windy days. Springs that fed the Valley and turned it into a rich marshland for birds, deer, and elk dried up. The salt grass and cottonwoods all dried up. Under the current plans, the River will only run about two feet deep. That will be sufficient, however, to allow some habitats to regenerate and sagebrush and salt grasses should begin to flourish. It is expected to take years before the wildlife makes a comeback. The hope is that as the river starts flowing again, so will the tourists. Residents believe that new opportunities for hunting and fishing, hiking will help boost the economic situations of the small towns located in the Valley.

Decades of legal battles, starting in the 1970s, saw the city agree, in 1997, to have the water return to the river in 2003. However, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power repeatedly pushed that deadline back until a court fined the DWP $5000 per day starting last September. DWP’s total payment in fines: $2,285,000. The judge that imposed the fine also stated that if, by January 2007, the city had not gotten the water to flow back into Owens River Valley, that it would be barred from using the second aqueduct.

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