By Mary O’KEEFE

Although many eyes are on November’s election to see if the country will see a blue wave sweep across and, if so, how high will that wave travel – or will the political waters stay calm keeping a mix of red and blue? In many communities local government will have the most impact. It is the supervisors, town and city councils, school districts and water boards that really have power to shape communities. In California, the water board is one of the most important elected organizations in a community. 

When people think about California there are several things that come to mind – Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the ocean, the Gold Rush – but not a lot of people think about California regarding our water rights even though there are some famous movies that deal with this issue.

The movie “Chinatown” (1974) dealt with a lot but at its foundation were water rights and corruption. The film dealt with a fictional plot to orchestrate a drought to force landowners to sell cheaply. 

The film was fiction; however, it was inspired by a real California battle with water. Water power brokers included William Mulholland who bought up land and water rights in the Owens Valley then diverted water to the San Fernando Valley through the LA Aqueduct.

Until Mulholland and his deal, the LA Basin was dry, depending entirely on rain and snowfall for its water. In an article titled, “When California’s Water Wars Turned Violent” by PBS reporter Kirstin Butler, the water battle began with a 1904 camping trip to Owens Valley. It was there Mulholland saw the abundant water source streaming from the melting snowcaps in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Mulholland was a “self taught” civil engineer and the head of what was later the LA Dept. of Water and Power (LADWP).

In 1904 LA’s population was growing and it was obvious the area did not have enough natural resources to sustain the growing city. So Mulholland helped design a way to get the water from Owens Valley to travel over 200 miles downstream through the desert and rocks to the City of LA. 

On this camping trip with Mulholland was a former LA mayor named Fred Eaton who began buying up portions of the Owens Valley once the plot was formed to get water from the Owens Valley. Now as you can imagine the people who lived in the Owens Valley were surprised when the water diversion plan was made public. They knew Eaton was buying land but had no idea why. (Does any of this sound familiar when it comes to data centers and small towns losing their ground?)

In 1905 Eaton bought the Rickey Cattle Company, which was about 50,000 acres of water-bearing land. Once the plan to divert water from the Owens Valley became public the residents were very upset. 

“Soon after the LA Times made Eaton’s scheme public, he was visiting one of the Valley’s small towns with his son. A mob ran both Eatons out of town, but not before the prospector was promised unhappy consequences should he return,” according to PBS. 

It took about 10 years to create the “world’s largest aqueduct” and LA was flush with water. But as with all well-planned schemes, the population of LA grew beyond what was being pumped in from the purchased land in the Owens Valley.

The City of LA returned to the Owens Valley to purchase more land to get even more water rights. 

“[Owens Valley] residents’ water tables dropped. As farms produced less, the local economy faltered, investment dried up and banks refused to make loans. Schools closed,” according to PBS.

And then something happened that set the stage that LADWP is still performing on … the Owens Valley residents and farmers came together to negotiate with the City of LA. But those talks went nowhere and the City, in 1924, sued a long list of farmers claiming they were the ones diverting water that belonged to the City of LA.

The people of the Owens Valley realized the law was not on their side – so they took the law into their own hands. They bombed part of the aqueduct. Though Mulholland used his money and power to find the perpetrators no one would turn them in. 

The farmers were seeing 300,000,000 gallons of water being drained daily from their Valley. In the end, LA controlled 90% of the Owens Valley water.

Without water conservation and as the LA population continued to grow, the Owens Valley was being drained dry. So Mulholland turned to the Colorado River and made a deal to bring that river to LA. 

“Water is the life-blood of every community. The man who did more than any other to furnish that vital element to Los Angeles is William Mulholland, who for many years was chief engineer and general manager of the city-owned Bureau of Water Works and Supply (now the Water System of the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power). He died in 1935 but his work lives on. Every time a faucet is turned [on] the water it releases is a reminder of the man whose life was devoted to public service,” according to LADWP.

That statement is absolutely correct; Mulholland’s work does live on. There is no doubt that without his engineering ideas LA would not have been able to survive. And it is important to note that although Owens Valley residents felt their water was stolen, the pioneers of the valley had done a similar thing to the indigenous peoples who were there before them. Mulholland’s deals continued to put LA first and the rest of the valleys and communities living outside of its water walls were destined to be affected by those agreements. 

I have been writing about a project that CVWD presented years ago. It is quite simple: Capture some of the rain water and ice melt that travels from the mountains above our valley down the Dunsmuir Wash and divert it into the ground. This would increase groundwater for residents – something we lost quite a bit of during the years of drought. The water that travels down the Wash that goes through CV Park, which is where this pipe would be built, currently goes through our washes into the LA River and then out into the ocean. There is no water reclamation plant along the way to capture the water – it just flows out into the sea. 

When I approached the LADWP I was told that CVWD could build their project and capture the water – but they would have to pay LADWP for the water they captured. So LADWP would “let us” have the water that freely flows through our valley but we would have to pay for the water [I just wanted to state this twice]. 

When I pointed out that they, LADWP, did not capture the water, that we were not taking water away from them, that this water was simply traveling through on its way to the ocean, they agreed with what I said and then said, “CVWD can build their project but will have to pay us for the water.”

They have to pay because the deal Mulholland made was that it was the City of LA’s water and there was no stipulation that it would actually have to be used in a constructive useful way – it simply belongs to them.

So as we all wait for El Niño and the possibility of getting a lot of rain, and the governor has issued a state of emergency so we can prepare for possible historic rainfall, I invite CV residents to get their umbrellas, take a quick trip to CV Park and watch the amount of water flowing down the wash that we can’t save for our groundwater because of an agreement made over a century ago. 

We are still seeing a slight chance of showers and possibly a thunderstorm today with our high in the mid-60s. Winds should be calm; our Santa Anas have blown through. We still have a slight chance of rain on Friday, but should see some sun peeking through with temperatures in the mid to low 70s. That pattern of warming and no rain is expected to continue through Tuesday, according to NOAA.