LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Owens Valley: Los Angeles
built 657 days ago
A visit to California’s Owens River Valley serves as a case study for understanding the reach of the city and the reshaping of nature. This forgotten land has made possible the massive growth of Los Angeles, even though it lies hundreds of miles away. In popular history, the Owens River Valley was an idyllic California Eden, a bountiful farming region under the eastern Sierras, until Los Angeles stole the flow of the river to fill its aqueduct. Passions over water still run high in the”ÀÜValley but as this guide demonstrates, water is only one of a series of infrastructures overlaying its terrain. Between the Sierras and the White Mountains water, power, and a myriad forms of tourism intersect with a sublime landscape, at once beautiful and toxic, natural and reshaped by man.
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Statement of Purpose: The fieldwork that culminated in the publication of A Land Between focused on the eco-cultural history of the Owens Valley in southeastern California. It began as an inquiry into how people perceive the landscape and how these perceptions promulgate changes on the land. Owens Valley was selected because of its long history of struggles between natural elements, particularly water, and cultural needs and expectations. The Owens River supplies 75% of the municipal water for the city of Los Angeles and most narratives (films, oral histories, and books) center on the story of water extraction by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The intent of this book was to offer a more holistic picture of the valley's long and fascinating history. For example, Native Americans have lived in the valley for thousands of years; it was the site of a Japanese American war relocation center; the mountains that edge the valley are home to the ancient bristlecone pines, oldest living trees in the world; and countless motion pictures have been shot in the valley.
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The Valley was cut by the Owens River, which flows east of the highway for the entire trip, although some of its water flows through the aqueduct that occasionally crosses the highway. Arid now, the Valley was once much wetter before the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) claimed (some would say, stole) the rights to much of its water early in in the 20th century. The diversion of water to keep Los Angeles lawns green left Owens Lake, just south of Lone Pine, virtually dry. In the 1920s, steamboats were needed to cross it. Now it is so dry that the EPA cites it as a leading source of pollution because strong winds blowing down the Valley whip away the alkali dust from its surface, causing health threats for people hundreds of miles down wind. The EPA was so concerned about this that it actually suggested paving over the huge dry lake bed. No one suggested the seemingly obvious solution of filling the lake again (folks in LA might not be able wash their cars every day!), but they are now testing the idea of using sprinklers to hold the dust down.
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Los Angeles water rights in the Owens Valley and Mono Basin have again been a front-page issue since 1970. New environmental and recreational values and air pollution concerns have ushered in demands to curtail the shipment of water from source regions for urban use.
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The gleaming white luxury tour bus, provided by California Excursions and piloted by driver Larry Hansen, leaves from the Center’s main office in Culver City, after tour participants have a moment to browse the Owens Valley exhibit. After a brief welcoming and introductory address by the tour guide for the duration, CLUI program manager Matthew Coolidge, the tour begins, long before reaching the Owens Valley itself. The extensions of the valley are clear even in the city. Just up Interstate 405, the bus passes the Budweiser brewery that supplies most of Los Angeles with product from the “King of Beers.” Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest brewer, has 12 such breweries in the United States, each of which is a major consumer of water. In L.A., the water that is converted into the millions of bottles of beer comes, of course, from the Owens Valley.
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Much of the recent history of the Owens Valley involves the "theft" of its water supply by Metropolitan Los Angeles. This story is explained in Marc Reisner's book, Cadillac Desert and includes William Mulholland, the Los Angeles Times, and other sordid characters.
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