LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Owens Valley: Water
built 655 days ago
The Department of Water and Power’s primary construction company for dust-mitigation work in the Owens Valley, along with a related firm, overbilled or was overpaid more than $7 million, according to a recently released audit. The bulk of the work was on three construction contracts that were awarded for about $126 million, but grew to $162 million before the work was completed, according to the audit by GCAP Services Inc. Some of the construction work was overseen by CH2M Hill, the Denver-based engineering firm that a previous audit concluded overbilled at least $3.3 million on a $96 million contract for the project.
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Evaluation of selected water-management alternatives indicates that long-term variations in average runoff to the Owens Valley of as much as 10 percent will not have a significant effect on the water-table altitude. However, reductions in pumpage to an average annual value of about 75,000 acre-ft/yr are needed to maintain the water table at the same altitude as observed during water year 1984. A 9-year transient simulation of dry, average, and wet conditions indicates that the aquifer system takes several years to recover from increased pumping during a drought, even when followed by average and above-average runoff and recharge. Increasing recharge from selected tributary streams by additional diversion of high flows onto the alluvial fans, increasing artificial recharge near well fields, and allocating more pumpage to the Bishop area may be useful in mitigating the adverse effects on native vegetation caused by drought and short-term increases in pumpage.
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In 1970, LADWP completed a second aqueduct from Owens Valley. More surface water was diverted and groundwater was pumped to feed the aqueduct. Owens Valley springs and seeps dried and disappeared, and groundwater-dependent vegetation began to die.
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There is ... dust, and fear, in the Owens Valley air today. Many Inyo County residents worry about cancer, respiratory disease and pulmonary illnesses caused by toxic dust blowing off Owens Lake which was drained dry by the DWP in 1913. L.A. got its water, Owens Valley residents got sick.
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Ultimately, after lengthy and rancorous negotiations over the most valuable properties, the LADWP secured almost all the private land in Owens Valley. Although the evidence indicates that both parties did well in the exchanges, with no record of the often-claimed economic devastation, the charge of water theft remains a hallmark of the story.
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• The workplans being developed to update and revise the Green Book will be presented, as will some sort of timeline for the project to revise the technical groundwater pumping and management guidelines in the Owens Valley. The county Water Department and LADWP are working cooperatively to update the Green Book, and both entities have agreed to an “interim management plan” that will simplify annual pumping for three years so staff time can be devoted to the Green Book work, not pumping plans.
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