Drain - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 130

Eaton, whose family had founded Pasadena, pulled strings in state political circles
and met with President Theodore Roosevelt's advisers in Washington, DC, to quash the
Bureau of Reclamation's irrigation plan. At the same time, Eaton quietly bought up wa-
ter rights and large parcels of land in Owens Valley, with the idea of selling them to Los
Angeles for a vast personal profit.
When the city's secret aqueduct plan was revealed in 1905, the farmers, ranchers, and
miners in Owens Valley rose up in protest. But it was too late. Eaton and his friends had
used a combination of bribes, intimidation, and legitimate purchases to seize control of
the valley's water rights. Over the next twenty-five years, Los Angeles gained control of
nearly a quarter of the Owens Valley.
While valley residents grew alarmed by the city's takeover, Eaton, Chandler, and Otis
persuaded the citizens of Los Angeles that an aqueduct was necessary to ensure the sur-
vival of the city. They used all manner of persuasion, including planting false stories in
the LosAngelesTimesthat gave the impression the city was facing drought, and forbid-
ding people from watering their lawns, all the while lowering the city's water supply by
dumping it into sewers. What the conspirators didn't say was that Owens Valley water
would not only feed the city but would also be used to irrigate the San Fernando Valley,
a semidesert region just north of Los Angeles that was not legally part of the city. Ot-
is, Chandler, and others bought up large parcels in the valley and pushed for the bond
that would fund the construction of the aqueduct. In the summer of 1906, President
Roosevelt allowed the aqueduct to cross federal lands. The following year, spooked by
the idea that they were running out of water, Angelenos voted to approve $22.5 million
in bonds to build a 233-mile-long aqueduct to bring water from Owens Valley to the
city.
William Mulholland oversaw the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which
became the world's longest at the time. Starting in 1908, the project took five years and
required over two thousand workers and the boring of 164 tunnels to drain water from
the elevated Owens Valley to the San Fernando Valley and the city, at sea level. When
Owens water first spilled into the San Fernando reservoir, north of Los Angeles, on
November 5, 1913, Mulholland famously declared, “There it is. Take it.”
In 1915, Los Angeles annexed the mostly rural San Fernando Valley, more than
doubling the size of the city. With Sierra Nevada runoff flowing through the aqueduct,
the arid San Fernando region was transformed into a major center of corn, cotton, cit-
rus, and walnut growing. By 1960, the valley had over a million inhabitants; by 2007,
the valley's population had reached 1.7 million.
The aqueduct also had a major impact on Owens Valley. The city's water withdrawals
drained the hundred-square-mile Owens Lake and desertified the valley's land. As a res-
ult, most farming and ranching became impossible there. Owens Valley residents re-