Drain - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 133

ulates into the air, causing bronchial problems for people nearby. But Mono County was
sparsely populated and hundreds of miles from Los Angeles. As water levels dropped,
few noticed or cared—except for those who lived there.
The water table of the Owens and Mono Basins has always fluctuated several feet with
the seasons, but in the spring of 1953 , Mono County grew exceptionally dry. This was
odd, because the snowpack and rainfall had been normal that year. In the early 1950s,
Edward Moran, father of the Denver-based hydrogeologist Bob Moran, was the attor-
ney general of Mono County. He grew curious about the mysterious drying of his juris-
diction and began to nose around.
Ed Moran spoke to local ranchers and miners, who told him that almost every drop
of water in Mono Basin was being diverted. Hiking the steepsided watershed around
the town of Lee Vining, which overlooks the lake, Moran discovered that nearly every
little spring and creek that hydrated Mono Basin was being tapped, and wells had been
dug around the lake's perimeter to access seeping groundwater.
“Holy shit, Los Angeles is stealing all our water!” Moran said. Far from being cowed
by this discovery, Moran—the son of an Irish cop in San Francisco, a man who enjoyed
a good fight—was thrilled. “My dad was like a kid in a candy shop at Mono,” recalled
Bob Moran. “It was the biggest case of his career.”
“Water is the mother's milk of Los Angeles,” Ed Moran instructed his children. “No
water, no L.A. People never understood this fact, and they still don't.”
He decided to open the city's eyes.
In early 1954, Ed Moran filed suit against Los Angeles, claiming that the city was
taking far more water from the Mono Basin than it was legally allowed. That spring he
won a significant legal victory against the LADWP, his son Bob recalled, which required
the city to pay Mono County's taxes. (he details of this case remain murky.) “He was
asking tough questions: Who thought it was a good idea to drain Mono, and who really
benefits? Where is that water going, and how are those withdrawals sustainable? What
happens if the basin is totally drained?” said Bob Moran. “My father managed to make
a lot of very rich and powerful people in the city very uncomfortable.”
On March 5, 1955, Ed Moran met with state legislators in Sacramento, then had
lunch with his cousin. Late that afternoon, he climbed behind the wheel of his car and
set out on the long drive home. Sometime that evening, the car veered from the road
and plunged off a cliff, killing Ed Moran instantly. He was thirty-eight years old. There
were no witnesses. But there were plenty of conspiracy theories about what happened
that night. “My father had made a lot of enemies, and there were hints of foul play—'He
was done in by the water barons.' It was right out of Chinatown,” Bob Moran said.