California water wars
[2]: 62 Water from the Owens River started being diverted to Los Angeles in 1913, precipitating conflict and eventual ruin of the valley's economy.
In 1941, Los Angeles diverted water that previously fed Mono Lake, north of Owens Valley, into the aqueduct.
The litigation forced Los Angeles to stop diverting water from around Mono Lake, which has started to rise back to a level that can support its ecosystem.
Walker saw that the valley's soil conditions were inferior to those on the other side of the Sierra Nevada range, and that runoff from the mountains was absorbed into the arid desert ground.
[2]: 60 The Homestead Act of 1862 gave pioneers five years to claim and take title of their land for a small filing fee and a charge of $1.25 per acre.
The Homestead Act limited the land an individual could own to 160 acres (64.7 ha) in order to create small farms.
The irrigation systems created by the ditch companies did not have adequate drainage and as a result oversaturated the soil to the point where crops could not be raised.
[2]: 64 In return, while Lippincott was employed by the Bureau, he also served as a paid private consultant to Eaton, advising Los Angeles on how to best obtain water rights.
[2]: 66 Eaton bought land as a private citizen, hoping to sell it back to Los Angeles at a tidy profit.
[15] Roosevelt met with Flint, Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock, Bureau of Forests Commissioner Gifford Pinchot, and Director of the Geological Survey Charles D. Walcott.
[15] Several authors, such as Rolle and Libecap, argue that Los Angeles paid an unfairly low price to the farmers of Owens Valley for their land.
[8] Unknown to the public, the initial water would be used to irrigate the San Fernando Valley to the north, which was not at the time a part of the city.
[2]: 74–76 [11]: 152 [12] From a hydrological point of view, the San Fernando Valley was ideal: its aquifer could serve as free water storage without evaporation.
"[11] After the aqueduct was completed in 1913, the San Fernando investors demanded so much water from the Owens Valley that it started to transform from "The Switzerland of California" into a desert.
[2]: 89 In 1923, farmers and ranchers formed an irrigation cooperative headed by Wilfred and Mark Watterson, owners of the Inyo County Bank.
By exploiting personal bitterness of some of the farmers, Los Angeles managed to acquire some of the key water rights of the cooperative.
[2]: 93 Finally, a group of armed ranchers seized the Alabama Gates and dynamited part of the system, letting water return to the Owens River.
Since all local business had been transacted through their bank, the closure left merchants and customers with little more than the small amount of money they had on hand.
The brothers claimed that the fraud was done for the good of the Owens Valley against Los Angeles, and this excuse was generally believed to be true in Inyo County.
[2]: 97 The collapse of the bank wiped out the lifetime savings of many people, including payments gained from the sale of homes and ranches to Los Angeles.
[23][24] The City of Los Angeles continued to purchase private land holdings and their water rights to meet the increasing demands.
By 1928, Los Angeles owned 90 percent of the water in Owens Valley and agriculture interests in the region were effectively dead.
In December, 2003, LADWP settled a lawsuit brought by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the Owens Valley Committee, and the Sierra Club.
[35]: 91 Falling water levels started making a land bridge to Negit Island, which allowed predators to feed on bird eggs for the first time.
[37] The committee (and the National Audubon Society) sued LADWP in 1979, arguing that the diversions violated the public trust doctrine, which states that navigable bodies of water must be managed for the benefit of all people.
[39] In February 2014, after three consecutive years of below-normal rainfall, California faced its most severe drought emergency in decades with fish populations in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta in unprecedented crisis due to the decades of large-scale water exports from Northern California to south of the Delta via state and federal water projects.
[citation needed] Half a million acres of Central Valley farmland supposedly was in danger of going fallow due to drought.
This would suspend the very recent efforts to restore the San Joaquin River since 2009, won after 18 years of litigation, with increased releases from the Friant Dam east of Fresno.
Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer proposed emergency drought legislation of $300 million aid, and to speed up environmental reviews of water projects, so state and federal officials have "operational flexibility" to move water south, from the delta to San Joaquin Valley farms.
The 1974 film Chinatown was inspired by the California water wars and features a fictionalized version of the conflict as a central plot element.
