Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion L.A., Owens Valley settle despute over dust control

Los Angeles and the Owens Valley have reached a settlement in their dispute over new measures to control dust storms that have blown across the eastern Sierra Nevada since L.A. opened an aqueduct a century ago that drained Owens Lake. Under terms of the agreement, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will fast-track mitigation measures that do not use water, and the utility will be allowed to lay down a thinner layer of gravel to suppress dust. The recently discovered location of a Native American massacre at Owens Lake will be excluded from mitigation efforts because they would disturb the 328-acre site.

Rest of the story here

Wow, how many square miles of gravel would that be?

I once surveyed Owens Lake back in the 70s, and lots of it wouldn't support any sort of gravel hauling operation. They'd have to launch it out of a water gun or something like that.

I love this passage:

"... a lawsuit filed by the [LA] DWP that alleged that Great Basin was forcing the city to waste billions of gallons of High Sierra water on dust control measures."

Yeah, what a waste, compared with LA's far more prudent system of swimming pools, golf courses, outfall pipes and pet cemeteries.

This raises an interesting point: how come LA drains Owen's but San Fran fills Hetch Hetchy? Not a rhetorical question.

Hey, no problem: here on the coast we move dredge spoils around with pumps all the time. All they have to do is pump the scree from the MR, back of Langley, maybe a few chutes on Russel. Everybody wins!

Hetch Hetchy stores water that is sent elsewhere for consumption at a different rate and time than it collected. Owens Lake consumed water by evaporation. That's why it was a pool of brine retaining the salts that entered it. It grew as big as it needed to be to evaporate the water that entered it. Its been thousands of years since it received enough water to make it overflow, as it once did, down through Fossil Falls.

Dale B. Dalrymple

Exactly so on on Owen's. But water flows to Owen's about the same time it flows to Hetch Hetchy, and is used in LA on about the same annual pattern as in San Fran. So the answer on Hetch Hetchy is true, but simply begs the question, which is "Why there?"

Good one, Dog. I demolished my pool (backfilled it) when I realized that it was gobbling far more in water & electricity than it was worth in terms of pleasure. I came to view it as a bloated extravagance.

There is no "Why there?" about fresh water at Owens Lake. There never has been, historically. Owens Lake was brine. Farmers used the water before it got to Owens Lake and the lake level was already dropping because of irrigation diversions before LA bought the rights to the diverted water. Today the major diversion from the Owens River is between Independence and Big Pine. Fresh water is stored above that point in many mountain reservoirs (June Lakes, South Lake, Sabrina, etc.), in valley reservoirs (Crowley, Pleasant Valley, Tinemaha, and Hiawee-which is below Owens) and in lakes in the mountains around the LA basin. The reservoirs around LA have two main purposes: keeping storms from flushing local mountain mud, gravel and boulders into the suburbs and storing water from distant places like the Owens Valley and the Colorado River.

Today the lower Owens gets about 40 CFS of water that is pumped back into the canal at the head of Owens Lake before it picks up salt(Google "Lower Owens River Project"). Water delivery through the Owens River channel near Bishop is often as high as 600 CFS when water is being delivered downstream for storage or use. It goes through the canal around Owens Lake.

Dale B. Dalrymple

Uh, exactly. Which is why the question was about Hetch Hetchy.
Perhaps I should have said "the statement about Hetch Hetchy is true", but it begs the question.

It's easier, cheaper and safer to build dams across narrow canyons with solid rock than in flat land and dirt. And you can grow stuff in the dirt to harvest and sell. Also, the higher you build the reservoir, the wider the range you can deliver water to via gravity. Who would care about drowning some unproductive rock anyway?

Dale B. Dalrymple

Yes I am sure that's the reason. Ability to deliver to the entire city. And easier, etc. Sure can't say that for any of those downstream sites. I am sure the hydro power is just a lucky coincidence.

There's power generation in the Owens Valley, both geothermal and hydro. I believe currently only DWP runs the hydro, but is not involved in geothermal (yet) to the best of my knowledge.

Seems like a reasonable settlement, without knowing all the details. It's always good to allow more flexibility in addressing a problem rather than having an agency specify how to fix it.

Describing the components and flows of the LA aqueduct system, or comparing it to Hetch Hetchy is interesting stuff, but it's a bit of a side track. Getting back to the issue, the fact remains that LADWP created this situation when they "obtained" the water (let's not rehash that one). The impacts come along with the benefits of diverting on this scale. The lake naturally had enough water to prevent what is happening now - perhaps the largest dust generator in the world complete with heavy metals and other nasty stuff. Whoever diverts the water that ends up creating the mess needs to clean it up. You break it, you own it.

Had the water remained in the local area for the benefit of agriculture, then the local farmers would have to address the dust issue created by diverting the water. As it is now, LA gets the water and Owens Valley gets the dust. Glad to see they will continue trying new technologies to solve this rather than fighting it out in court.

the article suggests

"utility will be allowed to lay down a thinner layer of gravel to suppress dust."

Thinner? If they spent >$1B already (with how much success?)
then how does a thinner layer help?

You mean, "fighting it out AGAIN" of course.

This settlement came after at least four lawsuits brought by LADWP against enforcement actions by various agencies. The fact that it is a setttlement means that it WAS fought out in court. It just took going 0 for 4 in court to get LA to quit filing.

"Court" is not synonymous with "trial". In fact most of what goes on "in court" is NOT trials.

Dog, I think it was about 20 or 30 years? of litigation (no mention of "trial") before LADWP did anything to mitigate the dust problem. Kind of like the marathon legal battle over Mono Lake water levels. I actually started a thread with a link about the latest lawsuit against their regulators, which was thrown out of court.

As I read the media summary of the settlement, it looks like LADWP is getting some flexibility in how they solve the problem. Before the settlement, it appears they were required to divert a specific amount of water regardless of the outcome. Spreading gravel and flooding are just two ways (expensive ways) to address it. They are also planting salt grasses and using underground watering systems to reduce evaporation. The settlement seems to allow the possibility of other means as well. Perhaps they now have better data about the minimum thickness of gravel needed. The main point is that they are continuing to address the problem in the field rather than in court.

Exactly. In fact, there's a string of hydro power and reservoirs all along the LA acqueducts, illustrating (along with the rest of the western Sierra)e that a resrvoir at HH was unnecessary for either water use or power generation. Cheaper and easier? Maybe, but also a far more spectacular political and ideological victory for the SF developers and Gifford Pinchot. Which may have something to do with the fact that HH is the only project of its kind in that zone of the Sierra.

One of the more interesting historical uses of water power was the sluice that was built to bring logs down the mountainside near what we now call Horseshoe Meadows to the shore of Owens Lake, where it was converted to charcoal, carried across the lake by boat, and hauled by wagon up to the mines at Cerro Gordo, located above the Owens Valley in the Inyo Range. There were also smelters across the lake, and ore brought down from the mines.

If you know where to look, you can see the remains of this old sluice system as you drive north on US395, and especially if you hike up into Cottonwood Canyon itself. This Cottonwood Canyon is located west of Owens Lake, and is an interesting hike through a narrow, twisting, and very scenic canyon, eventually crossing the county highway a mile or so south of the Horseshoe Meadow campground and trailhead. You'll see bits and pieces of the old wooden sluice which carried the logs several thousand feet downhill.

You can also see where DWP diverts the stream into its hydro generation system before releasing it again, this time into an open aqueduct which in turn empties into the Haiwee Reservoir system, located south of Owens Lake.

But I digress - back to the settlement. This settlement is one of many stretching back many years. It's anyone's guess as to whether the terms of the settlement will be followed, and for how long. But, work done by DWP in recent years has gone a long way in reducing PM10 levels and restoring wildlife habitat.

Here's a link to a recent article on Valley Fever. PM10 has also been linked to cancers, so continuing to delay mitigation efforts has real consequences. I have hiker friends who had Valley Fever - serious business.

http://www.sacbee.com/2013/07/07/5549705..._medium=twitter