O
wens Dry Lake is an example of shameless use of natural resources and how it went wrong. The 110-square-mile Owens Lake was once a formidable body of water fed by the Owens River. The tragedy started when Frederick Eaton, who was mayor of Los Angeles in 1898, created the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and appointed his friend William Mulholland the superintendent. Eaton and Mulholland were expecting Los Angeles to grow much bigger and the limiting factor in growth was the water supply, their solution was building a gravity-fed aqueduct that could deliver the Owens water to Los Angeles. The Owens Valley had a large amount of runoff from the Sierra Nevada. By 1905, through purchases and bribery, Los Angeles purchased enough water rights in the Owens Valley to enable the aqueduct. The aqueduct was sold to the citizens of Los Angeles as vital to the growth of the city. However, unknown to the public, the initial water would be used to irrigate the San Fernando Valley, north of the city. A syndicate of investors (friends of Eaton) bought up large tracts of land in the San Fernando Valley with this inside information. The 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct was completed in November 1913, water from the Owens River reached a reservoir in the San Fernando Valley on November 5. After the aqueduct was completed, the San Fernando investors demanded so much water from the Owens Valley that the Owens Lake was gone from continuously holding water for more than 800,000 years to a contemporary biohazard, a crusty alkaline dust bed by 1924. Today Owens Dry Lake is the largest single source of PM-10 (fine dust) pollution in the United States. Salt grass and the installation of 300 miles underground pipe with 5000 irrigation bubblers have to accomplish the slow process of turning Owens Lake from biohazard to possible habitat.