An Old Water War Dries Up

With a single, terse sentence, an appeals court in Sacramento has brought to an end a quarter-century of litigation over Los Angeles’ pumping of ground water from the Owens Valley.

The action discharges the last vestige of the lawsuit brought by Inyo County against Los Angeles in 1973 to block it from conducting a pumping program without filing an environmental impact report under the California Environmental Quality Act. The city is now rid of two long, bitter battles over its taking of water from the eastern Sierra--Mono Lake and the Inyo ground water.

Now there is a legal framework in place to restrict the amount of water that the Department of Water and Power can import from the eastern Sierra valley. The settlement also provides for putting water back into a 60-mile stretch of the lower Owens River and to begin restoring some of the riparian habitat that disappeared when the DWP dried up the river and then started pumping from wells.

The decision ratifies an agreement that has been in place between the department and Inyo County since 1991 and will have no immediate effect on DWP ground water pumping levels.

One big issue remains: the problem of dust blowing from Owens Lake, which went dry as its river disappeared into the aqueduct watering Los Angeles. The city should move quickly to find a solution to that problem as well.